itaysk

SharePoint SP2 is here, and with it, the pre upgrade checker.
This is a tool that scans your SharePoint farm, and produce a report with all the issues that might be problematic when upgrading to SharePoint 2010\WSS4.

This is very interesting.. Think about it.. this tool “knows” what’s in the next version of SharePoint, and checks if your farm suits with it.

So I ran the tests to see what’s it gonna say. Well, it was mainly informative stuff.. just to remind you what’s in your farm. But still, there were a few points worth mentioning (I kept the best one to the end):

Supported upgrade types

“The current farm supports the following upgrade types:

• Inplace Upgrade
• Content Database Attach”

I don’t see anything about “gradual upgrade” that we know from current version.

Lists and Libraries

From KB 956201:
”The LargeLists rule in Pre-Upgrade Checker will provide information about lists that exceed the default threshold for large lists in the next version release of Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.”

Apparently there is a default threshold for list size in the next version.

Customized field types that will not be upgraded.

“A field type using custom Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) in itsRenderPattern element will not be upgraded as an XSLT-based field type. Fields based on this custom field type will be rendered without any custom formatting in Windows SharePoint Services 4.0. The following field types will not be upgraded:

• HoldsField($Resources:fldtypes_holds_name)
• HoldStatusField($Resources:fldtypes_holdstatus_name)
• HTML(Publishing HTML)
• Image(Publishing Image)
• Link(Publishing Hyperlink)
• SummaryLinks(SummaryLinks)
• LayoutVariationsField(Variations)
• ContentTypeIdFieldType(Content Type ID)
• BusinessData(Business data)
• TargetTo(Audience Targeting)

It is highly recommended that you manually upgrade all custom field types to the new XSLT-based field types in order to have full rendering and customization support. For more information about this rule, see KB article 956451 in the rule article list at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=120257.”

This is the most interesting rule, since it gives us a real insight about a new WSS 4 feature: XSLT-based field types.

Apparently, custom field types will no longer base on CAML markup for rendering inside list views, but on a new XSLT based rendering instead.

This might suggest that the entire list view web part will no longer base on CAML, and will be replaced by something more like the XSLT Data View that we already know.

Mysteriously, the KB article 956451 is not found anywhere, but some early posters seem to have got a glimpse of it. Searching KBAlertz suggests that it was recalled by Microsoft…?

Anyway.. That’s what got my interest about pre upgrade checker.. hope to hear more about the next version soon.

-- My name is Itay Shakury, and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --