Agile and Developer

If you are a developer working in an organization where everyone is talking about agile and only your project manager seems to be excited about it. Here are the things you need to do as a developer.

Before you go any further about TDD, BDD and all test driven approach, take a moment and think about what you could do adopt right away if your manager is talking about agile. No doubt that you need to write Unit tests, TDDs but before we need to understand what it is.

Agile manifesto says

“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan”

Now from developer’s perspective lets look at the highlighted lines.

“Working Software over…”, says that you starts showing the working software and demo it often. But this requires that you to build something that can be demoed, not shown as a presentation or as a code. You could do this only if you have very small requirement and they are independent

Now, first part is easy. Product owner can breakdown the features. But second part is tougher one. This is where you need to pitch in. But verifying if the feature can be implemented with writing the code required only for this feature is your job. This is when you break down the story and suggest PO.

Lets take an example, where you need to show a webpage where based on the role you need to implement a feature say an admin action. If you have to implement this feature end to end you need following features ready

1. Login implemented
2. Role assignment implemented
3. Role to feature mapping done
4. New feature itself

say you implement this in the same order and say you take a sprint to implement each, then every demo what you are showing is what stake holder has seen elsewhere. Something like role and feature mapping might not even go beyond the code and unit test.

 

So what did stake holder get in first 3 sprints?

Close to nothing.

 

Now what if you implement the new feature(say showing some grid with all data) without any security implementation. During the demo you can show, how will data look. Is this the right presentation, can we do anything better and you are giving good time for your stake holders to sleep over it and come back with all possible related stories. Now during next demo, you show login and apply the effect of authentication to the feature built. 

 

Did we turn the world upside down in the name of Agile? But did we get right feedback and testing done soon? That’s the beginning!

TFS Reports–Expose through TFS Web

If you are allowing TFS access over internet, reports will be one thing that you would find difficult to expose over internet as this might sit in your SQL server.

What about the web access? Where is report page on team foundation web access? There is none!

So, What you could do is, move the SSRS service to the Web Server or a new server hosted outside.

Both requires IT’s involvement and support. No one would be ready to move the DB server out or even SSRS server out of the firewall if it’s a shared server. If you have your other reports than the TFS reports hosted on this server, this might not be received well from the IT.

So to solve this, I created a new page in TFS and exposed all the reports from the TFS web page. Which just embeds the report viewer control and renders the report on the TFS webpage.

Here are list of changes you will have to do for implementing this reporting plug-in.

• Open C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Access\Web\UI\Controls\PageHeader.ascx. And insert a new row

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="mainTab">
    <tr>
       <td class="<%=(Request.Url.AbsolutePath.Contains("/UI/Pages/Reports/Reports.aspx") || Request.Url.AbsolutePath.Contains("/UI/Pages/Reports/Viewer.aspx") ? "att" : "ptt")%>">
            <a class="<%=(Request.Url.AbsolutePath.Contains("/UI/Pages/Reports/Reports.aspx") || Request.Url.AbsolutePath.Contains("/UI/Pages/Reports/Viewer.aspx") ? "att" : "ptt")%>"
            href="/tfs/web/UI/Pages/Reports/Reports.aspx?pguid=<%=this.Locator.ProjectUri.Segments[3] %>"><span class="ptt">Reports</span></a>
       </td>
       <td></td>
     </tr>                                     
 </table>

• Create a project visual studio, ASP.Net Web page project. Create a new page and call it as Reports.aspx. In this page we will list all the reports and give a link to access all the reports.



• Open the reports.aspx and add a data list control to it. Your mark up should look like
  
  
  

  <asp:Content ID="c" ContentPlaceHolderID="c" runat="server">
      <asp:DataList ID="ReportList" runat="server">
          <itemtemplate> 
          <td>
          <asp:HyperLink ID="reportLink" runat="server">
          <%
     1: # DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"Name") 
  %> 
          </asp:HyperLink>
          </td>
             </itemtemplate>
      </asp:DataList>
  </asp:Content>

  
  
  
  



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  Change the base page to WebAccessPage, this is how you access the TFS connection details that are buried in the base page.
  
  



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  public partial class Reports : WebAccessPage

  
  
  
  



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  In the code behind, In page initialization set the current tab and subscribe to list binding event.
  
  



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  protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
  {
      base.OnInit(e);
      ActiveTab = "Reports";
      ReportList.ItemCreated += new DataListItemEventHandler(ReportListItemCreated);
  }

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  



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  On Load method, connect to the reports server and fetch all the reports using reporting services. Before adding the code, add a service reference to the  SSRS service by Project->Add Service Reference –> URL as http://sqlserver:5050/ReportServer/ReportService2010.asmx. I have given the name for the service reference as ReportingService2010.
  
  

  
  

  protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
      ReportList.DataSource = GetProjectReports(this.Connection.CollectionName + "/" + this.CurrentProject.Name); ;
      ReportList.DataBind();
  }
  
  
  private ICollection<CatalogItem> GetProjectReports(string path)
  {
      WindowsImpersonationContext ctx = WindowsIdentity.Impersonate(IntPtr.Zero);
      CatalogItem[] reports = null;
      try
      {
          ReportingService2010 reportService = new ReportingService2010();
          // get the URL from the config http://sqlserver:5050/ReportServer
          reportService.Url = config.ReportServerURL + "//ReportService2010.asmx";
          reportService.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
          reports = reportService.ListChildren(path, true);
      }
      finally
      {
          ctx.Undo();
      }
      return reports;
  }
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  



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  Assumption above is, workerprocess is running under the identity which has access to reporting server. So we are impersonating to default and reverting back while connecting to SSRS.

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  



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  Now we need to make all the report list as hyper links with proper navigation set, in the item created event of the list we would implement this.
  

  
  

  void ReportListItemCreated(object sender, DataListItemEventArgs e)
  {
    CatalogItem currItem = (CatalogItem)e.Item.DataItem;
  
    HyperLink link = (HyperLink)e.Item.FindControl("reportLink");
  
    if (currItem.TypeName == "Folder")
    {
        link.Attributes.Add("style", " color:Gray; font-size:16px");
        link.Enabled = false;
    }
    else if (currItem.TypeName == "Report")
    {
        e.Item.Enabled = true;
        link.Attributes.Add("style", "font-size:13px; padding-left:30px;");
        link.NavigateUrl = base.ResolveUrl("~/UI/Pages/Reports/Viewer.aspx") + "?pguid=" + this.Locator.ProjectUri.Segments[3] + "&rep=" + currItem.Path;
    }
    else
    {
        link.Visible = false;
        e.Item.Visible = false;
    }
    link.Text = currItem.Name;
  }

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  



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  We don’t have the report viewer implemented yet, so lets create a new page called viewer.aspx and add report viewer control to it. Mark up would look like
  

  
  

  <%@ Register Assembly="Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
      Namespace="Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms" TagPrefix="rsweb" %>
  
  <asp:Content ID="c" ContentPlaceHolderID="c" runat="server">
      
      <rsweb:ReportViewer EnableViewState="true" AsyncRendering="true" ID="ReportViewer" runat="server"
       Width="100%" Height="100%" 
       BackColor="#f8f8f8" ForeColor="#555555" InternalBorderColor="#cccccc"
       BorderColor="#dddddd" BorderStyle="Solid" BorderWidth="1px"
       ProcessingMode="Remote">
      
      </rsweb:ReportViewer>
  </asp:Content>

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  



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  In  the code behind,  binding to the control is straight forward once we have the path
  

  
  

  public partial class Viewer : WebAccessPage
  {
      protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
      {
          base.OnInit(e);
          ActiveTab = "Reports";
          Page.EnableViewState = true;
          Master.EnableViewState = true;
          ReportViewer.ReportError += new Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportErrorEventHandler(ReportViewerReportError);
      }
  
      void ReportViewerReportError(object sender, ReportErrorEventArgs e)
      {
          if (TimeSheetHelper.IsUserAdministrator(Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name))
          {
              Response.Write(e.Exception.ToString());
          }
          else
          throw new Exception("Report exception", e.Exception);
      }
  
      protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {
          if (!IsPostBack)
              LoadReports(Request.QueryString["rep"]);
      }
  
      private void LoadReports(string reportPath)
      {
          ReportViewer.ServerReport.ReportServerCredentials = new ReportServerCredentials(CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials);
          ReportViewer.ServerReport.ReportPath = reportPath;
          ReportViewer.ServerReport.ReportServerUrl = new Uri(config.ReportServerURL );
          ReportViewer.ServerReport.Refresh();
      }
  }

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  



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  That’s it! You should be able to see the pages something like this..
  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Publishing your Product/Corporate website

If you are a startup and don’t want to spend much time in getting your website out, here we have a solution.

http://www.drupalgardens.com/ can get your website ready in 15 mins!!! To be practical, you can have your full blown website ready in a day. If you say that you have other providers who can do this, believe me they can’t. I strongly recommend you to run through the video and think again. I tried their beta and I am a fan of Drupal garden now!




What it is?

It’s a Drupal based hosting, with a great pluggin added for customization. With this admin plug-in you can

1) Chose templates
2) Chose themes
3) Chose color schemes( this is too good)
4) See workflows
5) Provide your custom CSS etc

Even though they are prized lil high, I think its worth if you are a start-up and focus on your product than the overheads.

Deploying on IIS7

Have you ever written code to deploy on IIS 6? Then this is much more easier compared to it, no more IIS base admin and confusing interfaces.

Now everything starts with IAppHostWritableAdminManager interface, from there you just have to swim through the elements using GetAdminSection method. Pass the section "system.applicationHost/sites"to get all the site elements on "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST".

This will list all sites. Select a site or create a one in the collection. Say you need to create an applicatin under default website, select the first element in collection and find all the Application. You can create one here using createelement method. Its all XML.


Lets make to some easier. If you are looking for deploying your application through code and you know how to do it through the InetMGR MMC console, its goood enuf!

Follow these simple steps and you are there.
1) Back-up your Web.Config
2) Back-up your IIS host config file, from \System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.Config
3) Play around!, Setup your application manually now. Set all the handler, mime, etc
4) Your web.config is now ready. Compare once and see what gets stored here
5) Now open ApplicationHost.config and locate your application there

You will find your application under say default website as




All you have to do is get the admin section for "sites" locate the id=1 create a child element named application. Set the property called path as "/Guru" abd other property ApplicationPool as "defaultAppPool".

Create a child called VirtualDirectory and set rest of the properties.

Anything else you need to do? Well you will figure out!! You can see the difference in the original app-host file and code!