Archives
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Curious on what's happening at the OOXML BRM!
The Ballot Resolution Meeting, BRM, on DIS 29500 is currently taking place in Geneva and I'm really curious on what's going on in down there in Switzerland. There has not leaked anything of interest, just some rumors and photos. I guess we all have to wait until the weekend and then we will be flooded with upset|angry|joyful|content|happy comments from the delegates.
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SharePoint SDKs updated
The SDKs for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 has been updated and are now available at the Microsoft Download site.
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Software Development Kit (SDK) (version 1.3)
SharePoint Server 2007 SDK: Software Development Kit (version 1.3)This contains several updates and worth to notice is the Search sample protocol handler, Custom Content Source and the BDC editor.
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About the Microsoft interoperability changes
A few days ago Microsoft dropped the news that they are increasing their openness regarding interoperability. This is great news for the world of software, even though everyone has their own opinions in this matter.
What now have been made public is more than 30.000 pages of documentation of the various protocols used within Microsoft server products (Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007). You can find the documentation in the MSDN Library or on the Microsoft Download site.
I found a few interesting documents that I think are worth reading or saving for future reference:
WebDAV extensions
There are three documents related to extensions Microsoft have made to the WebDAV protocol, which includes some new verbs (GETLIB), headers and optimizations of the WebDAV protocol.
- [MS-WDV]: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Protocol: Client Extensions
- [MS-WDVME]: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Protocol: Microsoft Extensions
- [MS-WDVSE]: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Protocol: Server Extensions
- [MS-WDVRN]: World Wide Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Noroot Depth Protocol Specification
- [MS-WDVRV]: World Wide Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) MS-Author-Via Protocol Specification
If you are working with implementing WebDAV enabled software/applications and would like integrate with the Office products these are highly interesting.
Windows Search Protocol
This document describes how to interact (search or manage) with the Windows Search service.
Security
The document called [MS-SECO] Windows Security Overview contains really good information on the security in Windows and how authentication and authorization is handled as well as detailed information on security principals, SIDs and accounts and groups.
I welcome this strategic change by Microsoft. It is a lot to read, but if/when Microsoft gets the search on MSDN to work better (I currently use Google to search MSDN) we will have much easier to understand how the different products interact.
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Microsoft Office binary formats available under OSP
The Microsoft Office Binary File Formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt...) are now available for everyone under the Open Specification Promise, OSP. This is good news for all of you working with the traditional binary format, when for example moving them to the new Office Open Xml, OOXML, file format.
The binary file formats have previously been available for download for a long time (under RAND-Z), but now you download them here.
This change to put it under OSP, is due to the comments on OOXML by the national bodies and Microsoft has now promised ECMA International to make it easier to get hold of the specifications.
Thank you Brian Jones for bringing us the good weekend news.
Now I'm on for a two month parental leave...
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Open linked Office documents in the application instead of in Internet Explorer
I have several time stumbled upon clients who complain that their hyper linked Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) opens up in the web browser, Internet Explorer, instead of in their respectively Office application.
In SharePoint document libraries these problems are solved using a special JavaScript that fires up the correct application, but today I had a client complaining about this problem when having Office documents linked in a Wiki. So I dug up some information from the Microsoft Knowledge Base on this matter and though I should share it (or at least have it written down for future reference).
Three KB articles focuses on this one (wonder why I have missed them before?).
- KB927009 - A new window opens when you try to view a 2007 Microsoft Office program document in Windows Internet Explorer 7
- KB162059 - How to configure Internet Explorer to open Office documents in the appropriate Office program instead of in Internet Explorer
- KB254918 - How to change Internet Explorer to open linked files in Word 2000 instead of in the browser
There are mainly two methods to make the documents open up in their Office applications; one is to do some registry hacking and the other one is to edit a property in the Registered file types. I think the easiest way is using a registry script.
This script (from KB927009) fixes the issue, just create an empty document with notepad and save the file using a .reg file extension and then double-click the file and accept to import the changes to the registry.
If you don't have Office 2007, then you can remove all references to ????.12, for example Word.Document.12.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Word.Document.8] "BrowserFlags"=dword:80000024 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Word.RTF.8] "BrowserFlags"=dword:80000024 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Word.Document.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:80000024 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:80000024 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.Sheet.8] "BrowserFlags"=dword:80000A00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.Sheet.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:80000A00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.SheetMacroEnabled.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:80000A00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.SheetBinaryMacroEnabled.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:80000A00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PowerPoint.Show.8] "BrowserFlags"=dword:800000A0 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PowerPoint.Show.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:800000A0 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PowerPoint.ShowMacroEnabled.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:800000A0 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PowerPoint.SlideShow.8] "BrowserFlags"=dword:800000A0 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PowerPoint.SlideShow.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:800000A0 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PowerPoint.SlideShowMacroEnabled.12] "BrowserFlags"=dword:800000A0
Standard registry hack disclaimer: only do this if you are sure what you are doing....
Install script for the SharePoint Application Templates
The Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, also known as the Fab40, is a set of forty different templates that can be used within a SharePoint environment.
These templates are good to use as a starter when creating new SharePoint sites or custom solutions and I recommend that you install them into your test or development environment. But the download contains 40 different .wsp and .stp files which has to be installed one at a time; either using STSADM or using the web interface.
Why not using a script?
And here is one...
1: @SET STSADM="c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin\stsadm"
2: 3: for %%f in (*.wsp) do %STSADM% -o addsolution -filename %%f
4: 5: for %%f in (*.wsp) do %STSADM% -o deploysolution -allowgacdeployment -immediate -name %%f
6: 7: for %%f in (*.stp) do %STSADM% -o addtemplate -filename %%f -title %%f
8: 9: pause 10: 11: IISRESETJust create a .bat (or .cmd) file and copy the text from above and save the file.
Open up a command prompt and run the file and wait for the script to finish.
Tada...
Subscribe to this feed using Windows Live Alerts
You can now subscribe to this feed using Windows Live Alerts, just click the Windows Live Alerts logo and customize how you will receive the alert.
This is another great Live service from the Microsoft Live team.
You can sign up to create your own alerts here.
Thanks to Michael Ganotti for the tip.
Planning Capacity for SharePoint and Exchange
If you are about to plan capacity for your Microsoft SharePoint 2007 topology you can get great assistance from the Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2007 and the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Model.
What is Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2007?
The Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) 2007 is a pre-deployment capacity planning tool for Microsoft Server products when creating distributed application deployments.
The SCCP allows you to create a model of your hardware, network and applications/servers using a Model Editor. The model can then be run through a simulator which warns you of eventual bottlenecks and allows you to analyze all kinds of different data.
SCCP also contains a hardware editor (CPU and hard disk configurations) so you can customize your model and adapt it to your existing hardware or hardware that you intend to use.
The SCCP can be loaded with different Capacity Models and wizards, which helps you to create your topology.
Some Screenshots
The image above shows a SharePoint intranet site with three branch offices and the image below shows how the topology looks like when you zoom in to the Intranet Site.
Using this Model editor you can change everything from the networks used to the number of users to the roles of the servers and then run a simulation to identify your bottlenecks.
This is how the hardware editor looks like and you can see how detailed you can configure the CPUs.
Capacity Models
There are only one Capacity Model out of the box; Exchange Server 2007.
The SharePoint models can be downloaded here and should appear soon on the TechNet System Center Pack Catalog and an Operations Manager model is in beta and should be shipped before summer.
Summary
This is a great tool for IT-professionals as well as architects and developers to identify possible problems before start wiring and plugging in. I can really recommend SCCP; especially when making proposals to clients, so you can test the recommended setup. I have been running the beta and RC for a while and are very satisfied with it.
The tool can of course not replace good knowledge of the products and hardware and should be used with caution.
The only drawback I found is that it should be possible to combine your models. For example making a content deployment (with staging, authoring and publishing sites) scenario with MOSS 2007 is not possible, you have to make several models and then make your own analysis
Where can I get this?
SCCP can be downloaded from the Microsoft Downloads site (4.7 Mb) as of today and the SharePoint models here (3.2 Mb).
Vista SP1 is imminent and Windows Server 2008 is RTM
The Release Notes for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 just appeared on the Microsoft Downloads Site. 
And just after this Microsoft posted a Media Alert: Microsoft Releases Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008 to Manufacturing.
Finally!
Vista Service Pack 1 will be available "to customers in March" and Windows Server 2008 will "be available [...] on March 1".
When will it be available on Microsoft Downloads or for MSDN/TechNet Subscribers?
Update: The Windows Vista Team Blog has detailed timings for Vista SP1
Update 2: Windows Server 2008 is available for MSDN and TechNet Subscribers
Let the fun begin...
Will it sneak up on us tonight?
Will Windows Vista Service Pack 1 be released to the web tonight?
Let's see how the download servers will handle this...
Update (later this day): No need for any download servers...we will have to wait a month and a half before it will be available. Sigh...