Sunday, April 19, 2009

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System due to ship April 28th

Check out Office Sustained Engineering's Blog for more details!

Virto Ajax Web Part Calendar SharePoint

Virto Calendar can be used instead of built-in SharePoint Calendar. It provides you with powerful capabilities for more convenient events calendaring, e.g.:

Adding Event with a one mouse click
Event Coloring according to List Type
Date Picker for quick and easy navigation
Event duration editing with a simple resizing action
Event date changing with a just drag and drop
Single aggregated view of all your events from different SharePoint Lists not only single SharePoint Site
Resizing for fitting your web page design
Printing of any calendar View


Download Free Virto Calendar Now!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

White paper: Working with large lists in Office SharePoint Server 2007

Via: SharePoint Server Technet

Microsoft performed performance testing against Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to determine the performance characteristics of large SharePoint lists under different loads and modes of operation. This white paper presents their findings.

The test results in this white paper are intended to demonstrate the difference in the performance characteristics of SharePoint lists containing large numbers of items when different data access types are used to present list contents. Test results in this white paper show how to optimize list performance through limits on the number of items that appear in a list, and by choosing the most appropriate method of retrieving list contents.

Download this white paper as a Microsoft Word document (.doc).

White paper: Working with large lists in Office SharePoint Server 2007 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=95450&clcid=0x409)

Data access methods

  • Browser

  • SPList with For/Each

  • SPList with SPQuery

  • SPList with DataTable

  • SPListItems with DataTable

  • Lists Web service

  • Search

  • PortalSiteMapProvider



Analyzing the results
The test results in this white paper validate the fact that with proper testing in your own environment, it is quite possible that you can use more than 2,000 items in a container without an adverse impact on performance. The best results will be obtained if you write your own user interface to work with the data in the list, and make some carefully considered choices about what data access method works best for your requirements. The data access method you choose may very well impact other aspects of your site or list implementation.

For example, using data access methods that require the SPList class will greatly benefit from indexing columns used in a WHERE clause. However, the benefit of indexing these columns is marginal if the data is retrieved using the Search service, the Lists Web service or the PortalSiteMapProvider class. Conversely, if you are not using the SPList class for data retrieval, data access will likely be much faster if you are able to retrieve data based on the ID of items, rather than the value of a specific column in a list.


Additional Resources: Plan for performance and capacity (Office SharePoint Server)

Monday, April 6, 2009

SharePoint Drives Ferrari!

Ferrari introduced their new Ferrari.com website, which is powered by SharePoint Server 2007, according to Owen Allen, SharePoint product manager.

The site is pretty sleek loaded with images, video and flash animation! Check out this preview video about the Ferrari.com site.

Via Softpedia, Owen Allen, Steve Clayton and Chris Parkes!

Saturday, April 4, 2009

SharePoint List Association Manager - SLAM!

Most developers who have used SharePoint as an application development framework have run into the realization that SharePoint is NOT a relational database. In fact, the accepted wisdom is if you need relational tables, use ASP.NET/SQL straight-up, not SharePoint.

Enter SharePoint List Association Manager (SLAM). In short it allows you to define relationships (one to one, one to many, many to many) between SharePoint lists (or Content Types) and then leverage those relationships in webparts or custom field types using familiar and straight forward SQL queries.

Illustrated Guide to SLAM

SLAM Architecture

Check it out on codeplex!
http://slam.codeplex.com/

Thursday, April 2, 2009

MOSS Installation and Deployment Guides

Well, here you go. A 200 page MOSS Installation Guide and a 400 page MOSS Deployment Guide from Microsoft ;)

Installation Guide for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Deployment for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Upgrading to Office SharePoint Server

Keep tabs on the latest document by checking out Newly published content for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Download SharePoint Designer Free!

SHAREPOINT DESIGNER 2007 IS NOW FREE! Be sure to watch the video in the "Related Resources" below to learn more about details and future direction. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides the powerful tools you need to deliver compelling and attractive SharePoint sites and quickly build workflow-enabled applications and reporting tools on the SharePoint platform, all in an IT-managed environment.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42

Home Page for SharePoint Designer 2007
Video of SharePoint Designer 2007 FAQ (6.2MB)
Video of SharePoint Designer 2007 FAQ (16.8MB)
Video of SharePoint Designer 2007 FAQ (82.9MB)