May 13, 2009
So, lots of discussion in the SharePoint community following this post from the Microsoft SharePoint Team on preliminary system requirements for SharePoint Server 2010.
We’ve known for quite a while now that the next release of SharePoint will be 64-bit only. The new and interesting information is:
It will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2. In other words, you won’t be able to use Windows Server 2003, even if it is a 64-bit version.
It will also require 64-bit SQL Server, either 2008 or 2005. In fact Microsoft best practice suggests that in a SharePoint farm, the SQL Server boxes should be the first candidate for 64-bit technology anyway, but this certainly gives you more reason to go 64-bit.
Now it’s worth bearing in mind we are talking about a product version which isn’t even in a full beta yet, so it’s going to be a while before real deployments (probably second half of 2010 for those pioneers who aren’t afraid of arrows). But the points covered in the post should certainly be taken into consideration, particularly if you are in the planning stage and looking at hardware and software selection. Also Microsoft are promising a much easier upgrade path this time, which is why they’ve put the Upgrade Checker into Service Pack 2.
If you are investigating 64-bit now, I would recommend taking a look at the Combined Knowledge whitepaper on how to move MOSS2007 from 32-bit to 64-bit which you can download from here (lots of other good downloads there as well).
You might also be interested in best practices for using virtualisation technologies in a SharePoint farm. If so, let me point you to the set of Best Practice for Virtualizing SharePoint articles from Brian Wilson of the Microsoft UK SharePoint team.
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Collaboration, Microsoft SharePoint, Office, SQL Server, Technology | 
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Posted by workerthread
May 4, 2009
US Company Vertigo have a long track record in the development of showcase solutions for a range of clients, and have been involved in several proof of concept projects for Microsoft going back over the years. Right now they have a very nice Windows Presentation Foundation project available for download called Family Show. The latest version of this has been put together using Visual Studio 2008 and .Net 3.5, and certainly shows off some nice user interface design features. If you are interested in UI design, or indeed if you have an interest in genealogy, this is worth a download.
Here’s a quick screenshot of how it looks (click picture for a better view):
(by the way, it’s not one of my relatives 
)
So if you want to take a look for yourself, the download is available here, and source code is available as a CodePlex project here. Scott Stanfield from Vertigo has also recorded a video demo of Family Show which you can watch here.
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Technology, Training, Windows, development | 
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Posted by workerthread
January 6, 2009
Nick Swan over at Lightning tools has put together the Big SharePoint Survey, the intention being to find out more about how the product is being used, what the pain points are etc. Results will be made available to all, so the more contributors they get the more useful the data will be. You can complete the survey online here.
On the subject of how SharePoint is being used, interesting to see this post on 10 best-designed intranets of 2009 (2009?) where half the winning intranets used SharePoint….
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Posted by workerthread
December 8, 2008
A quick post on two recently announced conferences for Spring 2009 :
UK Excel User Conference – Microsoft London 1st and 2nd April 2009. This is a free-of-charge two day conference being held at the Microsoft offices in London Victoria. A good spread of topics, plus an almost guaranteed amount of moaning from developers about the Office 2007 ribbon during the breaks. In these times of cut-backs and credit crunch here’s an event which doesn’t need sign-off from your boss for payment of a conference fee. Agenda and registration details can be found here.
European SharePoint Best Practices Conference London 6-8 April 2009. Certainly not a free event this time, but it looks like there will be a good selection of well-known SharePoint speakers (Joel Oleson already lined up for the keynote). More information available here. Right now the full agenda isn’t available, but you can get an idea of topics from this agenda on the US conference site.
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Microsoft SharePoint, Office, Technology, Training | 
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Posted by workerthread
