/web/log/flazx

Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Author: James W. Newkirk
ISBN: 0321418506
Release Date: 17 May 2007

eBook Description

Make the Most of Visual Studio Team System in Real-World Agile Development

Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) gives Microsoft development teams a powerful, integrated toolset for Agile development. Visual Studio Team System: Better Software Development for Agile Teams is a comprehensive, start-to-finish guide to making the most of VSTS in real-world Agile environments.

Using a book-length case study, the authors show how to use VSTS to improve every aspect of software development, step by step—from project planning through design and from coding through testing and deployment.

Agile consultant Will Stott and Microsoft development lead James Newkirk carefully integrate theory and practice, offering hands-on exercises, practical insights into core Extreme Programming (XP) techniques, and much more.

Coverage includes

• Using VSTS to support the transition to Agile values and techniques

• Forming Agile teams and building effective process frameworks

• Leveraging Team Foundation Version Control to help teams manage change and share their code effectively

• Implementing incremental builds and integration with Team Foundation Build

• Making the most of VSTS tools for Test-Driven Development and refactoring

• Bringing agility into software modeling and using patterns to model solutions more effectively

• Using the FIT integrated testing framework to make sure customers are getting what they need

• Estimating, prioritizing, and planning Agile projects

This book is for working software developers, architects, testers, and managers in real teams—professionals who are either transitioning to VSTS or considering doing so. It will help you start deriving value from VSTS immediately, as you lay a solid foundation for ongoing process improvement.

Amazon.com

Visual Studio Team System: Better Software Development for Agile Teams

Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Author: Alan Cameron Wills
ISBN: 0321398203
Release Date: 24 May 2007

eBook Description

Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs)–languages geared to specific vertical or horizontal areas of interest–are generating growing excitement from software engineers and architects. DSLs bring new agility to the creation and evolution of software, allowing selected design aspects to be expressed in terms much closer to the system requirements than standard program code, significantly reducing development costs in large-scale projects and product lines. In this breakthrough book, four leading experts reveal exactly how DSLs work, and how you can make the most of them in your environment.

With Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL Tools, you’ll begin by mastering DSL concepts and techniques that apply to all platforms. Next, you’ll discover how to create and use DSLs with the powerful new Microsoft DSL Tools–a toolset designed by this book’s authors. Learn how the DSL Tools integrate into Visual Studio–and how to define DSLs and generate Visual Designers using Visual Studio’s built-in modeling technology.

In-depth coverage includes

• Determining whether DSLs will work for you
• Comparing DSLs with other approaches to model-driven development
• Defining, tuning, and evolving DSLs: models, presentation, creation, updates, serialization, constraints, validation, and more
• Creating Visual Designers for new DSLs with little or no coding
• Multiplying productivity by generating application code from your models with easy-to-use text templates
• Automatically generating configuration files, resources, and other artifacts
• Deploying Visual Designers across the organization, quickly and easily
• Customizing Visual Designers for specialized process needs

Amazon.com

Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL Tools (Microsoft .NET Development Series)

Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Author: Gerard Meszaros
ISBN: 0131495054
Release Date: 21 May 2007

eBook Description

Automated testing is a cornerstone of agile development. An effective testing strategy will deliver new functionality more aggressively, accelerate user feedback, and improve quality. However, for many developers, creating effective automated tests is a unique and unfamiliar challenge.

xUnit Test Patterns is the definitive guide to writing automated tests using xUnit, the most popular unit testing framework in use today. Agile coach and test automation expert Gerard Meszaros describes 68 proven patterns for making tests easier to write, understand, and maintain. He then shows you how to make them more robust and repeatable–and far more cost-effective.

Loaded with information, this book feels like three books in one. The first part is a detailed tutorial on test automation that covers everything from test strategy to in-depth test coding. The second part, a catalog of 18 frequently encountered “test smells,” provides trouble-shooting guidelines to help you determine the root cause of problems and the most applicable patterns. The third part contains detailed descriptions of each pattern, including refactoring instructions illustrated by extensive code samples in multiple programming languages.

Topics covered include

• Writing better tests–and writing them faster
• The four phases of automated tests: fixture setup, exercising the system under test, result verification, and fixture teardown
• Improving test coverage by isolating software from its environment using Test Stubs and Mock Objects
• Designing software for greater testability
• Using test “smells” (including code smells, behavior smells, and project smells) to spot problems and know when and how to eliminate them
• Refactoring tests for greater simplicity, robustness, and execution speed

This book will benefit developers, managers, and testers working with any agile or conventional development process, whether doing test-driven development or writing the tests last. While the patterns and smells are especially applicable to all members of the xUnit family, they also apply to next-generation behavior-driven development frameworks such as RSpec and JBehave and to other kinds of test automation tools, including recorded test tools and data-driven test tools such as Fit and FitNesse.

Amazon.com

xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code (The Addison-Wesley Signature Series)

Publisher: Sams
Author: Alison Balter
ISBN: 0672329328
Release Date: 31 May 2007

eBook Description
Microsoft Office 2007 is a major upgrade from the last version of Office; Access will also be greatly revised. Alison Balter is the name that Access developers will trust to guide them through Access 2007’s new features. She has the rare ability to take complex topics and explain them clearly, as shown by the success of her ten previous books on Access. Balter is known for providing real-world solutions to specific Access development problems. She also is known for her ability to back up her practical examples with just enough underlying theory to give the reader a good overall understanding of Access. In short, this book will provide beginning and intermediate Access developers with everything that they need to know to design and build Access 2007 applications. It should also appeal to DBAs and power users who want or need to get started building custom Access apps. This latest book in her Mastering Access series will not disappoint her many fans who anxiously await each new version, and should win her new fans as well.

Amazon.com

Alison Balter’s Mastering Microsoft(R) Office Access 2007 Development

Publisher: Apress
Author: Paul Cornell
ISBN: 1590597516
Release Date: 29 January 2007

eBook Description

Excel As Your Database guides those of you who need to manage facts and figuresyet have little experience, budget, or need for a full-scale relational database management system. Youll learn how to use Excel to enter, store, and analyze your data.

This book is written and organized in a way that assumes you have some familiarity with Excel, but not with databases. The book features quick-start solutions, practice exercises, troubleshooting tips, and best practices.

• This book covers Excel 2007 and 2003.
• The author clarifies not just how to use a technique, but under what realistic scenarios.
• The text features step-by-step, how-to procedures.
• Try-it-out exercises are based on realistic sample data.

Amazon.com

Excel as Your Database

Publisher: Apress
Author: Clare Churcher
ISBN: 1590597699
Release Date: 15 January 2007

eBook Description

Beginning Database Design: From Novice to Professional provides short, easy-to-read explanations of how to get database design right the first time. This book offers numerous examples to help you avoid the many pitfalls that entrap new and not-so-new database designers. Through the help of use cases and class diagrams modeled in the UML, youll learn how to discover and represent the details and scope of the problem in question.

Database design is not an exact science, and solid database design principles and examples help demonstrate the consequences of simplifications and pragmatic decisions. The rationale is to try to keep it simple, but allow room for development as situations change or resources permit. The book also features an introduction for implementing the final design in a relational database.

Amazon.com

Beginning Database Design: From Novice to Professional

Publisher: Apress
Author: Andrew Troelsen
ISBN: 1590598237
Release Date: 15 January 2007

eBook Description

C# 2005 has enjoyed huge success in the year since its launch, firmly establishing itself as the premier language for development on Microsofts successful .NET 2.0 platform. With the launch of the .NET 3.0 extensions in early 2007, the horizons of this language are being extended, and it is becoming even more powerful as it is able to leverage the new .NET 3.0 Foundations.

In recognition of this, Apress presents Pro C# with .NET 3.0, Special Edition to provide you with a complete A-to-Z reference for using C# with the .NET 2.0 platform and the .NET 3.0 extensions. The book contains new chapters that explore the interactions between the existing framework and the new extensions, giving you an edge when you evaluate and implement .NET 3.0 for the first time. To provide even more support, a bonus PDF download will be available with each purchase, offering over 500 pages of carefully selected additional content to help broaden your understanding of both .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0.

Amazon.com

Pro C# with .NET 3.0, Special Edition (Pro)

Publisher: Apress
Author: Daniel Woolston
ISBN: 1590597753
Release Date: 29 January 2007

eBook Description

Since Microsofts release of BizTalk Server 2006, there is a serious need for more documentation on this product. Foundations of BizTalk Server 2006 fills that void. The book will take you from novice to professional, equipping you with the tools youll need to get started in the world of BizTalk server integration.

From installation to deployment, you will grow increasingly more comfortable with the product as you work through a multitude of hands-on examples and demo applications. This book will demystify the product and emphasize the new 2006 BizTalk Server features. So even if youre a reluctant reader at first, youll gain full confidence in the product by books end.

Amazon.com

Foundations of BizTalk Server 2006 (Foundations)

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Author: Randy Allen Harris
ISBN: 1558607684
Release Date: 13 December 2004

eBook Description
From the voice on the phone, to the voice on the computer, to the voice from the toaster, speech user interfaces are coming into the mainstream and are here to stay forever.

Soundly anchored in HCI, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and social psychology, this supremely practical book is loaded with examples, how-to advice, and design templates. Drawing widely on decades of researchin lexicography, conversation analysis, computational linguistics, and social psychologyauthor Randy Allen Harris outlines the principles of how people use language interactively, and illustrates every aspect of design work.

In the first part of the book, Harris provides a thorough conceptual basis of language in all its relevant aspects, from speech sounds to conversational principles. The second part takes you patiently through the entire process of designing an interactive speech system: from team building to user profiles, to agent design, scripting, and evaluation. This book provides interaction designers with the knowledge and strategies to craft language-based applications the way users will expect them to behave.

*Loaded with examples and practical synopses of the best practice.

*An ideal combination of conceptual base, practical illustrations, and “how-to” advicefor design and for the entire design process.

*Will bring novice voice designers fully up to speed, and give experienced designers a new understanding of the principles underlying human speech interaction, principles from which to improve voice interaction design.

Amazon.com

Voice Interaction Design: Crafting the New Conversational Speech Systems (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies)

Publisher: Que
Author: Bill Jelen
ISBN: 0789736101
Release Date: 24 April 2007

eBook Description
It is easy to create a bad looking chart in Excel. This book teaches you how to unlock the beautiful formatting options available to make incredible looking charts. The first section will talk about how to decide which chart type to use. Subsequent chapters will walk through each chart type, how to create them, how to utilize them, and special options available for each chart. The book discusses themes, colors, creating metallic charts, shadows, transparency, etc. The book also handles anything graphical in Excel. It will show the new In-Cell Data Bar charts available in Excel 2007. A section will talk about creating business flowcharts with IGX Graphics and how to display product pictures in Excel, and a section on VBA will cover creating 100’s of charts using the macro language.

Amazon.com

Charts and Graphs for Microsoft(R) Office Excel 2007 (Business Solutions)