Lamont Harrington's Blog

Microsoft has recently released the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint.  The Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint is source code and guidance for developers describing how to use Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies together in business applications and Internet Web sites. SharePoint applications that use Web Parts can now be built using Silverlight user interface elements. This capability enables a fresh look at data exposed through SharePoint Products and Technologies using the modern graphics capability in Silverlight.

To get more information about the blueprint and find out when/where you can download the bits, head on over to the Silverligh Blueprint for SharePoint website.

Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition

For Visual Studio 2008

This deliverable is available on MSDN at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/servicefactory

About the Deliverable

The Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition (also known as the Service Factory) is an integrated collection of resources designed to help our customers quickly and consistently build WCF and ASMX Web services that adhere to well-known architecture and design patterns. These resources consist of models with code generation in the form of tools integrated with Visual Studio and patterns and architecture topics in the form of written guidance.

The Service Factory contains automation and guidance integrated into Visual Studio 2008 for building Web services. The core of the automation components is a Web services domain model. This domain model contains elements such as service contracts, operations, messages, and data contracts. This domain model manifests itself in the form of three integrated domain-specific languages (DSLs) that are used to model services: Service Contract Model, Data Contract Model, and the Host Model. The Service Contract Model is illustrated in the following screenshot.

To learn more about the Service Factory, please visit its official home on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/servicefactory.

Community (http://www.codeplex.com/servicefactory)

The community site contains hands-on labs for both using and extending the Service Factory, discussions with customers and field, known issues, and roadmap information. In the near future the site will include presentations, demonstration videos, and community contributions.

Web Client Software Factory 2.0

February 2008 Release

Resources

• MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/webclientfactory
• Community site: http://www/codeplex.com/websf

About the Deliverable

The Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) provides a set of guidance for architects and developers building enterprise Web applications. The factory includes samples, reusable code and a guidance package which automates key development tasks from within Visual Studio.

Using the Web Client Software Factory assets, developers can create Composite Web applications composed of independently developed and deployed modules. These modules are dynamically brought together at runtime into a common shell. Additionally the factory includes support for ASP.NET AJAX thus providing users with a richer and more responsive user experience.

New In This Release

The February 2008 release of the Web Client Software Factory has the following improvements to the June 2007 release.

• Full support for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5
• Added ASP.NET AJAX extenders for Context Sensitive Autocomplete, AJAX Validation, and Real Time Search that can be used in existing ASP.NET sites and ASP.NET sites built using the Composite Web Application Block.
• Added UI Composition capability through extending our dependency injection mechanism to support Pages, User Controls and Master Pages.
• Added Dependency Injection on ASMX Web Services and JSON services.
• Added a new set of Quickstarts and How-To topics on MVP, Modularity and the new AJAX extenders
• Added a new Order Entry Reference application that demonstrates all of the new functionality.

In addition, this release of WCSF has the following community issues and fixes:

• 42 Workitems closed including the top-voted items on CodePlex
• Add ASP.NET AJAX Support (97 votes)
• Web Client Software Factory Support for Enterprise Library 3.1 (62 votes)
• Services through configuration (32 votes)
• Support for using the Validation Application Block (16 votes)
• Recipe support for Visual Basic .NET (20 votes)
• Added Presenter support for Master Pages (11 votes)

Microsoft has recently released a set of lectures and whitepapers on advanced topics around Office SharePoint Server 2007.  Below is a description (taken from the TechNet website) of topics and links.

Today, I've achieved what many in corporate america would say is "the impossible".  In my journey through the world of GTD (e.g. "Getting Things Done"), I've certainly reached that mountain top, and it feels good.  Thanks to a nifty tool called ClearContext.  The picture below says a thousand words...

I highly recommend you check out ClearContext.  It's definitely worth the $$

Microsoft recently released the DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit for SharePoint.  Back in May 2007, MOSS underwent certification testing with the Joint Interoperability Test Command to meet the Department of Defense 5015.2 Records Management Standard.  This certification solidifies the validity of MOSS Records Management capability.  The resource kit has been released to MS Connect and available for download.

For more information aboout the resource kit you can visit the resource kit information website

An excellent whitepaper is available on our downloads site that provides guidance on implementing solutions on top of SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.  A breakdown of the sections is cited below:

• Chapter I - Document Goals
• Chapter II - Implementation Scenarios
• Chapter III - Implementation Environments
• Chapter IV - Implementation Activities
• Chapter V - Deployment Methods
• Chapter VI - Tools for the Job
• Chapter VII - Implementation Project Plan and Team
• Chapter VIII - Implementation Worksheet
• Chapter IX - Hotfixes
• Chapter X - Testing
• Chapter XI - Summary
• Chapter XII - Glossary
• Chapter XIII - References
• Virtualization
• SDKs and Centers
• Dev Tools
• Packaging Tools
• SOLUTION Framework
• Bin or Global Assembly Cache
• Features
• Authoring and customization
• Content Deployment / Migration
• Team Development
• Testing, Source Control and MSF
• Patterns and Practices
• Chapter XIV - Credits and Thanks To

Definitely worth the download.

Our Architecture Strategy Team has recently unveiled a great solution geared at simplifying the task of building Office Business Applications (OBA) using the Microsoft Office System platform. 

The solution, called the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit,  surfaces the underlying composition capabilities of the 2007 Office System and provides a prescriptive application composition experience for Information Workers to build OBA solutions. 

You can head over to the Architecture Center on MSDN to get more information about the solution and download the bits.  Right now, only the binaries are available, but the plan is to release the source code by mid-March.

Over on the SharePoint Team Blog is a good post citing resources related to deployments of MOSS/WSS on Windows Server 2008.  With the pending launch of the next release of Windows Server, it's important to know the impacts it has on deploying SharePoint Products & Technologies within your organization.  The resources cited in the post cover the following areas:

• WSS deployment on Windows Server 2008
• MOSS deployment on Windows Server 2008
• Upgrading from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 with existing SharePoint deployments
• SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint deployments

Check out these resources if you're planning on deploying MOSS/WSS on Windows Server 2008 or want to understand more about the process.  As we near launch of Windows Server 2008, you'll start seeing even more resources around this very topic.

Microsoft has recently released SP1 for both Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.  For a list of what's included in the service pack, you can view the SP1 whitepaper posted to Microsoft's TechNet website.  This information will be important from both a business and technical perspective as it relates to support installing SP1.  There's also a KB article that's recently been posted that provides invaluable information about SP1.

Important Note: WSS 3.0 SP1 should be installed before SharePoint Server 2007 SP1.

Critical Planning and Deployment & Installation Information 
Before installing SP1, read deploying software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 which will help you understand tips tricks and troubleshooting steps and Planning and deploying SP1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

Download locations:

Windows SharePoint Services

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1, 32-bit edition and 64-bit edition
• Windows SharePoint Services Language Pack 3.0 SP1, 32-bit edition, 64-bit edition

Office SharePoint Server

• Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 (includes SP1 for Project Server, Forms Server, and Groove) 32-bit edition and 64-bit edition
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Language Pack 3.0 SP1 32-bit edition, 64-bit edition