Microsoft visual studio 2015 unleashed

Part I Introducing Visual Studio 2015 Part II An In-De pth Look at the IDE Part III Working with the Visual Studio Tools 10 Debugging Code 11 Deploying Code 12 Developing Applications

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Unleashed

Lars Powers Mike Snell

800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 USA

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2015 Unleashed

Copyright © 2016 by Pearson Education, Inc

All rights reserved No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the

information contained herein Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein

ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33736-9

ISBN-10: 0-672-33736-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015907636

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing August 2015

All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized Sams Publishing cannot attest to the accuracy of this information Use of a term in this book should not be

regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark

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Part I Introducing Visual Studio 2015

Part II An In-De pth Look at the IDE

Part III Working with the Visual Studio Tools

10 Debugging Code

11 Deploying Code

12 Developing Applications in the Cloud with Windows Azure

13 Working with Databases

Part IV Exte nding Visual Studio

Part V Building We b Applications

17 Building Modern Websites with ASP.NET 5

18 Using JavaScript and Client-Side Frameworks

19 Building and Consuming Services with Web API and WCF

Part VI Building Windows Clie nt Apps

Part VII Cre ating Mobile Apps

23 Developing Windows Store Applications

24 Creating Windows Phone Applications

25 Writing Cross-Platform Mobile Applications with Apache Cordova Index

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I Introducing Visual Studio 2015

1 A Quick Tour of Visual Studio 2015

The Many Faces of a NET Application Windows

Developing with MVC/Razor

Creating a Single Page Application (SPA) Coding Web Services with Web API

2 The Visual Studio IDE

Installing Visual Studio

Managing Your IDE Settings

Specify Stored and Synchronized Settings

Change Color Theme

Manually Import/Export and Change Default IDE Settings Switch IDE User

3 The NET Language s

ReadOnly

NameOf

Index Initializers (C# Only)

Creating and Raising Events

Language Features

Infer a Variable’s Data Type Based on Assignment

Create an Object and Initialize Its Values (Object Initializers) Define a Collection and Initialize Its Values

Creating an Instance of a Nonexistent Class

Add Methods to Existing Classes (Extension Methods)

Add Business Logic to Generated Code (Partial Methods) Access and Query Data Using the NET Languages

Removing Unused Arguments from Event Handlers (VB Only) Creating an Automatically Implemented Property

Dropping the Underscore in VB for Line Continuation

Summary

Part II An In-De pth Look at the IDE

4 Solutions and Proje cts

Creating a Project

5 Browse rs and Explore rs

6 Introducing the Editors and De signe rs

Creating and Editing XML Documents and Schema Inferring Schema

Developing Windows Client Applications

Creating a Windows Forms Project

Creating a Windows Presentation Foundation Project

Authoring WinForms Components and Controls

Creating a New Component or Control

Further Notes on Writing Component Code

Creating Classes with the Class Designer

Creating a Class Diagram

Adding Items to the Diagram

Defining Relationships Between Classes

Defining Methods, Properties, Fields, and Events Summary

Part III Working with the Visual Studio Tools

7 Working with Visual Studio’s Productivity Aids

Testing Web Applications

Unit Testing MVC and Web API Projects Unit Testing ASP.NET Pages

9 Re factoring Code

Visual Studio Refactoring Basics

Invoking the Refactoring Tools

Making (and Previewing) Changes

Using the Class Designer to Refactor Renaming Code

Accessing the Rename Operation

Working with the Rename Dialog Box

The Many Phases of Debugging

Debugging the Application (Self-Checking) Debugging Basics Summary

The Visual Studio Debugger

The Debug Menu and Toolbar

Debug Options

Stepping In, Out, and Over Code

Indicating When to Break into Code

Working with Tracepoints (When Hit Option) Viewing Data in the Debugger

Using the Edit and Continue Feature

Advanced Debugging Scenarios

Remote Debugging

Debugging WCF Services

Debugging Multithreaded Applications

Debugging Parallel Applications

Debugging a Client-Side Script

Debugging Crash Information (Dump Files) Debugging Windows Store Apps

Summary

11 De ploying Code

An Overview of Client Deployment Options

Introducing ClickOnce Deployments

Introducing Windows Installer and InstallShield Deployments

Summary

12 De ve loping Applications in the Cloud with Windows Az ure

Create and Deploy an Azure Web Apps in Visual Studio

The Azure Hosting Platform

Create the ASP.NET Application and Azure Hosting

Deploy/Publish an Application to Azure

Set Up an Existing Application to Publish to an Azure web app Website Management with Azure Server Explorer

Debug an Azure web app

13 Working with Database s

Creating Database Objects in Managed Code Creating a Stored Procedure in C#

Binding Controls to Data

An Introduction to Data Binding

Autogenerating Bound Windows Forms Controls Editing Typed Data Sets

Manually Binding Windows Forms Controls Data Binding in WPF Applications

Data Binding with Web Controls

Object Relational Mapping

An Overview of LINQ

Mapping Using the O/R Designer

LINQ Code

Working with the Entity Framework

Querying Against the Entity Data Model

Summary

Part IV Exte nding Visual Studio

14 Introducing the Automation Obje ct Mode l

An Overview of the Automation Object Model Object Model Versions

Automation Categories

The DTE/DTE2 Root Object

Solution and Project Objects

Controlling Projects in a Solution Accessing Code Within a Project Working with Windows

Referencing Windows

Interacting with Windows

Text Windows and Window Panes The Tool Window Types

Linked Windows

15 Exte nding the IDE

The Structure of an Extension

Defining and Reacting to Commands

A Sample Extension: Color Selector Getting Started

Creating the User Control

Finishing the Package

Summary

16 Exte nding the Code Editor

The Visual Studio Editor and MEF Editor Extension Points

Using the Visual Studio SDK

Part V Building We b Applications

17 Building Mode rn We bsite s with ASP.NET 5

ASP.NET Website Fundamentals

Introducing ASP.NET 5

The NET Core Framework and Execution Environment

Choosing an ASP.NET Project Template

Understanding the ASP.NET 5 Project Template and Related Files ASP.NET 5 Dependencies and Package Managers

Summary

18 Using JavaScript and Clie nt-Side Frame works

Developing with jQuery

jQuery and AJAX

Building Single-Page Applications (SPAs) with Client-Side JavaScript Frameworks

Selecting a Client Framework

Summary

19 Building and Consuming Se rvice s with We b API and WCF

Service Fundamentals

Summary

Part VI Building Windows Clie nt Apps

20 Building Windows Forms Applications

Introducing the WPF Designer

XAML and Design Panes

Building a Simple Image Viewer Application Starting the Layout

Storing the Images

Binding to the Images

Button Event Handlers and Image Effects

Path Selection with a Common Dialog Box Summary

22 De ve loping Office Busine ss Applications

Visual Studio Office Project Types

Part VII Cre ating Mobile Apps

23 De ve loping Windows Store Applications

Fundamentals of Cordova Development

How Cordova Works

Cordova Dependencies

The Cordova Project Template

Creating a Basic Cordova App

Running and Debugging Your App

Using Cordova Frameworks and Plug-Ins

Choosing Cordova Client Frameworks

Cordova Plug-Ins (for Accessing Native Device Capabilities) Developing a Cordova App with Ionic and Angular

Set Up Your Project

Anatomy of the Ionic-Angular-Cordova App

Rebuild the Sample App

Support Storage

Running on Windows Phone

Additional Items to Consider

Summary

Inde x

About the Authors

Mike Sne ll spends his work life helping teams build great software that

exceeds the expectations of end users He runs the Solutions division at CEI (www.ceiamerica.com) Mike and his team deliver architecture, consulting, and mentoring to clients looking for help with enterprise projects, commercial software, mobile applications, or cloud-based solutions He is also a

Microsoft Regional director

Lars Powe rs is currently the director of application development at

Newgistics, Inc Prior to Newgistics, he held various technical management positions at 3M and spent many years with Microsoft as a platform evangelist focused on emerging technologies

developer-architects at CEI for acting as a sounding board for so many topics

Of course, I’m also grateful to my co-author, Lars Powers, for the many years

of collaboration

Lars Powe rs:

Nothing of consequence is delivered without team work This book is no

exception I’d like to acknowledge the Pearson team who did all the hard work

to get this book into your hands Joan Murray alternately cajoled, supported, and pushed us along Mark Renfro and Elaine Wiley stitched all the pieces together for us And Christophe Nasarre-Soulier ensured we stayed on the mark for technical accuracy

And to my co-author, Mike: as always, projects are easier with you on board

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Introduction

Visual Studio 2015 is Microsoft’s first, big release since moving to a more open-source approach for NET and related technologies This includes the new Roslyn compiler for C# and Visual Basic, the NET Core Framework, ASP.NET itself, and more The result is enabling a wider reach for NET

applications, including both building and deploying on Mac, Linux, and

Windows

Microsoft has also worked to integrate Visual Studio with community-driven, open source JavaScript frameworks, package managers, and UI kits The

ASP.NET 5 model simplifies modern web development using frameworks such

as Bootstrap, AngularJS, Knockout, Gulp, and many more

Visual Studio 2015 supports the new, Universal App model for building on Windows These applications can be written once and adapted to desktop, tablet, and phone This includes upcoming support for Windows 10

development

Cross-platform mobile development is also supported Microsoft has provided project templates for the open-source Apache Cordova This enables

developers to build a mobile application that runs on iOS, Android, and

Windows Phone using familiar web technologies of Hypertext Markup

Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript

This latest version of Visual Studio unlocks productivity across platforms and application types And this book is meant to help you unlock the power behind Visual Studio so that you can realize productivity gains and greater reach for your applications

Who Should Read This Book?

Developers looking to use Visual Studio (Community, Professional, or

Enterprise) to build great apps for users will want to read this book Of

course, established NET developers who rely on Visual Studio to get work done will also want to read this book to ensure they are getting the most out of their chosen toolset This book covers both using the IDE and building most of the many types of applications Visual Studio supports It covers all of the

following key topics:

Writing code using Visual Basic and C#

Understanding the basics of solutions, projects, editors, and designers Writing IDE extensions and add-ins

Writing unit tests to verify your code works as designed

Debugging code with the IDE

Refactoring your code

Building websites using the new ASP.NET 5 (and MVC 6) model, which includes support for Bower client-side package management and the new NET Core 5 for running ASP.NET applications on Windows, Mac, and Linux

Using JavaScript and the many client-side frameworks such as Knockout, AngularJS, and Bootstrap to create great web experiences

Developing service-based solutions for web and mobile clients using ASP.NET Web API and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Creating Windows desktop and Store applications using Windows

Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Working with data and databases and leveraging LINQ and Entity

Framework to build data-centric applications

Using Microsoft Office and Visual Studio to create enterprise solutions based on common office tools (Word, Excel, and so on)

Creating Windows Azure applications that live in the cloud

Developing applications for Windows Phone

Building cross-platform mobile applications that run on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone using Apache Cordova and related tools

This book has one primary focus: detailing and explaining the intricacies of the Visual Studio 2015 IDE to enable developers to be work faster and, ultimately, work smarter Although we do provide a language primer, those just starting out with Visual Basic or C# may want a companion book that focuses solely on their language of choice If you can write C# or Visual Basic code, this book will radically help you optimize your productivity with Visual Studio

This book focuses primarily on Visual Studio 2015 Professional edition

(which also covers the Community edition) There are additional features in Visual Studio Enterprise However, those are mostly not covered by this book Instead, we dedicate space to the version of the product used by the majority of NET developers all over the world

How Is This Book Organized?

You can read this book cover to cover, or you can pick the chapters that apply most to your current need We sometimes reference content across chapters, but for the most part, each chapter can stand by itself This organization allows you

to jump around and read as time (and interest) permits There are seven parts

to the book; each part is described next

Part I: Introducing Visual Studio 2015

The chapters in this part provide an overview of what to expect from Visual Studio 2015 This includes a tour of using the IDE to build various types of applications In addition, we cover the new C# and Visual Basic language enhancement for the 2016 and the NET Framework 4.6 Finally, we conclude this part with a language primer for those just getting started with NET

development Readers who are familiar with prior versions of Visual Studio will want to review these chapters for the new additions in 2015

Part II: An In-Depth Look at the IDE

This part covers the core development experience relative to Visual Studio It provides developers with a base understanding of the rich features of their primary tool The chapters walk through the many menus and windows that define each tool We cover the base concepts of projects and solutions, and we explore in detail the explorers, editors, and designers

Part III: Working with the Visual Studio Tools

Part III is the largest section of the book; it unlocks many of the powerful

productivity features of Visual Studio 2015 These chapters investigate the developer productivity aids that are present in the IDE and discuss how to best use Visual Studio for testing, refactoring, debugging, and deploying your code This part also covers building applications in Azure The section concludes with a chapter dedicated to using Visual Studio to work with databases

Part IV: Extending Visual Studio

For those developers interested in customizing, automating, or extending the Visual Studio IDE, these chapters are for you We explain the automation

model and then document how to use that application programming interface (API) to automate the IDE through macros We also cover how you can extend the IDE’s capabilities by writing your own add-ins

Part V: Building Web Applications

Part V is for web developers We cover building applications with the new ASP.NET 5 (and MVC 6) model This section also covers JavaScript and related client-side frameworks for building responsive, highly interactive client-side solutions The section concludes with coverage on writing and consuming services using Web API and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Part VI: Building Windows Client Apps

This section is targeted at developers looking to build applications for

Windows This includes the class Windows Forms We also cover the

powerful WPF and building Universal Application Finally, this part includes

a chapter dedicated to building custom solutions on Microsoft Office

Part VII: Creating Mobile Apps

Here we cover creating mobile application for Windows Store, Windows Phone, and cross-platform (iOS, Android, and Windows Phone) This part is targeted at the mobile developer looking to either build on Windows or use the hybrid mobile technology, Apache Cordova

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographic conventions are used in this book:

Code lines, commands, statements, variables, and text you see onscreen

appears in a monospace typeface

Placeholders in syntax descriptions appear in an italic monospace

typeface You replace the placeholder with the actual filename, parameter, or whatever element it represents

Italics highlight technical terms when they’re being defined

A code-continuation icon is used before a line of code that is really a

continuation of the preceding line Sometimes a line of code is too long to fit as

a single line on the page If you see before a line of code, remember that it’s part of the line immediately above it

The book also contains Notes, Tips, and Cautions to help you spot important or useful information more quickly

Source Code

You can download all the source code associated with this book from the

book’s website: www.informit.com/title/9780672337369

Part I: Introducing Visual Studio

2015

The Visual Studio Product Line

Languages and Frameworks

The Many Faces of a NET Application

Developing Windows 8/10 Clients

Creating Web Applications with ASP.NET 5

Coding for Azure

Working with Data

Writing Mobile Apps

Visual Studio 2015 and the latest version of the NET Framework introduce new features that address modern, mobile-first/cloud-first development

concerns such as cross-platform development, adoption of open standards, and transparency through open source This latest version also continues to

improve on existing developer experiences when writing code for the web, Windows, Office, database, and mobile applications The 2015 product allows developers to really increase their range when building modern applications that users demand Some highlights for the 2015 release include the following:

Developer productivity enhancements in the code editor, including touch support

Cross-platform mobile development for Windows, iOS, and Android Modern, unified web development with ASP.NET 5

Cloud-ready integration to ease development and deployment

Integration of the new, open source “Roslyn” compiler for VB, C#, and now TypeScript

Easier, faster data development across web, Windows, Windows Phone, and Windows Store using Entity Framework 7

Shared projects for C# and JavaScript to make sharing code between applications easier

Redesigned version of Blend for creating beautiful user interfaces (UIs) with XAML

Enhanced IDE support for building JavaScript solutions with oriented TypeScript language (a superset of JavaScript itself)

object-Open source of many NET elements including the compiler, the NET Core, TypeScript, ASP.NET, and more

This chapter covers the core makeup and capabilities of Visual Studio 2015

We first help you sort through the product choices available to NET

developers We then compare the NET programming languages The remaining sections of the chapter cover the many possibilities open to NET

programmers, including building web, Windows, cloud, data, and mobile

applications Our hope is to give you enough information in this chapter to get

Part I, “Introducing Visual Studio 2015,” is broken into three

chapters This chapter provides a snapshot of all things Visual

Studio Chapter 2, “The Visual Studio IDE,” is an introduction to

getting the tool installed, running it, and creating a first project It

also familiarizes you with the basics of the IDE Chapter 3, “The

.NET Languages,” is a quick primer on coding constructs in

Visual Basic and C# It also covers general programming against

the NET Framework

The Visual Studio Product Line

There are three primary editions of the Visual Studio product: Community, Professional with MSDN, and Enterprise with MSDN Development teams need to understand which tool they need for their development projects and price point At a high level, the primary tool editions are differentiated as follows

Visual Studio Community—A free, full-featured version of the

development tool for building Web, Windows, Desktop, and mobile applications This new version of the tool is targeted at developers learning to code, doing open source projects, and taking academic

courses

Profe ssional with MSDN—Includes the core features of the IDE to

build applications of all types on all NET languages Targets

professional developers and team looking to build commercial or

enterprise software Includes support for writing, debugging, and testing code

Ente rprise with MSDN—Formerly the Ultimate edition, the Enterprise

edition includes the core IDE features along with many advanced tools for building applications It builds on the Professional edition to add additional load testing support, architecture tools, lab management, release management, and more

Note

You can see a detailed product comparison at

https://www.visualstudio.com/products/compare-visual-studio-2015-products-vs

There is a peripheral version of the Visual Studio product called Test

Professional It is a tool targeted directly at testers You will learn more about all this product in the coming sections

Visual Studio Code

Microsoft released another development tool alongside Visual

Studio 2015 This tool is called Visual Studio Code It is a free

tool that allows developers to write web applications on

Windows, Mac, and Linux The NET Framework went

cross-platform; this is the tool that allows developers to work on these

other platforms You can find more information at

https://code.visualstudio.com//

Community Edition

The new Visual Studio Community 2015 edition is a full-featured IDE similar

to Professional but targeted toward students, small groups of developers, and open source contributors (and not enterprise teams) This version is free and available for immediate download Note that Microsoft has also release a Visual Studio Community 2013 edition

The former Express editions have been retired These editions were also free, but they were feature limited Community, student, and entrepreneurial

developers should be pleased to know this new edition is nearly the same as Professional but just has licensing restrictions

Being based on Professional opens community developers to all types of

applications using the great productivity tools built in Visual Studio Just as significant, it ensures the Community Edition supports Visual Studio plug-ins (more than 5,000 in existence) for using community extensions targeted at increasing productivity It also allows developers to target multiple different platforms with this single tool

The primary difference between the editions Community and Professional (outside of licensing and costs) are a few project types Microsoft has decided not to include with the Community Edition These project types are targeted squarely at enterprise developers They include SharePoint, Office,

LightSwitch, and Cloud Business Apps These type of solutions are outside the bounds of the solutions Microsoft sees students, hobbyists, and small groups needing to create

Note

For more information about the Visual Studio Community Edition

(including licensing restrictions) or to download, you can visit the

Microsoft site:

https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs

Unit testing and test-driven development

Code analysis and code metrics

Developing all application types, including Windows, web, mobile, Office, SharePoint, Cloud, SQL, and more

CodeLens to provide quick, detailed information including references, linked items such as bugs, and changes on your code right in the IDE Performance and diagnostics hub

Blend tool for building XAML UIs

Server Explorer

Refactoring in C# and Visual Basic

SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) for database development

Code review tools (when working with Team Foundation Server, or TFS)

Much more

Note

This book targets Visual Studio Professional only A quick

perusal of the book will allow you to see the depth and breadth of

what you can do with this powerful edition of the tool

Enterprise

Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 is targeted toward professional developers who build both corporate and commercial applications It includes all the features inside Professional plus tools that help developers verify, test, and check their code against common issues It also includes debugging tools designed to

eliminate the “can’t reproduce” bugs It provides architecture tools for creating UML models and exploring code visually This version of the product is the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink option in a single package The following list highlights the features of Enterprise:

Advanced performance and code profiling

Code Clone tool for finding and eliminate duplicate code

Unit test code coverage analysis and fakes

Coded UI testing

Test case management and exploratory testing

Test lab management tools

Historical debugging with IntelliTrace (including in production)

Unified Modeling Language (UML) support for use case, class,

sequence, component, and activity diagrams (including generating

sequence diagrams from code)

Architecture Explorer, for coming up to speed on and examining the structure of a code base

Web, load, and performance testing

developer access to nearly all Microsoft software and operating systems

including SharePoint, Exchange, Office, Dynamics, BizTalk, and more

Professional with MSDN, however, only provides access to TFS, Windows Server, and SQL Server

MSDN subscribers also have training benefits, access to deployment planning services, and monthly credits to allow Azure application hosting ($50 / month Azure credit for Professional subscribers and $150 / month for Enterprise) In addition, there is a new e-learning benefit for MSDN subscribers that includes access to a number of great learning solutions and instructional videos

Note

The MSDN benefit is vast, check out the following link for full

details:

https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-with-msdn-overview-vs

TFS and Related Tools

A key component of most professional development teams includes the

application lifecycle management environment, TFS This tool allows teams to manage and track work It provides the hub for collaboration between

developers, project managers, testers, and those providing feedback This section includes a brief overview of TFS and the related products: Team

Explorer and Visual Studio Test Professional (also known as Microsoft Test Manager)

TF S

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a broad term applied to the

concept of continuous delivery of software through a set of integrated tools and processes Microsoft uses this term often to refer to its collective group of developer tools This collection includes Visual Studio editions, TFS, Test Professional, and related ancillary tools TFS is the central hub that provides the integrated ALM experience around the various tools and their associated disciplines

Visual Studio Online (VSO)

TFS comes in two versions: on-premises-hosted TFS and the

online-only version called Visual Studio Online (VSO) MSDN

subscribers have access to both

The versions are similar, and Microsoft is working to make them

nearly the same However, at the time of writing this, VSO has

fewer features than TFS; these missing features include the

following: SharePoint integration, process template and work

item customization, data warehouse, and related reporting This

latter item is the most notable missing element

Of course, there are advantages to VSO First, it is online and

therefore more easily accessible and lower overall maintenance

Second, it automatically updates versions, patches, and service

packs It also supports cloud load testing and a few other

10 years Microsoft continues to build upon this with the release of TFS 2015 TFS is at the center of development and ALM coordination The following list highlights the many services provided by TFS:

Proce ss guidance /te mplate —TFS includes three process templates out

of the box: Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for CMMI Process Improvements, MSF for Agile Software Development, and Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum All provide a set of work items, workflows, and reports that are uniquely crafted with regard to their specific

methodology They also offer guidance to the team for executing key activities on the project (such as requirements management or build

automation)

Proje ct manage me nt—TFS enables project managers to define their

projects in terms of iterations and functional areas It provides work items that are used to define, assign, and track work on the project A work item can be a task on the project, a requirement, a bug, a test

scenario, and so on In general, a work item represents a generic unit of work on the project Of course, work items are customizable and can have states, new fields, and business rules associated with them TFS also includes a task board for easily viewing, working with, and tracking items in a collaborative way Work items play a central part in ensuring project team communication and reporting Project managers can use the TFS website along with the Excel and Project add-ins to Office to

manage the work items on a project

Re quire me nts manage me nt—TFS provides specific work items for

Te st case manage me nt—TFS and Test Professional enable work items

specific to test planning and test case management You can define a set

of test cases for a given requirement Each test case can define the steps required to execute the test case along with the expected results

Ve rsion control—The source control features in TFS include

enterprise-class features such as change sets, shelving, automatic build rules, the capability to associate work items to changed source, parallel

development, a source control policy engine, branching, checkpoints, and more There are powerful tools included for visualizing branch and

changeset relationships

Build automation—The TFS build tools allow for automatic, scheduled,

and on-demand builds Builds are reported against, documented,

automatically tested, and analyzed for code coverage and churn (as an example) The build engine is written using Windows Workflow

Foundation (WWF) TFS provides a build template you can use as the basis for creating custom build processes

Re le ase manage me nt—TFS includes the Release Management tool for

managing software releases from your environments such as

development to test to staging to production This tool allow you to track

a release and assign approvers for various stages of that release

Re porting—TFS provides a rich set of reports for tracking statistics and

the overall health of your project Reports include those built on SQL Reporting Services (that are accessible from the IDE, the Web, and

SharePoint) as well as a new set of Excel reports for working directly with the data

Collaboration—TFS includes Web Portal for teams collaborating on

iterations, requirements, and the related project task This consists of a project home page for quick health check, a team room for discussions, and task boards for updating status Web Portal also provides web-based access to source code, builds, and tests

Inte gration with othe r IDEs—TFS is accessible from Visual Studio,

Office, SharePoint, and the Web In addition, there is Team Explorer Everywhere for accessing the TFS features using other IDEs running on operating systems outside Windows This includes the Eclipse IDE and the Mac Xcode IDE

Test P rofessional (or Test Manager)

Visual Studio Test Professional 2015 provides test planning, test case

management, and manual testing for those people dedicated to the testing role This is a separate tool that should seem comfortable and familiar to testers Test plans are created based on application requirements (to provide

traceability) Test cases are created and tracked as work items

When testers run a test plan, they work through each test case and each step in the test case They indicate the success or failure of the given test For failures, they can log bugs (also work items) The bugs can automatically include things such as diagnostic trace information, event log data, network information, and even video recording of the steps the tester was executing when the bug was found

Test Professional also enables testers to create action recordings of their steps These recordings can be played back to execute the same steps again This helps automate many portions of manual tests

In addition, Test Professional includes lab management, which is a suite of tools for provisioning test environments from a template These environments are virtual machines that are meant to be set up and torn down as needed for testing You also can create checkpoint environments for various builds

Test Professional enables automated web, load, and stress tests You can run these automated tests directly from Visual Studio on your local machine to simulate smaller user loads However, if you want to collect data on multiple machines and test against a higher user load, you can leverage a test controller along with test agents The test controller serves as the central data collector and manages the test agents Test agents are then installed on both the servers under test and multiple client computers This allows the servers under test to send back important data such as IntelliTrace information The multiple client agents are used to simulate increased load and collect data from the client perspective Finally, the centralized controller aggregates the resulting data for reporting

Languages and Frameworks

Programming in Visual Studio and with the NET Framework means you have a variety of languages from which to choose Coding against the framework means selecting from C#, Visual Basic NET (VB.NET), F#, or C++ The

Framework itself is common to all three Once compiled and deployed,

applications written against NET are similar in runtime execution In fact, the new, open source NET Compiler Platform (“Roslyn”) is now the shared

compiler for both VB and C#