JOPX on Microsoft Business Applications and Azure Cloud: March 2009

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Change keyboard layout during login on Windows 2008 Server to Dutch(Belgian)

The same trick as for Change keyboard layout during login on Windows 2003 Server apparently seems to work for Windows 2008 Server as well.

Tags van Technorati: windows+2008,w2008,keyboard,regional+settings

Running a 64-bit guest in 32-bit host

Just tried something new – I needed to setup a virtual image for a 64-bit Windows Server 2008 on my laptop which is still running 32-bit Windows XP as a ~~guest~~ host OS. Luckily VMWare Workstation 6.0 (or higher) to the rescue – which allows you to do just this. If you want to know if your hardware supports 64-bit, go to the VMWare Drivers & Tools section where you will find a processor check for 64-bit compatibility.

Then the next hurdle – you will need support for Intel Virtualization Technology. My portable a Lenovo T61 supports this but it is disabled by default. So you need to go into the BIOS and enable this – go to Config>CPU section in your BIOS Setup Utility to do this. Next power off your machine and boot it up again. Now it should work (a simple restart did not seem to do the trick)

PS To check if your Intel processor supports VT check out Compare the Intel Xeon Processor Family – you will see Intel Virtualization Technology listed next to Other Intel Technologies.

Tags van Technorati: vmware,64bit,virtualization

P.S. Thanks Cassy for pointing out the mistake …

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Web 2.0: Please, but in your own time (and budget)?

I picked up this title from an intriguing blogpost (in Dutch) - Web 2.0: Graag, maar in eigen tijd ?! This posting will retake some quotes from this post (in italic) on to which I will add my own thoughts about this. I think this is an interesting topic so do add your own comment if you have another point of view.

“We need to share knowledge, innovate, bind talent and be open. So we need a platform to support this,… so' let’s define a publication protocol and add it to our quality handbook. Oh, and by the way on which project do I need to register these hours.”

This might sound familiar to you especially when you are working for a consulting firm which is typically generating revenue by charging customers by the hour. This means that if the organization you work for does not provide the room to invest in non-direct billable projects – basically investment projects – it probably will not have the ability to fully take advantage of the enablers of web 2.0 to innovate their business offerings. I look with admiration at Google’s 20% percent time rule and I’m wondering how many company are following this example especially now given the tight economic climate.

Sixth sense devices – Surface vNext

SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0 – The good, the bad and the ugly

Interesting post – SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0 – The good, the bad and the ugly – written with a lot more nuance then a number of other readings out there about SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0.

The problem is bigger than SharePoint

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Typealyzer – What personality is behind that blog?

Apparently the writing style of my blog reflects that I’m a guardian.

Guardians: The organizing and efficient type. They are especially attuned to setting goals and managing available resources to get the job done. Once they have made up their mind on something, it can be quite difficult to convince otherwise. They listen to hard facts and can have a hard time accepting new or innovative ways of doing things.
The Guardians are often happy working in highly structured work environments where everyone knows the rules of the job. They respect authority and are loyal team players.

Analyze your own blog at Typealyzer

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Architects?

Kind of sad – if you read this – I guess this is just another case of overinflated expectations surrounding another personae in the software industry – Architect is a swear word.

BIWUG April 2009 - SharePoint, SCOM and Tzunami

Another BIWUG session is planned on april 7th - here are some more details about the agenda:

18:30-18:45 Introduction
18:45-19:45 Using System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor a SharePoint environment: System Center Operations Manager 2007 is THE end to end Monitoring Solution. In this session we will discuss what you, as SharePoint guys, find relevant to be monitored. System Center Operations Manager uses a SharePoint Monitoring toolkit for monitoring the SharePoint Environment. This toolkit consists of a set of System Center Operations Manager 2007 management packs designed to help IT pros monitor their WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 and 2007 SP1 environments. These newly released packs were engineered to take advantage of SCOM 2007’s features, including new and improved reporting, additional actions, new views, and integrate IIS and SQL health rollup for a better understanding of the system-level dependencies of the SharePoint environments.And last but not least: System Center Operations Manager can also emulate end user experience by monitoring a Web Application. We will show you how to monitor a Web Application, even if it is require credentials, and how to record a browser session. If you have a SharePoint environment and don’t have a monitoring solution at the moment then you can’t miss this session! Speaker: Alexandre Verkinderen
20:00-21:00 - Tzunami for SharePoint migrations – More details to follow Speakers: Frank Cleynen and Silvana Carrasco Cordero

We forgot to give away the free Visual Studio 2008 copies last time - an innocent hand picked some random numbers and so we have the following winners which we picked from the list of attendees from last session. If you don't show up to pick your copy we will draw another winner amongs the attendees.

The winners are:

Francis Goeminne
Tom Nys
Steve Luys
Rifat Rugovaj
Ward Noppe

Don’t forget to register for this session.

Tags van Technorati: biwug,community,scom,sharepoint,moss+2007,moss,system+center,microsoft,sharepoint+2007

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

TechDays 2009 - Enhancing the SharePoint developer experience - Supporting links

There were a number of resources I mentionned in my talk which were not listed in the slidedeck. I promised to add them to my blog so here you go:

Adding intellisense when editing XML files in WSS v3/MOSS 2007 (using the core schemas) and using CAML.Net Intellisense for SharePoint (using the extended schemas)
SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 Dispose Patterns by Example
Caching in Office SharePoint Server 2007 - used by CBQ web part
Right-click a .WSP to add solution
Test Driven development and SharePoint - The final conclusions (SharePoint Pod Show) - LOL

I'll put on some of the Powershell examples on my blog in the next days.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,caml,caml+2007,moss,moss+2007,TDD,sharepoint+podshow,fun

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Changing the hyperlink color in a Powerpoint slide deck

Kind of frustrating that such a simple task as changing the color of a hyperlink in a Powerpoint 2007 can be so complex. Finally found it in this video - Powerpoint 2007 Demo: Change the color of hyperlink

So Navigate to the Design Tab, in the Themes section click on Colors and next click Create new Theme Colors in the collapsed menu. This will open a dialog window in which you can select the color for a Hyperlink and a Followed Hyperlink.

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,powerpoint+2007

My SharePoint developer toolkit

Every SharePoint developer should invest some time in building up his own toolkit to make the development experience a more fluid and efficient one. This is a preliminary list of SharePoint tools aimed at SharePoint developers. I will update this list quite regularly to keep it up to date with new releases. If you think there is something missing in this toolkit - just leave a comment.

Build and Packaging Tools

CAML/Search Tools

Visual Studio Optimisations

Content/Config Replication

SharePoint Extensions

Testing Tools

Inspection Tools

Governance/Manageabilty

SP Governance Tools
Reporting Framework
MS Asset Inventory
MS Monitoring Kit: Only usefull if you are also using System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
SP Admin Toolkit v3 (incl SPDiagnostics )

STSADM and Powershell Tools

Planning/Design Tools

Other tools

.NET Essentials

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,sharepoint,codeplex,sharepoint+2007,tools,community,moss,moss+2007,wss,wss3

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Microsoft's vision of the future

Cool video

Update: since the original video disappeared I added a link to the YouTube vid ...

SharePoint Diagnostics Tool

The latest release of the SharePoint Administration Toolkit now also includes the SharePoint Diagnostic tool (SPDiag) version 1.0 which allows ot create a unified view of data about SharePoint from ULS logs, IIS logs, performance counters, WMI instrumentation data and event logs. This way you can identify possible issues with SharePoint environment in a more efficient fashion by defining your own specific reports.

Make sure that you also download the SharePoint Diagnostics Tool user guide to get you started since you will need to do some extra installations such as the Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,administration,microsoft,moss,moss+2007

SharePoint unit testing

Update 8/3/2009: I updated some statements to avoid misunderstandings ...

As the kind of solutions we built on SharePoint become increasingly more complex it might be an interesting idea to take a look at creating unit tests for your solutions (although some people might tell you that it is not always worth the effort - see Peter Seale - SharePoint: not unit testing ). There are some challenges when trying to create unit tests for SharePoint development as outlined in Unit Testing SharePoint 2007 Applications. An interesting approach is using Isolator for SharePoint which allows unit testing sharepoint code without needing SharePoint installed (You would typically run your unit tests on your build server so this is quite handy). If you look at the SharePoint Guidance of the Patterns&Practices group you will notice that they are using the same approach.

A good resource to get you started is the great series of whitepapers about unit testing and SharePoint written by Andrew Woodward:

Unit Testing SharePoint Solutions - The basics (White paper - Andrew Woodward) and the codesamples which go along
Unit Testing SharePoint Solutions - Getting into the object model (White paper - Andrew Woodward) and the codesamples which go along

Related resources:

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,tdd,development,microsoft,unit+testing,sharepoint+2007

Monday, March 02, 2009

Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint

This is not new - there was already some information released at TechEd Europe about VS2010 and SharePoint - but still some interesting info which show the continued investment of Microsoft in enhancing the SharePoint developer experience.

Somasegar's weblog: SharePoint tools support in Visual Studio 2010

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,visual+studio,vs2010,office+14,microsoft,development

Office 14 = Office 2010?

Interesting quote:

"From a strategy perspective, the next big innovation milestone is Office 14, our next Office release, which will not be this year," Ballmer told the Wall Street crowd. "There's a version of SharePoint. There's a version of Exchange. There's a new version of Office Live."

Source: Office 14: worth a wait?

Tags van Technorati: office+14,office,sharepoint,microsoft