SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005

I noticed a posting about the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 performance gains when using SQL Server 2005 as backend database - How do you fancy a 51% performance increase in SPS 2003? " and I decided to try it out - here is what I did:

Created a backup with SharePoint Portal Server backup and restore

Installed a named instance of SQL Server 2005 next to my existing SQL Server 2000

Disconnected the SQL databases from my current portal

Reconfigured my SharePoint Portal Server to use SQL 2005 Server

Performed a restore with SharePoint Portal Server 2003

PS The tests described in the posting - a 51% performance gain for a medium farm setup - is actually done on 64-bit machines. I'm wondering if anyone has some numbers for 32-bit.
SharePoint

BIWUG - april 2006 meeting - Tour of the conferences, WebObs and Business Intelligence/ ECM in 2007 Office System

We kicked of the meeting with a Tour of the Conferences - Patrick talked about SharePoint Advisor and SharePoint DevConnections ( mainly a lot of laying in the sun in Orlando and playing games in Vegas ;-)) and gave a nice demo about how to create an event handler in WSS v3. You can now implement event handlers on both lists and document libraries. Another new feature with the respect of event handlers is that you can now use them both synchronously and assynchronously. Afterwards I talked about the 2007 Office System sessions at Dev&IT Pro Days Belux - for people interested, you can download the presentations here:

Office System: Introduction to the Programmable Customization Model for the 2007 Office System User Experience

Office System: How SharePoint Services 2.0 developers today can take advantage of the new capabilities in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Office System: What'>s New for Developers in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

2007 Office System Overview

Office SharePoint Futures

In the second part we saw a demo of WebObs - WebObs is an usage analysis tool for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 - it is based on a tagging system and does not have to use the IIS logs - this also means that all data is available in real time. You will need to add a webpart to the pages you want to track - this can be done manually, directly into the SharePoint template pages or with a configuration tool. The reports are generated using SQL Reporting Services - so you can use the features available with Reporting services - such as export to excel. You get some custom webparts to track the usage information - WebObs report wizard webpart, fixed report webpart, my last search results webpart, top documents webpart, search suggestions webpart. There is also a site template available with the WebObs usage reporting dashboard of all types of content - search queries, documents, lists, sites, for specific users (or groups of users). Reports are shown in a user-friendly way - showing title instead of the url. Pricing for WebObs for SharePoint: 5000 for Server License + Client Access License - between 4 and 5 euro / users depending on number of users.

The last part was a demo of the new Business Intelligence functionality and ECM capability in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (or short MOSS ;-)) - here are some things we saw:

Excel services and Excel Web Access

Publish to Excel Services from within Excel 2007

The new Report Center site

A basic KPI list template

New policies framework (ECM)

... and lots more...

For people interested in attending one of the next sessions - check out the BIWUG site - www.biwug.be
sharepoint2007Office2007

Dilbert - Subcontractor beware ;-) ....

This one is simply hilarious ....

Dump your stress with OneNote

Nice tip from Darren Strange (Office Rocker! Strange thinking about Office):

open a OneNote page
force yourself to sit there for 15 minutes while you dump everything in your mental todo list onto the page
keep going
don't stop and don't worry about duplicates
don't let yourself get distracted into doing some of them
5 minutes to go
OK finished? well done - everything is on the page, you can exhale now
Drag text around and start grouping them on the page
tip: hold down the Alt key as you drag and drop to join sections up on the page
Now your worry list is organised into groups
turn each line into an action if appropriate, flag it for follow up (I just click the button for today every time)
switch to Outlook (all your tasks will be synched there) and in the to-do bar make sure you've not got any duplicates
set the correct follow up time (today, tomorrow, next week etc) for each one
switch to calendar week view and drag items off the to-do bar onto the calendar to block out sufficient time to do each task
now you can relax knowing its all in hand and you can go off and have a nice weekend/evening
Try it - I bet you will be less stressed out if you do..

Another top tip - in a meeting, click the "notes about this item" from calendar and add all your notes and flag actions as you go along. At the end of a meeting where you've whiteboarded some stuff, take a photo with your smartphone and later paste it onto the page. You can share it with others easily too either via email or shared notebooks. And with OneNote mobile this will get even easier.

Happy Easter everyone!

Live Communication Server, Avaya & Cisco

In partnership with Avaya, customers with both Avaya MultiVantage Communications Applications and Microsoft Office Communicator will be able to:

Use the Microsoft Office Communicator client to dial Avaya telephony endpoints

Use Microsoft Office Communicator to view the Avaya phone status and presence availability of others

Use Microsoft Office Communicator to initiate or answer phone calls, and then use the PC or an Avaya desk phone to conduct the call

Microsoft and Avaya plan to deliver the first of their joint offerings in 4Q2006.

In partnership with Cisco Systems, customers with both the Cisco Unified Communications system and Microsoft LCS and Office Communicator will be able to accomplish similar tasks as with the Avaya integration. In addition, users will be able to transparently escalate from an Office Communicator IM session to a Cisco-powered voice session. The joint offering is expected in August 2006.

Office 2007, SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services V3 Link Galore

Now that the Office 12 NDA is lifted you get to to see the first round of postings about 2007 Office System which includes not only the Office 2007 clients but also SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services V3:

Update: this list has been updated, check out SharePoint 2007 links v2

The Beauty of SharePoint 2007 - Publishing / Copying Documents

Security highlights in SharePoint 2007

SharePoint 2007: Business Data Catalog

The Beauty of SharePoint 2007 - Scan for Broken Links

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 ROI

MSDN TV: Introduction to Upcoming SharePoint Products and Technologies

The Beauty of SharePoint 2007 - Sign In As Different User

What is new with Columns?

The Published Links Web service in SharePoint 2007

SharePoint 2007: Mobility Shortcut URL

SharePoint 2007: Multi-valued lookup columns

Recycle Bin functionality in SharePoint 2007

The Evolution of Web Content Management in the 2007 Version of Microsoft Office (Webcast -April 18, 2006)

MSDN WebCasts: InfoPath 2007

SharePoint 2007 Product Guide

[SharePoint 2007] What are Content Types?

Outlook 2007

Tudor's blogLots of InfoPath 2007 resources

[SharePoint 2007 Tip] Versioning in document libraries

Microsoft 2007 Office System preview site - Lots of info and also the place to register for the Office 2007 beta2

What are Content Types?

SharePoint 2007-- Get Ready

[DevCon 2006] Business Data Catalog

Naming guides for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Office DevCon 2006: Day 3

[DevCon 2006] Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint Services

[DevCon 2006] Bill's keynote: "It's more then you think"

2007 Office system - and the new Office Services

WebCast: Preparing for Web Content Management with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Page anatomy in Office SharePoint Server 2007

Performance, performance, performance - caching in SharePoint 2007

Rolling up information in SharePoint Sites

Office Developer conference 2006 keynote continued

Office Developer conference 2006 continued

Office2007sharepoint2007Office12

Dolmen Job event 26 april 2006

Following posting only in Dutch - sorry guys, only Dutch speaking developers, analysts and architects should apply:

Want to join our team?Ben jij een ervaren IT-er op zoek naar een nieuwe uitdaging?Dan is er een toekomst voor jou weggelegd bij Dolmen. Een job vol afwisseling, een stabiele werkomgeving, een'no nonsense' bedrijfscultuur, state-of-the-art ICT-oplossingen en dynamische medewerkers.Ontdek alles over Dolmens bedrijfscultuur, jobinhoud, doorgroeimogelijkheden, competentiemanagement,... op Dolmens jobevent op 26 april 2006. Meer info -
Dolmen Jobevent.

Top 10 IT Projects in 2006 and Microsoft Technologies

I just stumbled upon this interesting posting about the Top 10 IT projects in 2006 and Microsoft Technologies - if you read the posting, you will see that on number 5, you will find Collaboration - here's a small excerpt about it:

Collaboration
Collaboration is one of Microsofts biggest messages in 2006. Windows Vista will provide numerous enhancements for collaboration like Meeting Spaces a peer-to-peer application for document collaboration. Office Groove 2007 will provide a disconnected peer-to-peer collaboration solution for small teams that then integrates back into SharePoint. Exchange Server E12 will connect directly into SharePoint and will provide major enhancements for calendaring and messaging. Live Communications Server and Live Meeting Server (competitor to WebEx) will merge into a unified product allowing enterprises to host presentations, video conferencing, application sharing, and more with a single interface. Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be released at the end of the year with significant changes to the previous SharePoint architecture and will become a collaboration hub for teams, document management, compliance and retention, integration with E12, tighter integration with ISA 2006, project management, project portfolio management, Excel services, and online-based InfoPath forms. In addition to these changes in SharePoint, Office 2007 will have significant changes including direct integration into document management and SharePoint servers, integration with Meeting Spaces, and more.
SharePoint

Using forms based authentication for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 extranet access

Bart just wrote an excellent posting about how to use FlexAuth and ISA Server to enable SharePoint Portal Server 2003 for extranet access - I know this thing actually does the trick, since we implemented it at Dolmen.
SharePoint

Creating a link enabled document library using Windows SharePoint Services and ASP.Net 2.0

Most of you already know that Windows SharePoint Services v3 is totally ASP.Net 2.0 based but did you also know that you can already use ASP.Net 2.0 with Windows SharePoint Services 2003 as well. Check out my article on MSDN Belux - Creating a link enabled document library using Windows SharePoint Services and ASP.Net 2.0..

An interesting customisation for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is the ability to track relationships between documents. In this article we will create an extension for WSS which will allow users to link documents to each other. This extension will be written in .NET 2.0 code to demonstrate how you can use Visual Studio 2005 to enhance your SharePoint sites. To be able to create a document linking solution on WSS with ASP.NET 2.0, we will need to complete a number of steps: 1. Upgrading Windows SharePoint Services to ASP.NET 2.0 2. Creating a custom SharePoint list to store the relationships between the documents 3. Extend the SharePoint document library context menu 4. Add your custom administration page for linking documents
SharePoint

SharePoint Tools Galore v6

Time for another update of the SharePoint and MCMS tools Galore list, version 6 here it comes.... I added some new sections (IFilters, CRM, SharePoint and Visual Studio 2005,...) and added some tools to existing sections as well.

SharePoint toolsuites

Coras workplace suiteSuite with
rollup webparts (for news,documents,tasks,...), navigation controls and full language localization (This is way cool...)

Syntergy Provide lots of modules such as
replication technologies for SharePoint, bulkloader, audit for SharePoint,...

Tools for SharePoint from SPSDev.com - contains Pocket Portal,
My Team OrgChart WebPart, Bulk upload

Search

Entopia K-Bus for SharePoint Portal Server: Adds extra information discovery capabilities, also allows
SharePoint to index Documentum, Opentext,...

WSS PowerSearch - The developers ofthis product also have
some other nice SharePoint tools, check out PowerRecycle and PowerNav

Behaviortracking from Mondosearch

Coveo SharePoint search

SharePoint Advanced Search Tools (Gotdotnet)

Ontolica - enhanced search interface for the SPS search engine

SharePoint word breaker update

IFilters

Adobe PDF iFilter

IFiltershop - Zip iFilter, CHM, DWF, Inventor,Mindmanager,Msg, MS Project,OpenOffice,Postscript,RAR,SHTML,StarOffice,vCard,WMV,XMP

JPEG iFilter

Audio/Video iFilter -WMA,WMV & MP3

SharePoint XML iFilter

Cadcompany Autocad DWG iFilter/li>

IFilter for CSF

Citeknet IFilters - free ifilters for cab,chm,exe,hlp, rar and zip

WordPerfect iFilter

MCMS (Microsoft Content Management Server)

MCMS Manager 3.0

Telerik RAD controls for MCMS

AchieveForms for CMS

CMS.Rapid

Metalogix migration manager

Smart language connector for CMS

Backup/Data Recovery/Antivirus

SharePoint document recovery tool : Free download from Stephane Cordonnier

McAfee Portal Shield Antivirus solution

AVG SharePoint Server Edition web site Antivirus solution

Sybari Antigen for SharePoint

TrendMicro PortalProtect Antivirus solution

Bitdefender for Sharepoint - Antivirus solutions

SharePoint Dynamic Site Collection backup (Webfox Inc.)

Workflow

NetPoint Solutions

Factiva:Search and workflow tools for Office 2003

Captaris Teamplate: This workflow toolset even adds a module for fax based workflow "RightFax Workflow wizard

Skelta workflow .Net

K2.Net

Nintex smartlibrary

Smart workflow from LMR Solutions

DataLan FlowBuilder

ActiveSPS Workflow Solutions

Biztalk adapter for SharePoint

Document, Records and Digital Assets Management

Meridio: .Net software which integrates seamlessly into SharePoint and provides records management
features needed to be compliant with standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley, US DOD 5015.2 records management standards,...

Towersoft

Wisdom

Mobius

Equilibrium MediaRich for SharePoint- digital asset management (DAM) solution to Microsoft Office Systems 2003.

Workshare Professional -Secure document compliance

Gigatrust

Hyper.Net (Coextant)- Cross-media content automation server

Retention Server for SharePoint from 80-20 - free solution for more info check out this recording

EntropySoft ECIGlobal document service bus

RSS Feeds & SharePoint

RSS Feed for SharePoint Lists (U2U)

PortalBuilder RSS Extensions for SharePoint- RSS XML feeds (and lists) are the building blocks for building live interfaces for SharePoint data using AJAX technologies. Deployed in the _layouts virtualized application, these feeds are available from server and client side code and can be used as an AJAX XML data source.

Syndication Generator for WSS (Bluedog Limited)

SharePoint Syndication Generator (Sig Weber)

RSS Feed Viewer webpart (Sig Weber) -RSS Viewer Web Part based on the built-in SharePoint XML Web Part and a custom XSLT transformation

SharePoint Syndication (DevHawk) -Extension for SharePoint (WSS and SPS) that exposes site information via standard XML syndication formats (RSS, OPML, etc)

Utilities & developer tools

SharePoint Explorer : another free tool which you can use to explore the SharePoint object model

Admin report kit for SPS 2003: configuration and usage reporting tool for SPS 2003

SharePoint site permission manager (Gotdotnet)

SharePoint explorer for VS.Net

BlueDogLimited Webpart Tool Kit

CAML Query Builder (U2U)

SharePoint Configuration analyzer

CAMLViewer 1.0 (Stramit)

James Milne's SharePoint CSS Skinner

Office Web Components

SPS Portal 2003 Search Web Service Tester

Windows SharePoint Services: Usage Blob Parser

ViewPoint - SharePoint navigation and modeling tool

SharePoint Utility Suite Release 2 and SPSiteManager 1.1

SMove for SharePoint

SharePoint analyzer - Gathers information about a SharePoint configuration - Created by Mike McIntyre, an Escalation Engineer in PSS, and is used extensively by PSS in troubleshooting customer issues

SharePoint Explorer (IE Addin)

Admin Report Kit for SharePoint (ARKSP) -Configuration and usage reporting tool for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services. ARKSP presents information across virtual servers, portal sites, site collection and lists in SharePoint in simple report formats.

SharePoint Portal Area explorer

Portalbuilder application blocks

Cross-forest people picker-This picker requires and leverages the profiles in SPS for adding users to Windows SharePoint Services sites as a replacement to the Outlook address book button.

Reghost.Net- Reghost your unghosted SharePoint pages

SharePoint Database split (WSSSplit) -This tool automates splitting large Windows Sharepoint Services Databases into several smaller Databases. Based on an input, the process locks, backups, deletes and restores a SiteCollection.

Universal SharePoint Manager (IDevFactory)

SharePoint & Visual Studio 2005

Visual Studio 2005 Web Part code snippets (Gotdotnet)

Visual Studio 2005 Web Part project template(Carlos Segura)

Recycle bin solutions

Deleted Items Document Library Custom List Template

SharePoint Recycle BIN (Gotdotnet project)

Microsoft CRM integration

Displaying CRM business data in SharePoint web parts

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 List Web Part

InfoPath & Electronic Forms solutions

CaveDigital XML Form WebPreviewer Web Part- allows users without InfoPath to view the contents of forms on their web browser.

AchieveForms

InfoView 2.5

NetXPert InfoScope

InfoJet EditPart for SharePointEdit your InfoPath forms from within your browser

EasyForms Web Part: SharePoint: Community Beta

WebParts

Acar Learning Technologies - Poll webpart for SharePoint, Quiz webpart for SharePoint

CSEG Rollup webpart

FluidNature image webpart

Calendar webpart

My ChangePasswordControl Webpart for Sharepoint

Office Live meeting webparts

Cave Digtal XML Form webprevriewer webpart

SharePoint FAV 1.1

The Dot Net Factory - Active Directory WebManager Enterprise Edition

Easy tabs webpart

Windows Folder webpart- The Windows Folder web part allows users to store files within a standard Windows (NTFS) folder in a shared network location and display a list of those files in a SharePoint page via a consistent ‘document library’-style interface.

TraceInfo WebPart

Gant webchart

Brightwork Reporter - SharePoint web part to enable rollup reporting across multiple Microsoft SharePoint lists and sites

Flexlistviewer webpart - display lists of other sites without using SharePoint

Treeview webpart (Gotdotnet)

High availability & replication

Neverfail for SharePoint- Replication, switchover, failover and switchback for SharePoint

DoubleTake

Echo for SharePoint

Certeon - Microsoft SharePoint Application

Business Intelligence & Reporting

DSP Portal Edition : Adds webparts which can display information from OLAP cubes

Omnisys Power Gauge - displays measurements based on various types of data sources, using dynamic and configurable gauges.

Crystal Reports SPS integration kit

BI Portal

SQL Server 2000 report pack for SPS

Proclarity for SharePoint Portal Server

SharePoint Reports (Gotdotnet)

Miscellaneous

Brightwork: adds MSF (Microsoft Solution Framework) on top of SharePoint

Ratings & expert module for SharePoint

Factiva Modules to integrate news sources into your WSS/SPS (Factiva is a Dow Jones & Reuters company)

Advis site navigator Navigation and UI enhancements

Omnisys Probability Impact Matrix webpart - based on WSS risk list from Project Server 2003

KnowledgeLake Connect

Mindjet manager 6.0 with SharePoint support- Mindmanager - the famous mindmapping tool now has a free addin to support integration with SharePoint

Tam Tam WikiSharePoint version 1.0

Wikipoint - adds Wiki functionality to SharePoint

Offline/Mobile Portal capabilities

Digilink revelation Lets mobile users synchronise offline information with SPS and WSS - 15 day free trial

IORA Another solution for offline SharePoint usage

Groove - software firm that Microsoft acquired a couple of months ago, they sell amongst other Mobile workspace for SharePoint

BerryPoint - Adapts SharePoint for display on Blackberry

Colligo for SharePoint (currently in beta2)

BerryPoint Connect (Sourceforge) - SharePoint on Blackberry

Identity management and single sign on

Version3 - Simple Signon

Web Single sign on for SharePoint - Single sign on between Office and SharePoint in extranet scenario's

Collective Software FlexAuth - Single sign on on extranet

Migration tools

Casahl ecKnowledge

Tzunami deployer

SharePoint Import Export tools (Gotdotnet)

K-Wise - Migration tools

sharepoint