When: Tuesday 22nd January 2008, doors open 6:00pm, meeting starts 6:30pm

Where: UWE (University of the West of England), Frenchay, Bristol (see FAQ for directions and a map) - Room 2q48 (in Q block)

What: "Automating your build process using FinalBuilder" and "An Introduction to Test-Driven Development"

Who: Craig Murphy, MVP, ScrumMaster, podcaster, founder of DDD (I wrote this bit, not Craig)

Why: Because Craig is an MVP, Scrum Master and a real developer and project manager and he lives and breathes this stuff and has done for years.

How do I sign up for this meeting: Send an email to meetings at dotnetdevnet.com and quote your user name and the January meeting

Abstract:

Automating your build process using FinalBuilder

For non-trivial applications, having a managed build process is essential.  However, if that build process is irksome to use and requires a series of fiddly steps in order to complete it, developers/build folks will not been too keen to run it frequently.  This is a shame because a repeatable, fast and easy to use build process increases confidence and product quality. 

Thankfully there are tools available to help us automate the build process, FinalBuilder is one such tool.  Automating the build involves scripting every action that you need in order to compile, test, deploy and re-test your application.  Everything from pressing F5-Compile through to creating a setup.exe (MSI, installer, etc.), copying into a [clean] virtual machine, setting up database connections, sending e-mail, creating images, posting blog entries, burning CDs, starting/stopping IIS, version control integration...they are all part of the automation process.

Over the course of this session Craig will explain the need for automating the build process and will demonstrate VSoft's FinalBuilder tool (and Automise if time permits).  Craig does not have any formal connection with VSoft, he is just evangelical about their product!

An Introduction to Test-Driven Development

With Test-Driven Development (TDD) now entering the mainstream via such tools as NUnit and more recently xUnit.net, it is becoming an important tool to have in your developer tool chest. If you are wondering how to "get more" from TDD, code coverage could well be part of the answer.  I believe that we can improve the quality of our application by using a combination of TDD and code coverage.

Code coverage, whereby we "track" how much of our code is covered during testing, is not new.  Indeed, we can practice code coverage and TDD in isolation.  However, applying what we know about code coverage against our unit tests allows us to move our applications to the next "quality" level: no longer is it acceptable to have unit tests on their own, we must know how well written the unit tests are, how much of the classes under test are really being tested?

Over the course of 60-75 minutes Craig will introduce the benefits of code coverage using both manual methods and automated tools. He will briefly introduce TDD and will go on to demonstrate the benefits of using code coverage tools against your unit tests, i.e. how well do your tests exercise your classes/application?

Craig will be using Visual Studio 2005 and C# - his demonstrations are available for Visual Basic.NET and Borland compilers too.

About Craig:

Craig Murphy is an author, developer, speaker, project manager, Microsoft MVP (Connected Systems) and is a Certified ScrumMaster. Commercially, Craig has been using Borland Delphi since 1998; however his exposure to Delphi goes back as far as 1995. He regularly writes articles product/book reviews:

The Delphi Magazine, International Developer, ASPToday and Computer Headline have published his work. Craig has written for virtually every Developers Group magazine issue since the year 2000!

He specialises in all things related to Borland Delphi, Visual Studio, XML, web services and XSLT. Craig is evangelical about .NET, C#, Test-Driven Development, Extreme Programming, agile methods and Scrum. For eight years, 1998-2006, Craig developed cost estimating software for the oil and gas industry, asset valuation software for local councils and the Ministry Of Defence. In addition, he has written in-house time and expense applications and web-based human resource management applications.  At the moment, Craig is employed as a System Development Engineer developing [graphical] cost management tools for a leading professional services consulting firm.  He is using Visual Studio 2005 and C#, and can’t wait until Visual Studio 2008 reaches RTM and the MSDN!

User Groups and Community are Craig’s passion: he is very active organising DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper - DDD.  He is a core member of the Scottish Developers user group and spends a little time helping Agile Scotland with their activities.  Craig can be reached via his web-site: http://www.craigmurphy.com – keep up with him via his blog: http://www.craigmurphy.com/blog