Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

The video recording of Martin Woodward's two sessions at Tech-Ed, NA 2011, Team Foundation Server for Everyone  &  The Accidental Team Foundation Server Admin  provide an overview of TFS 2010 in about 2 hours. Some notes - TFS installation choices - Basic, Advanced TFS Basic Wizard - most compact TFS installation possible, provides only Source Control, WorkItem Tracking & Build services; can even work with SQL Server Express No requirement for Windows SharePoint Services, SQL Server Reporting Services Supports client installations - Windows 7, Windows Vista Grows when you grow - Client OS, Single server, Multi-server farms x64 Support Supports Java development Team Foundation VSSConverter command-line tool can migrate projects, files, version history, labels, and user information from your Visual SourceSafe database to your server for Team Foundation version control. This tool is included with TFS. Helps with Build Automation & Continuous Integratio...

To highlight its achievements in the 100 years of its existence, IBM has released a full-page ad in some Indian newspapers & a dedicated  site for IBM's 100 Icons of Progress . A few interesting facts & trivia from that list of accomplishments - IBM programmer John Backus and his team produced the first high-level language, FORTRAN (for FORmula TRANslating System) in 1957. Contributed to the rise of the Internet by designing with its partners a new high-speed National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) to connect US universities and 6 US-based supercomputer centers. Developed storage devices like Magnetic tape & Floppy disk Invented the UPC barcode system in 1973 The first IBM Personal Computer (IBM 5150) had a price tag of $1,565 & earned Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” award. The brand name PC has got so popular that it is now used as a synonym for a micro-computer. IBM engineer Forrest Parry's wife contributed to the development...

Steve Evans' presentation "Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 for Developers" at Tech-Ed, NA 2011, had some interesting IIS tips & tricks. I transcribed some of them from the more than hour-long video recording on Channel9 - - Developers have Swiss cheese knowledge – they know a lot but there are holes in what they are familiar with. Certificates - Certificate Authority (CA) creates a cert for a specific site & date range, the OS trusts it. - Client connects to server, pulls down cert & check for 3 things - * Certificate creator trusted? * Host header matches? * Date is in range? - Configuring SSL certificates - A wildcard certificate can be used for multiple sites related to each other - You can drop a non-CA issued cert into the Trusted Root Certification Authority to simulate a real scenario while experimenting with a feature PowerShell - strong support in IIS 7.5 - PowerShell treats IIS as a drive DefaultDocument setting - DefaultDo...