Fear and Loathing

You know, when Microsquishy lifted the NDA ban on us lowly MVPs (and others) to go forth and blog about Office 2007 (and specifically SharePoint) we all thought there would be a flood of cool new stuff? Where’s the flood? Okay, I’m as much to blame since I was all biting at the bit to get going yet I haven’t posted a single screenie. Anyways, Mart Muller broke the silence and has a great SharePoint 2007 tip on versioning in document libraries, complete with lots of cool screenshots so you can take a peek at the new interface.

Also I stumbled across a very cool NavigableCmdletProvider widget for Monad which lets you use the new Microsoft shell and treat SharePoint sites like a file share. This is a new technology that Monad enables via a provider and Oisin Grehan put together (through some poking around in Reflector) his own provider to talk to SharePoint. It’s just a start and he hasn’t implemented everything, but gentlemen, this is the very cool thing that cool things are made of. I mean, new web parts, 2007 screenshots and cool tools are great, but who would have thunk to put together Monad and SharePoint this way? Major geek points in my books for this add-in which you can check out here.

If you’re heading to TechEd 2006 in Boston June 11–16 then you’ll want to vote on your favorite topics in the Birds of a Feather sessions on the coolest things like say, SharePoint! Okay, so you’re probably not heading to TechEd and even if you were, why on Earth would you want to listen to me for an hour blubbering about, of all things, SharePoint?

Hmmm.

Okay, I got nothing but my session will be about 2007 and what you, as a developer, want to know as we dive head-on into the wacky ASP.NET 2.0, workflow enabled, security trimmed world that is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Anyways, I’m just going to keep moaning and complaining about it until you vote and send a geek like me to camp. So please vote for my session, just because a nerd needs all the popularity he can get these days and hey, what’s another hour out of your day.

While you’re at it, there are some pretty cool other BOF sessions you should check out as well. Heather Solomon has one that sounds pretty slick about customizing the SharePoint interface, John Lam and Scott Hanselman dives into Ruby and .NET which will be interesting (and I might finally learn something about Ruby), and don’t miss Jeffery Palermo and his discussion on Agile and .NET. Should be a blast so vote for your favorites and then just vote for me.

As the latte kicks in this morning, I thought this was interesting. With Microsoft touting their free line of Visual Studio Express and SQL Server 2005 Express products to get developers interested in building .NET systems, it seems Oracle has finally broken down and done the same thing.

They now have an entry-level database with a small footprint and of course, free (not sure if that’s free as in speech or free as in beer, as I always get confused when beer is involved). Built on the same code base as Oracle Database 10g Release 2 so if you’re building apps or want to maintain compatibilty with the big, bad, expensive machine called Oracle then this might be for you.

Here’s the rather bizzare link to download your own copy (the original link I got redirected about a million times to this page, gotta love those crazy database guys).

Enjoy!

Just a reminder of a couple of things coming up as I get a few things in order. Next week I’m at SharePoint Connections and presenting on Wednesday. It’s going to kick and we’ll be doing some pretty cool stuff during the sessions (I’m still tweaking things, updating code, and generally polishing the presentation for you now). Slide decks and code will be online after the presentation and I’ll be blogging everyday about what’s happening in other areas as Microsquishy talks about Office 2007 and SharePoint. I’ll be around the entire conference so hit me up for some mashing or something. Whatever mashing is.

Also my TechEd 2006 Birds of a Feather session proposal “Getting Ready for the next generation of SharePoint” is still avaiable for public viewing so please vote here (you have until Friday). I think it’ll rock and we’ll have some fun so show your support, vote, hang out, send emails, talk amongst your friends and hit me up for some mashing or something. Still don’t know what mashing is.

Tonight we’re meeting Scott Hanselman as he braves the cold (it’s really not that cold here today) and comes to Calgary to present “Anatomy of a Successful ASP.NET Application - Inside DasBlog” to the Alberta .NET User Group tommorow. There’s still space to register so head to the website because you can’t miss seeing Scott and his presentation kung-fu. Watch for pics coming soon here.

Conchango is a consultant services provider focused on delivering solutions to improve the business performance of companies through the application of information technology. I’ve been testing their Scrum for Team System product for awhile now and now they’ve released it as freeware.

Scrum for Team System is a free Agile Software Development Methodology add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and was developed with the help of Ken Schwaber (the father of Scrum). It’s a process template for Team Foundation Server that enables Microsoft's lifecycle tools to express their behaviour in terms of the processes, terminology and artefacts of Scrum. The add-in is pretty slick and covers all the major aspects of Scrum and is a much better implementation (IMHO) over something like MSF for Agile (that comes OOTB with TFS).

So check it out if you’re looking to adopt the Scrum process into your Team Foundation Server world. You can download the add-in for free from here (registration required, but free remember).

In May and June of this year (that would be 2006 for those that are not paying attention or just lost track of time) the Canadian Developer Evangelist group are  heading out on the Real Development Tour to 5 Canadian cities:

• Tuesday, May 30, 2006 – OTTAWA
• Thursday, June 01, 2006 – TORONTO
• Tuesday, June 06, 2006 – MONTREAL
• Thursday, June 08, 2006 – VANCOUVER
• Tuesday, June 13, 2006 – CALGARY

The tour will focus on Web Development (morning) and Security (afternoon). All details (and a pretty cool animation :-) ) can be found at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/realdevelopment/.

There will be some mashup sessions during lunch and towards the end of the day. I’m not sure if I’ll make it as TechEd 2006 overlaps with this date, so we’ll see where I end up (and who will listen). The final session will be more attendee driven (that would be you) so it might be really fun with some demos that address common painpoints in developer land.

Hope to see you out there so register early!

Okay, so how definitive? Like would you ever buy another SharePoint book in your life? I guess that’s all relative. Anyways, here’s the marketing blurb for Addison-Wesleys latest SharePoint book.

SharePoint 2003 Advanced Concepts: Site Definitions, Custom Templates, and Global Customizations

• By Jason Nadrowski, Stacy Draper. 
• Published by Addison Wesley Professional. 
• Series: Microsoft Windows Server System Series.

In SharePoint 2003 Advanced Concepts, two world-class SharePoint consultants show how to make SharePoint "jump through hoops" for you-and do exactly what you want.

Jason Nadrowski and Stacy Draper have built several of the world's largest SharePoint implementations for a number of Fortune 50 enterprise customers. Now, drawing on their extraordinary "in the trenches" experience, they present solutions, techniques, and examples you simply won't find anywhere else.

SharePoint 2003 Advanced Concepts addresses every facet of SharePoint customization, from site templates and definitions to document libraries and custom properties. The authors cover both Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and illuminate SharePoint's interactions with other technologies-helping you troubleshoot problems far more effectively.

Next time you encounter a tough SharePoint development or administration challenge, don't waste time: get your proven solution right here, in SharePoint 2003 Advanced Concepts.

• Construct more powerful site and list templates
• Control how SharePoint uses ghosted and unghosted pages
• Use custom site definitions to gain finer control over your site
• Build list definitions with custom metadata, views, and forms
• Troubleshoot WEBTEMP, ONET.XML, SCHEMA.XML, SharePoint databases, and their interactions
• Create custom property types to extend SharePoint's functionality
• Integrate with other systems and SharePoint sites so that you can use their information more effectively
• Change themes and edit Help, one step at a time
• Customize email alerts and system notifications
• Extend the capabilities of document libraries
• Control document display and behavior based on extensions

They have Online Sample Chapters available here on custom SharePoint 2003 templates. Enjoy!

As of today, Microsoft has lifted the NDA for Office “12” beta testers. So now we’re free and clear to blog about Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The floodgates are open, now there’s a surf building that will be unleashed shortly. This is great news as there are so many fantastic features and information that we want to show you before the public beta later this year. Now we can. Here’s the official word from Microsoft on this:

As of March 21, 2006, Microsoft is officially lifting our previous request for non-disclosure of Office Server products. This change in our NDA policy is driven by the open nature of the Office Developers Conference and the information that is being covered at that event.

The following things are now public:

• Product naming and packaging
• All Client applications, including Groove 2007 
• All Server applications, including both capabilities and feature-level server details 
• Key investment areas (collaboration, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Content Management, Enterprise Project Management).

There are still a few things that will be kept under wraps, but nothing vital so stay tuned from now until Beta 2 as we discuss capabilties and features of SharePoint Server 2007. No post right now as I’m just getting caught up on a million emails and such, but will be coming back with new information and details about the next version of SharePoint for you (this goes to say that I’ll still blog about the current version, but mix in the new SharePoint Server 2007 products and features along with it from time to time).