SQL Server 2005 SP1

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 has been released

There are also “April” releases of a number of other SQL 2005 tools:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor
• Feature Pack for SQL Server 2005 Apr 2006
• SQL Server 2005 Samples and Sample Databases (April 2006)

Setting TFS work items to default to be unassigned

Wouldn’t it be nice to have your work items in Team Foundation Server default to be “unassigned”, so that it is easier to determine what jobs are being worked on and what are unallocated?

Well it turns out this is possible.

First of all, you need to export the work item definitions that you want to customise:

cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE" witexport.exe /t tfsserver /p ProjectName /n Bug /f c:\Bug.xml witexport.exe /t tfsserver /p ProjectName /n Task/f c:\Task.xml

Now open these .xml files, locate the “Assigned To” field and update it to be the following:

 <FIELD name\="Assigned To" refname\="System.AssignedTo" type\="String" reportable\="dimension"\>

 <HELPTEXT\>The person assigned to do the work</HELPTEXT\>

 <ALLOWEDVALUES expanditems\="true"\>

 <LISTITEM value\="\[Project\]\\Project Administrators" />

 <LISTITEM value\="\[Project\]\\Contributors" />

 </ALLOWEDVALUES\>

 <PROHIBITEDVALUES\>

 <LISTITEM value\="Project Administrators" />

 <LISTITEM value\="Contributors" />

 <LISTITEM value\="domain\\tfssetup" />

 </PROHIBITEDVALUES\>

 </FIELD\>

What this does is limit the users that are displayed in the “Assigned to” drop-down list box to be just the direct project administrators and contributors.

Import these back into TFS:

witimport.exe /t tfsserver /p ProjectName /f c:\Bug.xml witimport.exe /t tfsserver /p ProjectName /f c:\Task.xml

Next, from Team Explorer, right-click on the team project and select Team Project Settings | Group Membership. Click on the ‘New’ button and create a new project group named “Unassigned”. Select the [Project]\Contributors group and add the [Project]\Unassigned group as a member. Now, select the team foundation server from with the Team Explorer, and right-click and ‘Refresh’ to reload the new templates.

ADSL2+ is here!

In the time it takes to have a shower, our broadband connection has been swapped over and we now have ADSL2+!

ADSL1 (Before, Telstra DSLAM) | | Upstream | Downstream | | — | — | — | | SNR Margin | 24.5 dB | 24 dB | | Line Attenuation | 34.5 dB | 20.0 dB | | Speed | 256,000 | 1,536,000 |

ADSL2+ (After, Agile DSLAM) | | Upstream | Downstream | | — | — | — | | SNR Margin | 9.0 dB | 9.0 dB | | Line Attenuation | 38.5 dB | 21.0 dB | | Speed | 942,600 | 11,467,480 |

Internode have the facility to customise the ADSL2+ profile, so tweaking that may improve things slightly. I’ve also got a Central Splitter that I plan to install as part of our house extensions so that should help things slightly too. But you can’t complain about a 10x improvement!