Yet somehow it is always the small things you remember. The 2005 release is superior in almost any aspect except one – it is missing the “Create GUID” menu item. The older versions had it and even though it is not the most widely used feature, it is something I’ve been missing many times.

Even my boss got so annoyed that he built a console application and put it in C:WindowsSystem32 in order to access it easily through Start -> Run. Later we learned about this wonderful website www.newguid.com but we already had the console application, so that was a little too late. As you can see, this feature has been greatly missed.

Microsoft realized they were on thin ice by removing the feature, so they made a wise decision in Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005. Can you guess what it is?

They brought it back!

And not only is it back, it is also a little bit better. A GUID is a GUID is a GUID, I know, but somehow it just feels better. I would like to thank Microsoft for putting the feature back in Visual Studio, but that would be like thanking the dry cleaners for returning your pants a year too late.

You can find it in the menu under Tools -> Create GUID, just like in the old times.

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Mads Kristensen currently works as a Senior Developer at Traceworks located
in Copenhagen, Denmark. Mads graduated from Copenhagen Technical Academy with a multimedia degree in
2003, but has been a professional developer since 2000. His main focus is on ASP.NET but is responsible for Winforms, Windows- and
web services in his daily work as well. A true .NET developer with great passion for the simple solution.

http://www.madskristensen.dk/

There is nothing quite like firing up a new program and watching it return something to standard output that looks more like a cat walked across a Cyrillic keyboard than the results one expected to see.

Developers working in Microsoft’s Visual Studio can take steps to help avoid the pain of invoking the debugger yet again, by proactively preventing some of the more common bugs from cropping up in code.

Author Peter Aitken has worked on several programming related books, including ones about Visual Studio.

He recently posted some commentary to InformIT that aims at placing the virtual flyswatter in developers’ hands and turning them loose on those bugs.

Even the most dedicated programmer who follows Aitken’s suggestions on good programming practices might still end up having to track down a belligerent byte or two of buggy code.

Just like the well-known maxim ‘divide and conquer’, breaking up one’s code can help a programmer narrow down the section where the bug lives.

Aitken suggests using breakpoints to find that critter.

“While the program is paused, you can take various actions to help find a bug,” he wrote.

Those actions include modifying the conditions that trigger the breakpoint, or specifying a hit count for each time the breakpoint is passed.

Once the program pauses, it’s time for the sheer joy of single-stepping through the code.

Aitken pointed out some useful keyboard shortcuts for when the program enters break mode. The developer can continue to the next breakpoint, or step into, over, or out of running the next statement.

Sometimes seeing the value of variables can help identify the problem.

By setting watch expressions for program variables through the Debug menu will show those values as the program executes.

If a variable reaches an unexpected value, that would indicate some kind of issue impacting it.

Go get those bugs. (Ok, maybe not those bugs. You know what I mean.)

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

A new client that will provide database admins and programmers with the same versioning and management tools used by other developers will be part of the next version of the Visual Studio Team System. A report from Internet News said the Team Edition for Database Professional would be needed since database pros work differently with their databases than application developers do.

“There has always been somewhat of a disconnect between developer organizations and database teams,” Matt Nunn, senior product manager, developer division at Microsoft said in the article. “Database teams run against a live system, apps teams build apps in a closed environment.”

By using the Database Professional version of Visual Studio, database programmers can do the kind of work with schemas and data in a test environment that they would normally have to do with a live database.

The Data Generator in Team Edition for Database simulates live data. When schema changes are made with the Database client, the tool shows how that will impact the database more accurately.

Version control in the client provides the same features for schema that it does for source code. The Team System tracks check ins and outs for schemas, and shows who worked on the schema.

There are also tools to automatically generate reports on aspects of a project, like who has worked on it and where they have progressed. One analyst cited in the article did express concern over database pros being exposed to “the beast that is Visual Studio 2005″:

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.