Lamont Harrington's Blog

The Patterns & Practices team has recently released the Composite Application Guidance for WPF which provides guidance for "componetizing" the development of enterprise-class WPF applications across multiple development teams, with each team owning a piece of the application, and then seamlessly integrating these pieces into one homogenous application.

Included in the guidance package is a reference implementation of WPF application, CFI Stock Trader, that models this guidance, reusable library code (called the Composite Application Library), documentation, quick start tutorials and hands-on labs.

You can download the bits here or to learn more about what the guidance entails, head on over to the developer center on MSDN.

I can't wait to try this stuff out!

Version 1.2 of the Visual Studio extensions for WSS has been released and available for download.  Version 1.2 provides support for Visual Studio 2008 in building SharePoint-based solutions.  The following tools are included:

Visual Studio 2008 Project Templates

• Web Part
• Team Site Definition
• Blank Site Definition
• List Definition
• Empty SharePoint Project

Visual Studio 2008 Item Templates

• Web Part
• Custom Field
• List Definition (with optional Event Receiver)
• Content Type (with optional Event Receiver)
• Module
• List Instance
• List Event Handler
• Template

SharePoint Solution Generator

Used to generate a Site Definition project from an existing SharePoint site.

Note here that this release only works for Visual Studio 2008.  If you're still doing development using Visual Studio 2005, you'll need to install Version 1.1 of VSeWSS which can be downloaded here.

Announced on the SharePoint Team Blog, the SharePoint Deployment Planning Services program has been launched and is geared at helping our Software Assurance (SA) customers sucessfully plan and deploy SharePoint Products & Technologies.  I think this program provides a great resource for those customers who are struggling to make sense of SharePoint technologies or are trying to uncover proven "best practices" around how to properly deploy and implement SharePoint-based solutions.

During my time as a Technology Architect within the Reston, VA Microsoft Technology Center, I worked with a number of customers in definining SharePoint-based solution architectures where we covered topics such as understanding SharePoint architecture, definining portal taxonomies and physical deployment topologies/architecture, development and integration opportunities through Strategy Briefings and Architecture Design Sessions as well as "real world" implementation through Proof of Concept engagements to demonstrate the capabilties of a "live" SharePoint solution.  It's certainly great to see these getting packaged into a set of service offerings that we can make more widely available to our customers and partners.

And speaking of partners, this program is jointly managed by our partner ecosystem as well as Microsoft Consulting Services which together provides proven business and technical expertise in architecting/deploying SharePoint-based solutions for small, medium, and large organizations alike.

To learn more about the SDPS program and what it can do for you, head over to the SDPS website.  Microsoft Partners having strong competency in the Microsoft Office System stack are encouraged to sign up and participate in this growing community.

Version 2.0 of the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit was released to the web today, on schedule and with all the great new features promised for the release. Version 1.0 of the toolkit was released at the Office Developer’s Conference in February 2008.

Watch the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit Overview Video to get an overview of the toolkit, the motivations for creating it, and its intended use. Visit the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit site to access and explore related resources: Installers for the toolkit & sample components, Documentation – architecture, user, admin, developer, and overview video.

What’s New in Version 2.0?

• IT administration capabilities integrated into the SharePoint Central Administration portal
• A prescriptively secure user experience for OBA composition
• Support for incremental deployment of OBAs.
• Support for installing the OBA Composer on a client computer that is running the Windows Vista operating system and connecting to a remote computer that is running Office SharePoint Server.
• Spport for many new, out-of-the-box components, too, which cover scenarios that pertain to Expense Reporting, Purchase Requisition Management, Financial Services, and Health & Life Sciences solutions
• Source code (framework, tools, and sample components) of the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit to enable independent software vendors (ISVs) and solution integrators to extend and repurpose the Toolkit to suit their individual needs.

Visit the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit site for more information.

Interesting eWeek report on the 100 Most Influential People in IT.

Zach Rosenfield (a Program Manager on the SharePoint Team) posted an announcment introducing the SharePoint Administration Toolkit.  This promises to be a great resource for administering your MOSS and WSS v3.0 deployments.  The initial version of the toolkit contains a couple of useful administrative tools, including the Batch Manager, which allows you to schedule bulk operations against site collections in a SharePoint farm, and a new command to the STSADM command-line utility called "updatealert" which will refresh all alert URLs in a specific site collection, which is important if you change the URL of a web application or after an upgrade.  A full whitepaper describing the toolkit can be found here.

Check out Zach's post of you want to have a good understanding of what the toolkit addresses and the features it contains.  The toolkit is available for download for both x86 and x64 SharePoint deployment configurations.

Enjoy!  I know I will!

I received an this e-mail this morning and I thought I'd share with the loyal readers of my blog.  Enjoy

40 Tips for a Better Life – 2008

1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk…smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Buy a lock if you have to.
3. Buy a DVR and tape your late night shows and get more sleep.
4. When you wake up in the morning, complete the following statement, “My purpose is to ___________________ today.”
5. Live with the 3 E’s → Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
6. Play more games and read more books than you did in 2007.
7. Make time to practice meditation and prayer. They provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.
8. Spend time with people over the age of 70 and under the age of 6.
9. Dream more while you are awake.
10. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
11. Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds and walnuts.
12. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
13. Clear clutter from your house, your car, your desk and let new and flowering energy into your life.
14. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead, invest your energy in the positive present moment.
15. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
16. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.
17. Smile and laugh more. It will keep the energy vampires away.
18. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
20. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
21. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
22. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
23. Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
25. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: “In five years, will this matter?”
26. Forgive everyone for everything.
27. What other people think of you is none of your business.
28. GOD heals everything.
29. However good or bad a situation, it will change.
30. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
31. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful, or joyful.
32. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
33. The best is yet to come.
34. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.
35. Do the right thing!
36. Call your family often (or e-mail them to death!!) Hey, I’m thinkin’ about ya!
37. Each night before you go to bed, complete the following statements: “I’m thankful for _______________. Today I accomplished _______________.
38. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
39. If you can't change your situation, change your location.
40. Enjoy the ride. Remember, this is not Disney World and you certainly don’t want a fast pass. You only have one ride through life so make the most of it and enjoy the ride.

May your troubles be less, May your blessings be more, May nothing but happiness come through your door.

I mentioned in a previous post the work I've been doing with the Library of Congress.  It has been a great effort and an excellent showcase of the power and flexibility of our platform.  On April 12th, we closed another chapter in this unprecendented effort by officially launching their myLOC.gov website.  The website has been architected and built on top of a platform consisting of SharePoint Server 2007, Silverlight, Windows Communication Foundation, and Windows Live ID.  The launch of the myLOC.gov site on this past Saturday marked the culmination of 9 months of work to deliver a compelling solution that's geared at reshaping how Americans view American History by literally bringing many of the historical treasures contained within the walls of the Library of Congress to life and allowing not only the American people, but the entire world to experience this great treasure.

The launch of the myLOC.gov website capped off a great week for the Library of Congress and Microsoft.  As a part of the revitalized digital experience, coined the "Library of Congress Experience", is also the launch of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)-based interactive touch screen kiosks that's running within the Library of Congress's Thomas Jefferson Building in DC.  There, US citizens, and people travelling to DC from around the world, will be able to enage within an immersive technology experience that allows people to interact with the Library's historical collections in new and exciting ways.  The myLOC.gov site takes this onsite experience and brings it to the web!

In the coming weeks, myself, in combination with our great partners, Portal Solutions and Schematic will be creating a "How We Did It" article (likely to be posted on the SharePoint Team Blog), in the same vein as the two-part article I published on another great effort with Conservation International, that'll dive deeper into the overall solution architecture and cover specifics around logical and physical architecture as well as discuss implementation details of key features and functionality.

So stay tuned!