We have a position open at Exony for a test developer (what Microsoft calls a Software Design Engineer in Test or SDE/T). For some reason most testers in the UK are what I would call QA engineers and do not consider writing code part of the job specification so if you fancy working for a young dynamic company that:

• Scores highly on the Joel Test
• Provides you with your own laptop and pays your mobile phone charges
• Allows for plenty of home work (some office time is a requirement though)
• Practises agile development with Scrum
• Uses the latest products and technologies

You should send me a copy of your CV/resume to the e-mail address at the top of this page. You should have the following qualities to be eligible:

• Ability to work in the United Kingdom (Newbury, Berkshire to be exact)
• Experience with XUnit (NUnit/JUnit) frameworks
• Ability to code C# in your sleep
• Strong troubleshooting, debugging, and analysis skills
• Good verbal and written communications skills
• Experience with SQL Server, Windows 2000/2003, ASP.NET and web services
• A passion for software testing and quality

You will work as part of the development team to understand customer requirements, develop the appropriate test tools, processes and code, identify and analyse bugs, raise quality and drive the product towards shipping.

No calls from recruiters please. I have a number that I am already dealing with and don't have room in my schedule for more.

[Edit: This position has been filled. Thank you to everyone that applied. I will have more positions posted in the near future.]

It's May Day Bank Holiday Weekend so I was going to try and stay away from the blog but after a testing afternoon with the new Team System Beta I thought I'd better share.

Firstly the install. I created a new Virtual PC image of Win2k3 SP1 to install the Team Foundation Server on. What the install guide doesn't tell you is that if you turn a server into a domain controller after installing Internet Services then the web won't work. You only find this out after installing SharePoint Services and following the troubleshooting guide when things don't work. After reinstalling SharePoint, Reporting Services and Internet Services things looked better and the Team Foundation install worked first time which was much better than my Beta 1 experience. However, after install, Analysis Services and Internet Services are hammering the CPU for no reason that I can determine. Installing the Visual Studio client was just as frustrating as the Beta 1 uninstall doesn’t clean up too well. After a couple of failed attempts I found this tool to clean up before installing.

Connection to the Foundation Server worked first time but failed to create a portfolio project complaining that the methodology could not be found. I haven't been able to get any further with this. The non-team bits do pretty much exactly what it says on the tin although the Intellisense is a little aggressive. The performance stuff also works well but the testing tools crashed the development environment every time I tried to run a test. This maybe due to the installation difficulties but I can't tell. Time to put it all back in the box and wait for the release I think.

These guys are driving me nuts so I'm afraid I've had to protect my site by forcing you to login before changing anything. If you feel you need access then let me know and I'll give you a password.

I removed the old Betas of Visual Studio and Yukon from my home machine this morning and to check everything was still OK I fired up Query Analyser to fire a quick query – “SELECT TOP 5 * FROM sysobjects”. This failed with a syntax error complaining about the TOP 5 part of the clause.

I was about to bite the bullet and reinstall SQL 2000 as well but noticed the database I ran the query in was an old one. A quick switch to the master database and the same query works fine. It turns out the previous database had a compatibility level of 65 so none of the new syntax will work.

One thing did get hosed on the uninstall – SQLDMO which is crucial for Enterprise Manger to run. To fix it execute the following:

regsvr32.exe “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn\sqldmo.dll”

Whilst my computer was performing its usual scan I had a bit of a panic because of the words in the dialog box below.

I think what they intend is to list any detected spy-ware after the “:“ but at a quick glance it looks like something has been found. All they needed to do was add “(None)” after the phrase and I would have avoided a heart attack.

Well the news about VSTS pricing is out and everyone is talking about it. If you want all these whizzy tools that Microsoft have been wooing us with over the last year then it is going to cost you more, a lot more. Plus their “simpler approach to MSDN subscriptions” is completely the reverse of reality. To tell the truth, it feels like I just caught a good friend sleeping with my girlfriend. Part anger, part disappointment and a desire to get them both out of my life.

Most of what needs to be said has already. Of particular note are articles for Scott Hanselman, Mike Gunderloy and Eric Bowen (read the comments). The only thing I’ll add is a response to the comment from Prashant Sridharan that “If you want the other stuff (which you probably aren't using right now anyway, or are probably paying a ton for as it is) we're giving you a very convenient and low cost upgrade to the Suite.” Just two points – MSDN Open Licensing has never been convenient and, as for the cost, we have already spent the money on the tools that supposedly cost a ton: Compuware (a ton), Perforce (cheap), FogBugz (very cheap).

So Scoble, I’ll be interested to see how you round up all the comment in blog-land on this one because, well, markets are conversations and it seems some Microsoft bloggers are censoring their comments sections…

After spending an untold number of hours trying to get a Reporting Services Extension to work I thought I should pass on the knowledge to others… Basically, it’s all about security and the rssrvpolicy.config file. This file is a little confusing especially as the default installation uses a weird indent. This article on code access security pretty much covers everything except where to put your new code group definition.

<CodeGroup class="FirstMatchCodeGroup" PermissionSetName="Nothing">
    <CodeGroup Name="Report_Expressions_Default_Permissions"/>
    <CodeGroup class="FirstMatchCodeGroup">
        <IMembershipCondition Zone="MyComputer" />
        <CodeGroup Name="SharePoint_Server_Strong_Name"/> 
        <CodeGroup Name="YOUR_CODE_GROUP_HERE"/>
    </CodeGroup>
</CodeGroup>

I have removed has much as possible from the file to illustrate where your new definition goes. See the nesting? The outer one says match the first inner one or set permissions to nothing. Then a code group Report_Expressions_Default_Permissions sets up the default expression permissions. The next code group has a membership condition of Zone="MyComputer" with a bunch of full trust Microsoft code groups. Finally, the last one is for SharePoint. Your new code group goes directly after this one at the same level.

Hope that saves someone some time.

Report Templates

• Create a Reusable Template Report

Report Parameters

• Cascading Prompts
• Create a Cube-Based Hierarchical Pick List

Security

• Using Forms Authentication in Reporting Services
• Forms Authentication Across Applications
• Harden MS Reporting Services Using Custom Extensions (Part 2)

Since installing the blacklist I have had a noticeable drop in referral spam which is good news. The thing that does concern me is false positives. I have had to drop a number of keywords from the list because they are just too common: "hole" appears in "whole" which one search provider uses to tag the query with "wholeinternet"; "golf" was in the list but I since I am buying one there is no reason to block it.

The one keyword I am undecided about is "virgin". There are a high number of spammers still using the keyword but it means that every referral from virgin.net (there is a search engine there too) will get a 404. Koan too has changed her URL; can you guess why yakushitsu.blogspot.com gets blocked?

So, next time you get a 404 response back from a web site then check who referred you in the first place. They maybe stopping you from seeing the page so try pasting the URL into a new browser window. To the users of the virgin.net search engine - I am sorry but you will never see this post.