Overview Of Team Foundation Server

With Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), Microsoft has made available an integrated set of tools which are used by members of the software development team. Each of these persons is going to play one or multiple roles. One can vary easily imagine roles of Business Analyst, Project Manager, Technology Solution Architect, Developer, tester and Release Manger. These roles use different tools which suit them. For example Developers over the years have used Visual Studio to create code and Project Managers use MS Project for creating, monitoring and controlling a project. All the tools used by various roles work on the same data which makes them integrated. These tools also need to access some services for managing the data. The data storage and the common services are provided by a server component of VSTS which is called Team Foundation Server.

In this article we will take an overview of Team Foundation Server and services offered by Team Foundation Server.

Team Foundation Server (TFS)

TFS is the heart of VSTS. It pumps the required data and provides required services to the various client applications. It allows all the team members to collaborate with each other. It is a server which incorporates some of the best software technologies created by Microsoft like ASP.NET 2.0, Windows SharePoint Services, SQL Server 2005 etc.

TFS Architecture

Logical Architecture

TFS is a multilayered server. It is divided in the layers of Data Layer and Application Layer.

The data layer and the application layer can be on the same machine if the number of clients is less than 20.

Data layer is implemented in SQL Server 2005. When TFS is installed it creates number of database and tables for maintaining the data of the users, work items, source control and other resources. Being implemented on SQL Server 2005, data layer provides excellent scalability and performance.

Application layer is implemented through set of services which are available over the network. Most of them are configured as webservices which makes them possible to be accessed even over the Internet.

Physical Architecture

It is possible to create a single tier architecture for installations which do not demand high scalability. It is suggested that for any non-trivial installation the data layer and the application layer should be on different servers to meet the scalability and reliability requirements. For meeting the requirements of teams which are geographically scattered and connected through internet, TFS provides the ability to use proxy to fulfill the requirements of distant users. Although proxy will be caching the source code, main source control where changes are allowed to be stored is where the main installation of TFS is. It is also suggested to have a separate build server since the build activity is very highly CPU intensive. Keeping the main TFS and build server on same machine with frequent builds may hamper the performance of TFS adversely. Fig 2 shows the suggested physical architecture of TFS for any non trivial installation.

Services Offered by TFS

The main set of services offered by TFS are to improve collaboration between multiple users. We can enumerate those as shown in Figure below

 

Source Code Control (SCC)

SCC is the major contributor to Software Configuration Management. SCC in TFS includes normal version control, Branching, Merging, Shelving and Unshelving etc. TFS maintains the source control in SQL Server 2005. By default it allows multiple check-out. We can place locks in such a way that either the locked files cannot be checked out or if they are checked out they cannot be checked in. TFS also supports check-in policies which make it mandatory on the team members to execute certain actions when they are checking in some source code.

SCC also works as a point of convergence between the team project and the technological solution. Team project allows for architecture, collaboration, monitoring and control of the project. It is very peripherally concerned with the technology. The technological solution does not involve itself with project management or versioning etc. Every unit of source code to be generated is tagged with a work item. Work item store the management data about the technological entities. Storage and management of work items is done through SCC.

Project Portal

For every team project TFS creates a SharePoint portal site. This site contains sections for Process guidance, Reports and documents. It provides appropriate permissions to contributors, readers and guests. Through the process guidance we can learn about the process template that is selected for the project. Various reports provide the health and progress of the project. Clients can have a look at the reports even across the Internet for status monitoring.

Work Item Tracking

Work items are tagged collection of data representing some abstract entities like task, bug, Quality of Service Requirement etc. We need to monitor status of each of these entities. At the same time each work item and entity pair will belong to a user at any given moment. The user will work upon the entity like task or bug and then either set the status of the work item to close or re-assign it to some other user for further work on the entity. TFS keeps track of status of each work item and the user who owns that work item at that time.

Build Automation

 Each developer compiles the application in his / her workspace on the local machine. After compilation the code is checked in the source code control. The checked in code has to be built to ensure its interoperability with code created at other time, maybe, by some other developers. This build process should be carried out periodically to ensure integrity of all the checked in code. TFS allows creation of build at pre-determined time using a component called Team Build. Team build schedules the build script created using MS-Build to be executed at the predetermined time.

Reporting

TFS uses a separate data warehouse to generate reports. There are number of predefined reports as per the process template which are created by default. TFS uses SQL SERVER 2005 Reporting Service to create these reports. Each report indicates either of status of the project, quality of the software which is being maintained, progress of the project. These reports are based upon work items, source code, test results and builds. The status and progress of each is initially stored in the normalized tables in the database. TFS creates the non-normalized entries in the data warehouse for the use of creating reports. Reports Data Warehouse object model allows developers to create custom reports in the form of .rdl files using report designer. These reports can also be made available through the reports site.

Conclusion:

Team foundation server is the engine that powers Visual Studio Team System. It offers scalable multi tier architecture. It utilizes latest and best technologies like ASP.NET 2.0, Windows SharePoint Services, SQL Server 2005 etc. It offers services that allow collaboration of users and integration of all tools used by various roles configured in VSTS. Services it offers are Source Control, Team Build, Reporting, Work Item Tracking and Project Portal.

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SQL Server Error - Saving Changes in not permitted. The changes you have made require the following tables to be dropped and re-created. You have either made changes to a table that can’t be re-created or enabled the option Prevent saving changes that require the table to be re-created

Description

I have installed SQL Server 2008 in my laptop after successfully installed 

I opened SQL Server Management studio and created new table like this 

Once the table is created open the table in SQL Server Management studio 

and right click and select “Design” option Once the table is opened try to 

add or modify the existing columns in table and try to save then it will through error like 

“Saving Changes in not permitted. The changes you have made require 

the following tables to be dropped and re-created. You have either made

 changes to a table that can’t be re-created or enabled the option 

Prevent saving changes that require the table to be re-created”

After seen this error message I realized that “Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation” option was enable by default because of that we are getting this problem. 

Follow below steps to solve this problem 

          1) Open SQL Server Management Studio

          2) Go to Tools

          3) In that go to Options

          4) In leftside treeview select Designers

          5) In Designers select Table and Designers

        6) After that in right side “Uncheck” check box of Prevent saving changes that require 

      table re-creation

After add above code run your application and check your output it will work for you

Demo

Now modify your table and save it now that table will save successfully into your database

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Difference between char , Varchar and nVarchar

Char DataType

Char datatype which is used to store fixed length of characters. 

Suppose if we declared char(50) it will allocates memory for 50 characters. 

Once we declare char(50) and insert only 10 characters of word 

then only 10 characters of memory will be used and other 40 characters of memory will be wasted.

varchar DataType

Varchar means variable characters and it is used to store non-unicode characters. 

It will allocate the memory based on number characters inserted. 

Suppose if we declared varchar(50) it will allocates memory of 0 characters 

at the time of declaration. Once we declare varchar(50) 

and insert only 10 characters of word it will allocate memory

 for only 10 characters.

nvarchar DataType

nvarchar datatype same as varchar datatype but only difference 

nvarchar is used to store Unicode characters and it allows you to 

store multiple languages in database. nvarchar datatype will take twice 

as much space to store extended set of characters as required by other languages.

So if we are not using other languages then it’s better to use 

varchar datatype instead of nvarchar

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Difference between Asp.net SessionState and ViewState in C#

         View State: 

 - View state is maintained in page level only.
 - View state of one page is not visible in another page.
 - View state information stored in client only.
 - View state persist the values of particular page in the client (browser) 

        when post back operation done.
 - View state used to persist page-instance-specific data. 

        Session State: 

 - Session state is maintained in session level.
 - Session state value is available in all pages within a user session.
 - Session state information stored in server.
 - Session state persist the data of particular user in the server. 

        This data available till user close the browser or session time completes.
 - Session state used to persist the user-specific data on the server side. 

       Usage

 - If you want to access the information on different web pages,

 you can use SessionState

 - If you want to access from the same page, 

then you can use Viewstate

     Security

     Session state provides more security when compared with 

     view state as the data value is stored in server side

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Asp.net insert, Edit, update, delete data in gridview

I have one gridview I need to write code to insert data into gridview after that I need to edit that gridview data and update it and if I want to delete the record in grdview we need to delete record simply by click on delete button of particular row to achieve these functionalities I have used some of gridview events those are 

1            Onrowcancelingedit

2          Onrowediting

3         Onrowupdating

4             Onrowcancelingedit

5         Onrowdeleting

By Using above griview events we can insert, edit, update and delete the data in gridview. My Question is how we can use these events in our coding before to see those details first design  table in database and give name Employee_Details

ColumnName	DataType
UserId	Int(set identity property=true)
UserName	varchar(50)
City	varchar(50)
Designation	varchar(50)

After completion table creation design aspx page like this
 

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head runat="server"> <title>Untitled Page</title> <style type="text/css"> .Gridview { font-family:Verdana; font-size:10pt; font-weight:normal; color:black; } </style> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <asp:GridView ID="gvDetails" DataKeyNames="UserId,UserName" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false" CssClass="Gridview" HeaderStyle-BackColor="#61A6F8" ShowFooter="true" HeaderStyle-Font-Bold="true" HeaderStyle-ForeColor="White" onrowcancelingedit="gvDetails_RowCancelingEdit" onrowdeleting="gvDetails_RowDeleting" onrowediting="gvDetails_RowEditing" onrowupdating="gvDetails_RowUpdating" onrowcommand="gvDetails_RowCommand"> <Columns> <asp:TemplateField> <EditItemTemplate> <asp:ImageButton ID="imgbtnUpdate"  CommandName="Update" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/update.jpg"  ToolTip="Update" Height="20px" Width="20px" /> <asp:ImageButton ID="imgbtnCancel" runat="server"  CommandName="Cancel" ImageUrl="~/Images/Cancel.jpg"  ToolTip="Cancel" Height="20px" Width="20px" /> </EditItemTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <asp:ImageButton ID="imgbtnEdit" CommandName="Edit"  runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/Edit.jpg"ToolTip="Edit"  Height="20px" Width="20px" /> <asp:ImageButton ID="imgbtnDelete" CommandName="Delete" Text="Edit"  runat="server"ImageUrl="~/Images/delete.jpg"  ToolTip="Delete" Height="20px" Width="20px" /> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> <asp:ImageButton ID="imgbtnAdd" runat="server"  ImageUrl="~/Images/AddNewitem.jpg" CommandName="AddNew"  Width="30px" Height="30px" ToolTip="Add new User" ValidationGroup="validaiton" /> </FooterTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="UserName"> <EditItemTemplate> <asp:Label ID="lbleditusr" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("Username") %>'/> </EditItemTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <asp:Label ID="lblitemUsr" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("UserName") %>'/> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> <asp:TextBox ID="txtftrusrname" runat="server"/> <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvusername" runat="server"  ControlToValidate="txtftrusrname" Text="*"ValidationGroup="validaiton"/> </FooterTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="City"> <EditItemTemplate> <asp:TextBox ID="txtcity" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("City") %>'/> </EditItemTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <asp:Label ID="lblcity" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("City") %>'/> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> <asp:TextBox ID="txtftrcity" runat="server"/> <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvcity" runat="server"  ControlToValidate="txtftrcity"  Text="*"ValidationGroup="validaiton"/> </FooterTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Designation"> <EditItemTemplate> <asp:TextBox ID="txtDesg" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("Designation") %>'/> </EditItemTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <asp:Label ID="lblDesg" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("Designation") %>'/> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> <asp:TextBox ID="txtftrDesignation" runat="server"/> <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvdesignation"  runat="server" ControlToValidate="txtftrDesignation" Text="*"  ValidationGroup="validaiton"/> </FooterTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> </Columns> </asp:GridView> </div> <div> <asp:Label ID="lblresult" runat="server"></asp:Label> </div> </form> </body> </html>

Now add the following namespaces in codebehind

using System; using System.Data; using System.Data.SqlClient; using System.Drawing

After that write the following code

SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection ("Data Source=SureshDasari;Integrated Security=true;Initial Catalog=MySampleDB"); protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!IsPostBack) { BindEmployeeDetails(); } } protected void BindEmployeeDetails() { con.Open(); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("Select * from Employee_Details", con); SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(cmd); DataSet ds = new DataSet(); da.Fill(ds); con.Close(); if (ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0) { gvDetails.DataSource = ds; gvDetails.DataBind(); } else { ds.Tables[0].Rows.Add(ds.Tables[0].NewRow()); gvDetails.DataSource = ds; gvDetails.DataBind(); int columncount = gvDetails.Rows[0].Cells.Count; gvDetails.Rows[0].Cells.Clear(); gvDetails.Rows[0].Cells.Add(new TableCell()); gvDetails.Rows[0].Cells[0].ColumnSpan = columncount; gvDetails.Rows[0].Cells[0].Text = "No Records Found"; } } protected void gvDetails_RowEditing(object sender, GridViewEditEventArgs e) { gvDetails.EditIndex = e.NewEditIndex; BindEmployeeDetails(); } protected void gvDetails_RowUpdating(object sender, GridViewUpdateEventArgs e) { int userid = Convert.ToInt32(gvDetails.DataKeys[e.RowIndex].Value.ToString()); string username = gvDetails.DataKeys[e.RowIndex].Values["UserName"].ToString(); TextBox txtcity = (TextBox)gvDetails.Rows[e.RowIndex].FindControl("txtcity"); TextBox txtDesignation = (TextBox)gvDetails.Rows[e.RowIndex].FindControl("txtDesg"); con.Open(); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("update Employee_Details set City='" + txtcity.Text +"',Designation='" + txtDesignation.Text + "' where UserId=" + userid, con); cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); con.Close(); lblresult.ForeColor = Color.Green; lblresult.Text = username + " Details Updated successfully"; gvDetails.EditIndex = -1; BindEmployeeDetails(); } protected void gvDetails_RowCancelingEdit(object sender, GridViewCancelEditEventArgs e) { gvDetails.EditIndex = -1; BindEmployeeDetails(); } protected void gvDetails_RowDeleting(object sender, GridViewDeleteEventArgs e) { int userid = Convert.ToInt32(gvDetails.DataKeys[e.RowIndex].Values["UserId"].ToString()); string username = gvDetails.DataKeys[e.RowIndex].Values["UserName"].ToString(); con.Open(); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand ("delete from Employee_Details where UserId=" + userid, con); int result = cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); con.Close(); if (result == 1) { BindEmployeeDetails(); lblresult.ForeColor = Color.Red; lblresult.Text = username + " details deleted successfully"; } } protected void gvDetails_RowCommand(object sender, GridViewCommandEventArgs e) { if(e.CommandName.Equals("AddNew")) { TextBox txtUsrname = (TextBox)gvDetails.FooterRow.FindControl("txtftrusrname"); TextBox txtCity = (TextBox)gvDetails.FooterRow.FindControl("txtftrcity"); TextBox txtDesgnation = (TextBox) gvDetails.FooterRow.FindControl("txtftrDesignation"); con.Open(); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand( "insert into Employee_Details(UserName,City,Designation) values('" + txtUsrname.Text + "','" + txtCity.Text + "','" + txtDesgnation.Text + "')", con); int result= cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); con.Close(); if(result==1) { BindEmployeeDetails(); lblresult.ForeColor = Color.Green; lblresult.Text = txtUsrname.Text + " Details inserted successfully"; } else { lblresult.ForeColor = Color.Red; lblresult.Text = txtUsrname.Text + " Details not inserted"; } } }

Demo

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