April 2009 - Posts
I don’t know about you, but I have a small wish list to Silverlight 3.0 ( considering the Beta 1 ) – two more additions :
- A Built-In support to RTL , in something like an “encoding” property of the XAML file – Just like in HTML ( current RTL is somewhat problematic :s )
- Version selection , like this :
NOTICE: This is version of the Silverlight that you choose , NOT of the .NET Framework ! which is just like saying “I want to install more than one Silverlight Toolkit, Side By Side, just like in .NET Framework”
( the image was constructed using Paint.NET )
BizTalk 2009 RTM
Thought the BizTalk Server Team Blog has announced yesterday about the Microsoft Announces General Availability of BizTalk Server 2009. It seems after a short search, that you can already download a Download and evaluate BizTalk Server 2009 free for 120 days of a BizTalk Server 2009 Evaluation Edition from the 06/04/2009.
Brief Description
BizTalk Server 2009 is an integration server that provides connectivity, Business Process Management (BPM) and SOA/ESB capabilities. It also includes Business to Business (B2B) integration capabilities and an RFID platform.
Overview
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 is an integration server that provides connectivity, Business Process Management (BPM) and SOA/ESB capabilities. With its strong Business to Business (B2B) integration capabilities and RFID platform, BizTalk Server 2009 puts real-time, end-to-end supply chain management within reach of every customer. Spanning systems, people, and processes both within and across organizational boundaries, BizTalk Server 2009 empowers customers to make informed business decisions. Real-time data from geographically dispersed, yet integrated systems—put you one step ahead of the competition. All this coupled with the confidence of an enterprise-class infrastructure, regardless of your company size.
MSDN Documentation
The BizTalk 2009 documentation on MSDN contains the following
BizTalk Server 2009
Upgrade
In case of an Upgrade , here’s a nice article from Nick Heppleston’s BizTalk Blog - A Quick Walkthrough of the BizTalk 2006 R2 Upgrade to BizTalk 2009 RTM
Editions
- Enterprise - Designed for customers with enterprise-level requirements for high volume, reliability, and availability
- Standard - Designed for businesses with moderate volume and deployment scale requirements
- Branch - Specialty version of BizTalk Server designed for hub and spoke deployment scenarios including RFID
- Developer - For development and testing purposes, and use BizTalk Server 2009 Evaluation Edition (EVAL) is free for evaluation purposes
Virtual Labs
ESB (Enterprise Service Bus)
Thought it was promised that Future Plans are that “The final release date for ESBG Guidance 2.0 will coincide with BizTalk 2009 release”, we are now still in our ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP2 -January 2009
BizTalk 2009 Solutions
Moss2007, Wss 3.0 & Office2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) RTM
The Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog has announced about “Announcing Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0”
As mentioned, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK 1.5, the release was expected. But this announcement failed to mention the Download details: The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2)
KB Article Links
Description of Microsoft Office Suite 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 SP2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953195 Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack SP2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953338
Description of Microsoft Office servers 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (SP2)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953334
Download Links
Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office Suite 2007 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B444BF18-79EA-46C6-8A81-9DB49B4AB6E5 Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007 Language Pack http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E1203DB2-1CC9-4809-9B6E-3F232CB8899F Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, x86 & x64
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B&displaylang=en
Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007, x86 & x64
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082&displaylang=en
Slipstream Builds For Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP2, x64
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9FB41E51-CB03-4B47-B89A-396786492CBA&displaylang=en
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP2, x86
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EF93E453-75F1-45DF-8C6F-4565E8549C2A&displaylang=en
Overview for Office Suite 2007
The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) provides customers with the latest updates to the 2007 Office suite (the products that are affected by this update are listed below). This download includes two types of fixes:
- Previously unreleased fixes that were made specifically for this service pack.
- In addition to general product fixes, this includes improvements in stability, performance, and security.
- You can find out more information in Knowledge Base Article 953195, where product-specific changes are described.
- All of the Public Updates, Security Updates, Cumulative Updates, and Hotfixes released through February 2009.
Before installing this service pack, you are strongly encouraged to read 953195, which describes some big improvements introduced by SP2, and also calls out some important information that you should be aware of before installing.
There are MORE than a few updates to the applications by them selves, but I choose to add the global changes, and to put in bold what I think is important
Changes that affect multiple products in Office Suite 2007
File formats
- OpenDocument Format (ODF) support
SP2 lets you open, edit, and save documents in version 1.1 of the ODF for Word (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/FX100649251033.aspx) , for Excel (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/FX100646951033.aspx) , and for PowerPoint (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/FX100648951033.aspx) . Users of these Office programs can now open, edit, and save files in the OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp) formats. - Extensible file formats
Extensible File Formats: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now include a converter interface that lets you plug third-party custom file formats into these Office programs. A developer can create a converter for files of a particular extension. When this converter is installed on a user’s computer, the custom file format effectively behaves like a built-in file format. Specifically, users can open files of this format and save them by using the Open or Save UI. They can even set the custom format as their default file format. For more information, visit the following MSDN Web site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd300649.aspx - Built-in Save As PDF/XPS support
PDF/XPS support is built into SP2 for Word, for Excel, and for PowerPoint. Users no longer have to download the add-in separately.
Office graphics
- Improves application performance when many graphic objects are present, especially for Excel 2007.
- Fixes several issues that involve the object model. These fixes let you better achieve parity with Office 2003 when the object model works with graphical objects.
- Increases printing fidelity of graphical objects in many scenarios.
- A new XML-based representation of each SmartArt graphic in a document is saved with the file to optimize interoperability. This new feature uses the standard DrawingML markup to describe the visual properties of the SmartArt graphic.
- Improves the Edit Points feature. This enables more accurate shape editing and increased interoperability with Office 2003.
Office security
- Fixes certain scenarios in which documents in trusted locations were treated as non-trusted.
- Improves several cryptographic or encryption scenarios.
- Provides a method to ignore time stamping expiration.
- Provides better security warnings when a certificate is revoked.
- An updated password algorithm that is in sync with the document ISO requirements.
- Provides an ISO-OOXML-compliant password verifier for Excel, for PowerPoint, and for Word.
- Enables smarter AVAPI blocking for encrypted macros.
Overview of some of the improvements for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Microsoft Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
- Improves the performance and stability of the content deployment feature and of the Variations feature.
- Adds a new command to the Stsadm.exe tool. This tool provides the following functionality:
- Lets a SharePoint administrator use the Variations feature to scan a site for errors, report the errors, and fix certain problems.
- Finds and repairs missing peer relationships and corrupted entries in the internal variations relationships list.
- Handles the propagation of large volumes of variations content in a more manageable way.
Microsoft Office Forms Server
- Improves performance of large browser forms on InfoPath Form Services, both for memory usage and for page load time.
- Improves reliability of Forms Server and of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server by addressing the previous behavior in which an upgrade of an administrator-approved form template triggers an IIS reset.
- Improves the Digital Signature functionality for InfoPath Forms Services.
Microsoft Office Search Server
- Improves the reliability and stability of WSS crawl, of SharePoint crawl, of crawling through a very large corpus, and of backup restore.
- Introduces a new command to the Stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint administrator tune the Query processor multiplier parameter. For example, the Query processor multiplier can be used to tune the query performance for SSP indexing content sources that have highly restrictive permissions and many duplicates.
- Improves the accuracy of searches that involve numbers. For example, there is additional support for large numbers in which a comma is used to separate every three digits (for example, 1,000,000), for numbers that are between 9 and 40 characters, and for numbers that are separated by spaces.
Platform support
- Provides full support for Windows Internet Explorer 8.
- Provides level 2 browser support for Mozilla Firefox (versions 2 and 3).
- Provides support for Windows Server 2008. ( which was already there in SP1 )
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK 1.5
The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK 1.5 was released just a few days a go (22/04/2009) , just a few days after the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Software Development Kit (SDK) 1.5 (21/04/09).
Take into notice that in just a few days time ( 27/04/2009 ) SP2 of Office2007 & Moss2007 would be released !
Brief Description
The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK contains conceptual overviews, “How Do I…?” programming tasks, developer tools, code samples, references, and an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) starter kit to guide you in developing solutions based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
What’s New in this Release for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SDK
- Installation enhancements: You now have a choice of installation path when you’re installing the SDK. Browse to your preferred folder during setup. The default installation path for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SDK is <%Program Files%>\2007 Office System Developer Resources\.
- Start menu navigation: This release features a new Start menu shortcut for quick access to documentation (compiled HTML Help, or CHM for short) files and the Welcome Guide (ReadMe.htm), which is a landing page with links to all the tools and samples. In Windows Server 2003, click Start, Programs, 2007 Microsoft Office System Developer Resources, Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK to open: MOSS 2007 Technical Articles and Visual How-Tos, Office Forms Server SDK Documentation, Office SharePoint Server SDK Documentation, Welcome Guide, Windows SharePoint Services SDK Documentation. In Windows Vista, click the Windows Vista Start button, All Programs, 2007 Microsoft Office System Developer Resources, Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK to open: MOSS 2007 Technical Articles and Visual How-Tos, Office Forms Server SDK Documentation, Office SharePoint Server SDK Documentation, Welcome Guide, Windows SharePoint Services SDK Documentation.
- Offline experience improvements: All of the technical articles, visual how-to articles, and book excerpts are now packaged—plus the Excel Services and Excel 2007 Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 Job Submission Developer Guide—into one searchable CHM file. Browse offline for content published on MSDN out-of-band with the SDK.
- New tools and samples included with the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK:
- Business Data Catalog Samples and Utilities
- Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor
- Sample Pluggable SSO Provider
- WSHelloWorld Web Service
- WSOrders Web Service
- Excel Services User Defined Function Sample
- WSOrders Custom Proxy Sample
- Amazon Web Service Sample
- AdventureWorks Metadata Samples
- SAP Sample
- Document Management and Content Processing Samples
- Comment Scrub Document Converter
- Term Replacement Document Inspector
- Search Samples
- Sample Protocol Handler
- Custom Content Source
- Custom Federated Search Web Part with a Credentials UI (also available at MSDN Code Gallery)
- Federated Search SQL Server Connector (also available at MSDN Code Gallery)
- Federated Search HTML to RSS Connector (also available at MSDN Code Gallery)
- Federated Search Virtual Earth Map Connector (also available at MSDN Code Gallery)
- Records Management and Policy Samples
- De-Duplication Router
- Document Integrity Verifier
- Records Center Web Service Console Application
- Search, Collect, and Hold Tool
- Sample Custom Barcode Generator
- IRM Document Protector
- Workflow Samples
- Custom Workflow Report Query Generator
- Custom Workflow Report XLSX Injector
- Visual Studio Workflow Templates
- Enterprise Content Management Workflow Activities
- List Item Activities
- Hello World Sequential Workflow
- State Based Approval Workflow
- Modification Workflow
- Replication and Contact Selector Workflow
- Intersystem Purchase Order
- Confidential Approval Workflow
- Group Approval Workflow
- Approval Workflow Sample
- Multi-Stage Workflow
- Server-side Collect Signatures Workflow
The download file OfficeServerSDK.exe provided for the SharePoint Server 2007 SDK contains the following:
- Compiled HTML Help files (updated with new content since RTM), OSSSDK2007.chm and WSS3sdk.chm, which contain conceptual topics, Class Library and Web Service References for SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
Updates to the MOSS SDK conceptual topics include: - How to: Customize RSS for the Content Query Web Part (new)
- How to: Create a Minimal Master Page (revised)
- Provisioning Portal Sites (revised)
- Portal Site Template File (revised)
- Portal (Portal Site Template) (revised)
- Webs (Portal Site Template) (revised)
- Web (Portal Site Template) (revised)
- Federated Search (new)
Updates to the MOSS SDK Class Library and Web Service Reference include: - Microsoft.Office.Workflow.ISoapServerWorkflow
- Microsoft.Office.Workflow.IWorkflow
- Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Workflow
- Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.IBarCodeGenerator
- Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.InformationPolicy.IPolicyFeatures
- Workflow Web service
- Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Federation
- Code samples that relate to topics in the SDK: Business Data Catalog metadata samples, Custom Single Sign-On Provider, SampleWebService, and Custom Filter Web Parts. The sample projects use Microsoft Visual C# and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
Updates to the MOSS SDK code samples include: - Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor tool (personal note: the previous one had some bugs, which you could workaround)
- Protocol Handler Sample
- Enterprise Content Management Starter Kit.
Also included in the SharePoint Server 2007 SDK, the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Starter Kit Designed for solution providers, independent software vendors, value-added resellers, and other developers to learn about how to extend the new ECM features and platform in Office SharePoint Server 2007. It contains the following:
- 2007 Office System Digital Signatures Developers Guide
- 2007 Office System Encryption Developers Guide
- Information Rights Management - Pluggable Rights Management, Technical Overview
- Importing Custom Actions into SharePoint Designer
- Workflow Security Topics
Code Samples - Content Processing
- Records Management and Policy
- Workflow
Visual Studio Project Templates for SharePoint Server 2007 workflow - SharePoint Server Sequential Workflow Library
- SharePoint Server State Machine Workflow Library
You can also view the
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK in the MSDN Library.
Along side the ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 Web Development Beta 1 Overview comes the Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for ASP.NET
Among features I liked were:
- Web Designer Snippets : the ability to have & use code snippets for the HTML / ASPX part of the program. For those of us who write “code” in the ASPX part ( and on the XAML part of Silverlight ) the options of “Code Snippets” & of “Regions” is missing. Being frank , it occurs from time to time that the ASPX file ( without the use of ASCX ) and the XAML ( in Silverlight , without the use of ‘UserControls’ ) sometimes grows beyond the wanted length, And Snippets & Regions which are well adapted in the CodeBehind “section” of the Application , is truly missed in this part.
BTW, the first step in the direction was done in having Intelicence on JavaScript in VS2008 ( Thank God ).
טיפים וטריקים - שימוש ויצירת VisualStudio CodeSnippet
- Javascript Intellisense Enhancements : needless to say in a growing world of AJAX ( one of the major enhancements in ASPNET 4.0 )
ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 Preview 4
- Deployment : A Web.Config for Build Type ?!? ( debug , release …. ) need I say more ?
- Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 : It has been possible to use routing by using the routing feature that shipped with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, and now that MVC ( Model View Control ) has shipped (ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTM) with Version 1.0 – it was needed to add the Architecture as an option in the Global Infrastructure
- DataView Control : A new DataView Control was added. The DataView control can now bind to any JavaScript object or array, or to any ASP.NET AJAX component.
As said these are just but a few of the enhancements, or in other words – this is what I liked ;)
Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Ok, so now it’s official – Microsoft SharePoint 2010!
The Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog has just announced about the rename of Microsoft SharePoint “14” is now Microsoft SharePoint 2010
( take into notice that the “O”, Office, from the Moss was removed ! )
New day, New TAGs ;)
SqlServer Express 2008 Profiler
If you didn't know , the Express Environment is one of my favorites ;)
So, when I come across an “AddOn” I run to test it – Well here’s a nice one
SqlExpressProfiler - The profiler for Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Express
Enjoy
SharePoint Designer 2007 For FREE !
Yes boys and girls, you’ve heard me – the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog & Microsoft SharePoint Designer Team Blog has announced that the SharePoint Designer available as a free download & Download SPD for FREE today!!
From the post there’s a link to a video where Tom Rizzo and J.R. Arredondo discuss these changes and provide some insights into what is coming in the future :)
So for the download:
Related Resources
Developer Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007
Hot of the press – new “Developer Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007”
The site contains a concentrated bundle of Moss2007 Best Practices ;) so you won’t have to go anywhere ( except my Blog ;) )
BTW , on you’re right you might notice other resource centers (which are related to Moss2007 development ):
Application Lifecycle Management Authentication Business Data Catalog Enterprise Content Management Enterprise Search Excel Services InfoPath Forms Services ( after the above, my most visited ) Migration and Upgrade Web Content Management Web Parts Workflow