Great… Sharepoint Designer is now free

Starting on April 1, 2009, SharePoint Designer 2007 is free for download.

Letter to SharePoint Designer Customers

Free Download

Watch the video where Tom Rizzo and J.R. Arredondo discuss these changes and provide some insights into what is coming in the future.

Get the video

SharePoint Commerce Services for Commerce Server 2009

The latest edition of Commerce Server 2009 has been announced. It includes OOB interoperability and integration with MOSS 2007.

Commerce Server 2009 comes with OOB default website that exists within SharePoint. It includes more than 30 web parts and controls:

• Management: Inline Product Editing, Channel Configuration and more
• Profiles: Registration Wizard, My Profile, Credit Card, Address and more
• Marketing: Advertisements and discounts, Ratings and Reviews
• Search: Search Box and Search Results
• Orders: Add to Cart, Shopping Cart, Order Details and more
• Catalog: Site Map, Product Query, Product Details and Images Viewer

In addition to Web Parts you can use all standard MOSS features, customize the site with Sharepoint Designer and use all publishing capabilities.

Sharepoint Commerce Services can be used with ASP.NET enabled web sites, but you will loose the following functionalities:

• Content Management
• Search
• Workflow
• Versioning
• and others

If you choose to use WSS 3.0 instead of MOSS 2007, you will loose:

• Multi language support
• Publishing (WCM)
• OOB workflows
• Enterprise Search

Microsoft Web Platform Installer

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer. In addition v2.0, installs popular open source ASP.NET and PHP web apps with the Web PI.

Popular Web Apps

Install free popular ASP.NET and PHP web apps such as DotNetNuke and WordPress.

.NET Framework

Install the latest version of the .NET Framework. This includes everything you need to work with ASP.NET.

IIS and Extensions

Install the latest version of IIS, including latest IIS Web extensions like IIS Media Services.

SQL Server

Install the latest version of SQL Server 2008 Express. This includes both the database engine and tools.

Visual Web Developer

Install the latest version of Visual Web Developer Express, Our full featured free web development tool.

Extra and Goodies

In addition to everything above, the Web PI also includes the latest community version of PHP for Windows.

Microsoft Days 2009

The registration for MS Days 2009 is opened. This year it will consist of two sub events – for IT Pro (14-15 April) and for Developers (16-17 April).

I’ll have sessions in both tracks:

Microsoft Citizen Service Platform or how to deliver high efficient solutions for the Public sector and Business

(IT Pro Track, 14 April 2009, 11:45 – 12:45)

 

Sharepoint Development with Visual Studio 2008

(Dev Track, 17 April 2009, 15:15 - 16:15)

 

Check the agenda for both (IT Pro and Dev) tracks! Reseve your seat now, come and listen!

Pay attention, the registration site is realized in Silverlight!

Microsoft Services University

I have joined MSSU 32 (March 2009). It was great event, click the image and see the whole album.

VSeWSS 2008 v1.3 – Feb 2009 CTP

New build of Visual Studio 2008 extensions for WSS 3.0 v1.3 CTP has been released this week (20.2.2009).

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b2c0b628-5cab-48c1-8cae-c34c1ccbdc0a&DisplayLang=en

How to get SPList instance

Usually the developers write code like this:

using (SPSite siteCollection = new SPSite(siteUrl))
{
    using (SPWeb web = siteCollection.OpenWeb())
    {
        SPList myList = web.Lists["ListTitle"];
    }
}

It seems good, consistent with best practices http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973248.aspx#sharepointobjmodel__codingtechniques, but whether it is really the best?

In this case web.Lists["ListTitle"]; loads metadata for all lists in this SPWeb and than compares the titles (SPList.Title) of all objects in the collection. Finally it returns the list matching the criteria.

Let’s see the code below.

using (SPSite siteCollection = new SPSite(siteUrl))
{
    using (SPWeb web = siteCollection.OpenWeb())
    {
        SPList myList = web.GetList(“http://site_url/lists/ListTitle/AllItems.aspx”);
    }
}

In this case the Object Model at first gets the List ID (GUID) from the URL, than loads the metadata only for this specific list.

Yes, that is not a big performance problem if you have a few lists in your SPWeb. But let’s consider what will happen if there are 1000 lists per site…?

Integrating External Content Repository with MOSS 2007

Learn how to integrate external document repository with MOSS 2007 and keep the content available for workflows, tasks and extensible metadata.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd440954.aspx

Authors: Trent Swanson, Bhushan Nene, Scot Hillier

Code sample: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/spextcontent

The architecture presented in this code sample utilizes the Content Management Integration Services (CMIS) standard for accessing Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems in a platform-independent manner. CMIS is a standard developed by Microsoft, EMC, and IBM that leverages SOAP, REST and Atom to enable communication with and between ECM systems.