Looking at generated queries for LINQ 2 SQL and EF with Visual Studio 2010 Intelli-Trace 14 November 2010 Peter-Himschoot VS2010, .NET Development When you use LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework you might wonder from time to time what the actual SQL is that was generated by the runtime. Both frameworks have their specific way to allow you to look at this, but require some extra code. Of course you shouldn’t forget to remove this code. Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate gives you another way to look at the generated SQL, without having to change to code. When you turn on intelli-trace, the intelli-trace log will show you the SQL. For example running some LINQ to SQL code will show up as: The ADO.NET entries show the actual query being executed. Note that older queries will also show in here, so if you forgot to look at the query at time of execution, you can scroll back to it later!
Planning, Running and measuring tests with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and Test and Lab Manager 24 January 2010 Peter-Himschoot VS2010, Team System, .NET Development So what does Visual Studio 2010 bring for testers? A whole lot! Especially the new test environment, where you can create a test plan to validate the quality of the software you’re building. A test plan is a collection of test cases, which you can then run. While running the system keeps track of a whole lot of things, including code coverage and IntelliTrace information. And finally this application allows you to examine the combined results of all tests, to see how your development effort is doing. So again: A test plan is a collection of test suites, used to test a certain iteration in your project. A test suite is a collection of test cases to test a certain part of your project, and a test case is a test for a project feature. A test case is basically an UI test running in a specific environment. To model this, Test and Lab manager also allows you to define a test configuration, which is a certain environment for your code, for example Windows 7 with IE8, or Windows XP SP2 with IE7. Running Test and Lab Manager First time you run this application it will ask for your Team Foundation Server (TFS) and after that, for the Project Collection and Team Project: Ok, next step it will ask you for a test plan; since there are none you will have to create a new one: Then click “Select plan >”. This opens the test plan. if you want you can change some of the properties of this test plan by clicking on the properties tab: Here you can change the iteration for example, or the test settings. With test settings you can change how your tests will be executed. For example in the Local Test Run settings you can change the diagnostic data adapter, which record data from your test run. For example is you want an action recording, event log entries, etc… You can also use it to emulate certain environments, for example running low on memory. You can even create your own data adapter. This first page allows you to change the name, and choose between running a manual or automated test. On the second page you can define the roles. You define a role for each tier to use to run tests and collect data. One the local settings you can only have one role, your own physical machine. If you want to use roles, you will also have to define environments. Here you can define what kind of data you want to gather. For example, the Action Recording will record each action taken during the test, making it easy for another person (typically a developer) to understand what happened during running the test. The Action log is a text version of the recording. IntelliTrace will allow a developer to load the IntelliTrace log and step back in the code, to see how the error came to be. Go back to the Contents tab. Now we’re ready to test some of our user stories (from now on I will be using User Stories, but this could just as easily be called a requirement or anything else to denote a certain needed functionality of your software system). Test cases are grouped into test suites. Per test plan you have a default test suite, but you can also create a test suite for a specific user story, copy a test suite from another test plan, create a nested suite or create one from a query: If you select “Add requirement"to plan” you will need to select a user story. This user story is now associated with this test suite. This will allow reporting to figure out which tests have ran for which user story. Now we’re ready to add a test case, so click the New button. The New Test Case dialog should show: Add the four steps (please note that we’re doing this for the sake of the demo, normally your requirement should not be to crash :) ). Save it. Click on the Tested User Stories tab: the User Story should be there. Save and Close. A couple of other things you can now do is to assign it to a tester, and/or change the configurations: Let’s run the test. First open the Test tab: From here you can see all test cases for a test suite: Select the test case and click on the run button. The Test Runner should open: Check the Create action recording button and hit Start Test. Do as the test case says, and try to use a repeatable way to start the application (for example using the start menu). The first and second step should not be a problem, so click the drop down boxes to the right of each step to indicate success: Now make the third step fail. You’ll need to enter a comment why it failed. Then click the End Test hyperlink button. You’ll see test center gather some information. On top of the test runner window you’ll see a toolbar. Click on the Create Bug button: You’ll see that most of the fields are automatically filled in. You might want to change the Severity for example, and maybe assign it to a certain tester, but that is all… Click Save. Check out the information included in the System Info, and All Links tab. Close it. Remember me asking you to start the application using some repeatable way? Well, try and click on the play button. Your test should replay again. This makes it easier to re-test later. Coming back to Test and Lab Manager. The test case failed so now the UI updates to show this: If you have more than one test, the bar will color depending on how many succeeded, failed or are still in progress. Later you can come back and verify if a bug still exists by using the Verify Bugs tab: Go back to the Plan tab, then open the properties. Now you should see an overview: Back to Visual Studio, so close the Test and Lab Manager. Go to the Team Explorer and open the My Bugs query. You should see the bug we created before. Open it: Go to All Links, and open the IntelliTrace log (.tdlog). With it you can now replay the bug, just like in my previous post on IntelliTrace. If this doesn’t work, go back to the test settings. You might also like the Video feature, so you can replay the user’s actions!
Using the WPF Visualizer in Visual Studio 2010 23 January 2010 Peter-Himschoot VS2010, WPF/Silverlight Visual Studio 2010 now has a cool little feature I want to show you. When you’re debugging WPF applications, you sometimes need to see the controls and their hierarchy. Now with VS2010 this is easy. Simply use the magnifying class (the visualizer feature) and select the WPF Tree Visualizer: This will show you all the controls with their properties like this: In the left pane you get the tree view of controls with a rendering of the selected control, at the right side you get all properties of the control.
Using the Visual Studio 2010 Historical Debugger to save and reproduce bugs 22 January 2010 Peter-Himschoot .NET Development, VS2010 Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate now has IntelliTrace, which is a historical debugging feature. IntelliTrace will keep track of everything your code has been doing and then, when a bug arrives, you can back-track to the possible cause of the bug. You might think this is nothing new, but don’t forget it also tracks the value of any variable at that moment in time. With the usual debugger you will see the latest value, not the value at that moment. You can enable (and it is enabled by default) by going into Options->IntelliTrace->General If you want to try this, build a simple windows forms application with a Button and CheckBox. Then add code as follows: 1: Public Class Form1 2: 3: Private message As String 4: Private flag As Boolean 5: 6: Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click 7: flag = FlagCheckBox.Checked 8: Doh() 9: End Sub 10: 11: Private Sub Doh() 12: If flag = True Then 13: message = "This should work" 14: Else 15: message = Nothing 16: End If 17: flag = True 18: ShowMessage(message) 19: End Sub 20: 21: Private Sub ShowMessage(ByVal message As String) 22: 23: 24: ' Throw exception if message is empty 25: Dim len As Integer = message.Length 26: 27: End Sub 28: End Class Run it with the checkbox unchecked. This should cause the application to stop in the debugger: Your code should look like this: See those special arraws in the gutter (the gutter is the section where you click to add/remove breakpoints)? These will allow you to backtrack. You should also have a IntelliTrace window looking like this (two views are available): With these you can jump directly to one of your code’s stackframe. Let’s try stepping back to see what happened. Press the back arrow, or better yet, use the keyboard shortcut (on my machine that is Ctrl+Shift+F11): You should now be able to step back in time, for example look how my IDE looks like when stopped at the ShowMessage method: IntelliTrace keeps track of the values of the arguments and such, at each point in time. For example, a little higher in the code I changed the flag variable to true, while the bug is caused because it was false before. IntelliTrace will show me this. 1: Private Sub Doh() 2: If flag = True Then 3: message = "This should work" 4: Else 5: message = Nothing 6: End If 7: flag = True 8: ShowMessage(message) 9: End Sub IntelliTrace will save all of this information in a file (now with an extension called iTrace, notice the naming convention <GRIN>), and because you can open this file afterwards, all kinds of scenario’s can now be implemented. You can send the file to a colleague so he/she can help you debug the problem. So where is this file? Go back to Tools->Options->Advanced and copy the directory for later: Open this directory in file explorer and copy the file to where you like. You will have to stop debugging, otherwise Visual Studio keeps a lock on the file. Don’t stop Visual Studio, because VS throws away the log file when it quits. When you open the file again, Visual Studio will show the log’s summary: Open the Thread Lists and look for the thread you want to see (probably the main thread): Double click it and with a little patience the debugger will open (make sure Visual Studio can find the sources). Or better even, the Visual Studio Test and Lab Manager 2010 can do this for you. So even if you have a non-technical user who is testing some application, and finds a bug, the IntelliTrace file will be attached automatically!