Taming TFS - Assembly versioning

The assembly version is a number in the form of <Major>.<Minor>.<Build>.<Revision>. What value the placeholders are assigned to is totally up to you, we chose to set the first three numbers manually and set the last one to the change set that the source was built from. At the same time, I didn’t want to limit the options, so by examining the “Build Number Format” input in the default template, I decided to merge the parameters available there with a custom parameter set (the build number format provides a couple of params, but doesn’t provide access to the change set number).

TrueCrypt whole disk encryption step by step

Although TrueCrypt has a rich documentation (available here) I could not find any quick step by step tutorial on how to easily encrypt whole system. So this was the reason for this screenshot-based beginner’s tutorial. 

Every confusing topic and phrase is well documented in TrueCrypt documentation so I will limit the comments to the very minimum.

Before you start installing TrueCrypt and encrypting your system drive prepare one blank DVD or CD which will be used for rescue purposes. If you already got one, we can start…

Taming TFS – Default build template

The default build template in tfs is good enough for starters, but what if you want more? Thankfully tfs is flexible enough to customize the build process with anything you want, so let’s get to it!

Taming TFS – The big picture

This is the second post from Taming TFS series. What I’d like to do here, is to give the big picture on how tfs operates, what it utilizes and how to use that. If you’re already familiar with the basics, you can skip this post, if not, then consider yourself invited to read on.

Taming TFS

TFS is a useful tool but making it work just the way you want may not be as straightforward as expected. This series of blog posts will describe the journey I went through to adjust tfs to our needs.

Application communication ways – WCF Data Services with EF Code First, WPF and WP7

Let’s assume there is an application database and the various client applications developed in Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MVC 3. The database is either MS SQL Server or MS SQL Server CE. Now the potential customer may use one or many of these applications/platforms so the connections to the database must be performed from all of these clients.
The following scenarios are considered. I tried to list some points that should be considered when choosing particular connection approach. The pictures represents the general architecture of the approach.

Disk encription software.

Recently I had to install an encryption software because I have started to keep some confidential data on my laptop and wanted to be sure it will not be compromised in case of my laptop is stolen.
I was really surprised when notice the mass of encryption software available on the market. There is various options and features which such software can serve and they are quite neatly described on Wikipedia.

Creating Help documents for web and desktop applications.

During software application development there is always a moment when user manual an help content must be written. Choosing appropriate tool for that is very important and decides about help creating and updating process speed. Help format is as important as the help itself and must be easily accessible from the application and convenient for the end user.

Elmah

Elmah stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers. It’s a very interesting little library. There’s a pretty neat (although old) article on it by Scott Hanselman and a follow up.

Document databases

I’ve recently heard a couple of times about mongodb and finally had a moment to look further into it.

The concept is pretty familiar – to have a data store that is not a relational database. I’ve stumbled upon the info about xml or file system databases (the latter one is used e.g by svn), though nothing seemed to stick.