Virtual Techdays in back

Virtual techDays is back again. it will be on 24-26 November 2008.
for more information and registration, go on http://www.virtualtechdays.com/

WCF REST Starter Kit Now Available

if you have seen noticed about whats new in .NET 4.0 for WCF. One of the things that have been brought into the attention is the support for creating RESTful Services. So does that mean that in order to create RESTful services via WCF, one need to wait for .NET 4.0. Well.. Not really.. if you are working on .NET 3.5 SP 1, then you got a WCF REST Starter Kit. It is available for download on CodePlex. This kit simplifies the development of REST services by adding new features and guidance tightly integrated with ASP.NET and the existing WCF release in .NET 3.5 SP1. Click here for Learning Resouce on WCF REST Starter Kit

Ramp up- a free, online, community-based program

Recently i have got a chance to got a visit a wonderful site called Ramp Up program (http://www.myrampup.com/) . Ramp Up is a free, online, community-based program that can help users save time in learning Microsoft technology. The easy-to-access content (provided by subject-matter gurus) is specifically tailored to the Ramp Up program, and offered in a variety of forms (whitepaper, v-lab, codecast and slidecast). There are lot of tracks in it SharePoint track, along with the other currently offered tracks (eg, Visual Studio 2008), teaches the important skills in a guided path, making the learning process easier and more efficient. Currently, there are no assessments in the program, so it's quicker than ever to graduate and receive the reward (25% off on certification and 50% off on e-Learning - only for graduates of Ramp Up).

Enterprise Library 4.1 Just Released

Quick Links:
– MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/entlib
– Community Forum: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=119312
– Community Extensions: http://codeplex.com/entlibcontrib
What’s New?
This release of Enterprise Library is a service release that includes the following:
– Unity interception mechanism and integration of the Policy Injection Application Block with the Unity Application Block
– Added support for generics in the Unity Application Block
– Added support for arrays in the Unity Application Block
– Performance improvements
– Usability improvements to the configuration tool
– Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 support
– Bug fixes
For the detailed list of all changes, see About This Release of Enterprise Library.

Eclipse tool for silverlight

The Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight Project will integrate advancedSilverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE and Eclipse RichClient Platform (RCP). Have a look on http://www.eclipse4sl.org/

Silverlight 2 Released

Silverlight is out now.
Click Here to get Started and Install Silverlight2
Click here for Videos of Silverlight 2

Microsoft Connected Technology Advisors group

So, its been quiet few weeks that i was a dead blogger and there were lots of work happening on my front behind the scene. so let me share some good news. Now , I am also in Microsoft Connected Technology Advisors group. so People who are hearing this word would have brought a "wow" factor but let me tell you who are advisors are Influencers who want to be actively *involved* in Microsoft product planning and validation efforts. I have been in for 'Oslo' and beyond and includes BizTalk Server ‘6’ and updates to the .NET Framework ‘4’ (WF, WCF) amongst other investments. if you have some queries/questions and would like some of your feature to be available in next upcoming versions, pls do share with me and i would take in person with the Product teams in Microsoft

Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint Released to CodePlex

Today Microsoft released the source code for the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint—based on the Silverlight Beta 2 release. The Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint provide a way for developers to better understand how to integrate Silverlight applications with SharePoint
In this release, you’ll find five blueprint samples:

1. Hello World
2. Media Player
3. Slider Control
4. Custom Navigation
5. Colleague Viewer

The links to get to the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint are:

1. http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/ --or direct at the CodePlex site
2. http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP

Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint Released to CodePlex

Today Microsoft released the source code for the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint—based on the Silverlight Beta 2 release. The Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint provide a way for developers to better understand how to integrate Silverlight applications with SharePoint
In this release, you’ll find five blueprint samples:

1. Hello World
2. Media Player
3. Slider Control
4. Custom Navigation
5. Colleague Viewer

The links to get to the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint are:

1. http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/ --or direct at the CodePlex site
2. http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP

SharePoint Certifications

When we Say SharePoint, we refer to two product of Microsoft (WSS and MOSS). On certifications front also, Microsoft has released 2 certifications each on SharePoint and WSS. One of the certification deals with the application development and others deal with the administration.
Below are the certification details

MOSS certification

1. SharePoint Server 2007 ― Application Development certificationhttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-542.mspx
2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Configuration credentialhttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-630.mspx

WSS certification
1. Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Application Development certificationhttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-541.mspx
2. MCTS: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Configuration certificationhttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-631.mspx

Silverlight Beta 2

Silverlight Beta 2 is been released last week. if you would like to download silverlight, click here. If you would like to explore more on Silverlight Beta 2 and some of the new features, please go ahead and visit the blog of very famous scott guthie by clicking here. Also i would recommend you to go ahead and view this video from tim heuer by clicking here

Web Page Error Toolkit

Anyone who has developed couple of web applications , they are very much aware of what 404 error page is .. well this error page is from IIS that comes when we type incorrect URL. well, this might happen due to variety of reasons like Pages deleted/moved or even the links in other pages have not been updated. well , this error page always look very strange to the end user who got no clue as to why and what was the mistake. Perhaps, even the developers were not having any way to handle this situation. This is where "web Page error toolkit" comes into the picture. This toolkit helps you customize 400 error page by giving good search results, relevant links or even helping to correct your spelling and many more. This sounds really an effective medium for any web applications running on top of .NET 2.0 or above. To download, click here.

StyleCop : Source Analysis Tool for C#

Every solution based and product driven companies requires some set of best practices for coding guidelines and also for layout, readability and documentation. Developers have their own style of writing and since most of us as a developer used to write code as a part of team creates a sort of inconsistencies. if you have gone to MSDN or technet, you would observed a clearly readibility and consistency in the code. well, the reason behind is a Source analysis tool called StyleCop which is been matured within microsoft from over few years. Good thing is that it is now freely available. Source analysis tools are often get compared with code analysis tool. for e.g. obvious thing that would have came in your mind is FxCop. well, yes there are few similarities and few differences. Code analysis tool like fxCop work on binary files like assemblies while source analysis tool like StyleCop work with the code. StyleCop is well integrated with VS 2005/2008 and can be downloaded from here. It can also be integrated with MSBuilds based command line builds

IE 8 Betas

Gone are those days where browser just recognizes plain HTML. Browsers are getting intelligent day by day. IE 8 Beta 1 is already released and have some of the good features like Activities, web slices etc to name a few. Also, this beta version also supports 5 languages and have full support of CSS 2.1 . To know more about the feature, click here.

To download , IE 8 Beta 1 , click here.

Going forward, IE 8 Beta 2 , expected to be released in coming months (Probably August) will support atleast 18-20 languages.

Sharepoint Web 2.0 Starter

Microsoft is coming up with great speaker on sharepoint on "Sharepoint web 2.0 starter". Though this event will happen on June 11th event at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, WA. If you happen to be in Redmond, get registered by clicking here. The whole event is also getting simulcasted via Live Meeting. You can join online at this full-day event and learn more about customizing and building Web pages, Web Parts, Silverlight, and more from a SharePoint context. if you want to join via live meeting, register by clicking here.

Working with VS 2008 SP1 in VISTA

1. Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is already in a beta and can be downloaded from here
2. if you just want to download .NET 3.5 SP1 beta, it can be downloaded from here
3. Lot of enhancements and bugs fixes have been done. Overview of the same can be seen at here
4. There is a dedicated Microsoft forum for VS 2008 SP1 beta and can be visited at here

If you are one of the Vista users using VS 2008, and want to download the VS 2008 SP1. There are some issues related to installing .NET 3.5 SP1 on Vista RTM so better recommended approach is to install the SP 1 of Vista before installing VS 2008 SP1.

Article on Sharepoint workflow wizard in VS 2008

Last weekend, got some good time to write an article on sharepoint workflow wizard in VS 2008. The article gives a brief detail on
1. Sharepoint workflows in VS 2008
2. Sharepoint workflow wizard in VS 2008 and its Pros/Cons
You can get it available from the below URL of code project site
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WF/sharepointworkflow.aspx

Sharepoint Workflows in Visual Studio 2008

Visual Studio 2008 provides lot of workflow templates. if you see the screen , two of those belong to Sharepoint.

1. SharePoint 2007 Sequential Workflow
2. SharePoint 2007 State Machine Workflow
Sequential workflow represents a workflow as a sequence of steps that must be executed in order until the last activity is completed. A state machine workflow represents a set of states, transitions, and actions. One state is denoted as the start state, and then, based on an event, a transition can be made to another state. Below is a typical example of a Sequential workflow.

when you select any of these workflow template, it executes the workflow wizard that allows to do debugging on the workflows on sharepoint that requires special permissions. for e.g this wizard takes care of deploying workflow customization on Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Wizard also takes care of associating the workflow template with a document library or list. It how an instance of your workflow can be started. Without VSTO you need to handle this outside of Visual Studio in separate steps. Really i would say that with lots of inclusion of sharepoint related work in Visual Studio, Microsoft is really making the life ease of the developers.

World wide Telescope

Yesterday after downloading a software, the word that came from my mouth is "WOW" .. well , its NOT VISTA, my dear friends... it is World Wide Telescope from Microsoft Research. Microsoft Research team has came up with the product called World Wide Telescope, built on .NET framework 2.0. Presently it is in beta . You can install it in your machines and make your machine as a telescope. You can navigate to any place, any part, universe, glaciers etc .. Its really really awesome . this is far more superior to Google earth, Virtual earth etc..This product is been based on Web 2.0 Visualization technology ( one of the promising and upcoming technologies ) . WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. If you have a 3d Graphics card, .NET 2.0 and DirectX, download and get a glimpse of the beautiful world around.http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/ .

SharePoint 2007 Maximum Limitations

The following table lists is the Maximum limitations lists in MOSS

Site collection : 50,000 per Web application
Web site : 250,000 per site collection
Subsite : 2,000 per Web site
Document : 5 million per library
Item : 2,000 per view
Document file size : 50MB (2GB max*)
List : 2,000 per Web site
Field type : 256 per list
Column : 2,000 per document library 4,096 per list
Web Part : 50 per page
Users in groups : 2 million per Web site
User profile : 5 million per farm
Security principal : 2,000 per Web site
Search indexes : One per SSPMaximum of 20 per farm
Indexed documents : 50,000,000 per content index
Content sources : 500 per SSP
Start Addresses : 500 per content source
Alerts : 1,000,000 per SSP
Scopes : 200 per site
Display groups : 25 per site
Crawl rules : 10,000 per SSP
Keywords : 15,000 per site
Crawled properties : 500,000 per SSP
Managed properties : 100,000 per SSP
Authoritative pages : 200 per relevance level
Results removal : 100
Crawl logs : 50,000,000
Shared Services Provider (SSP) : 3 per farm (20 per farm maximum)
Zone : 5 per farm
Web application : 99 per SSP
Internet Information Services (IIS) application pool: 8 per Web server
Site collection : 50,000 per Web application
Content database : 100 per Web application
Site collection : 50,000 per database
Index servers : 1 per SSP*
Application servers running Excel Calculation Services : No limit
Query servers : No limit
Web server/database server ratio : 8 Web servers per database server
Web server/domain controller ratio : 3 Web servers per domain controller

Reference of the same taken from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx

i’m Initiative : One of the Microsoft Great Initiative

I have been posting lot of great initiatives by microsoft, be it on technology or be it on other initiatives like Marketing front. so here this post is more of a noble cause. Bill Gates is known for investing his few % of his investment(in Million dollars) for lot of noble causes. Be it for a college or for other social cause.Gates foundation formed by bill and melinda is one of the such example. One of such kind of social initiative that got started last year is i'm Initiative. i’m is an initiative from Windows Live™ Messenger. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with some of the world's most effective organizations dedicated to social causes. In just one year, $1.3 Million is been donated to ten of the world’s most effective social cause organizations. This is really incredible and now you can expect the no. of users using i'm . so are you in i'm .. if not.. join it now :)

Microsoft DreamSpark :chase your dreams

Microsoft have its own way of selling his product as a freebies to various kinds of customers. They used to give the software product eval license etc during any Microsoft events. This is a kind of a good marketing strategy and some people named it as "Free Products from Microsoft". Now, if i say, that if you just need to prove yourself as a student by showing your IDs and you are eligible for getting various Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools like Visual Studio 2008 professional edition, Expression studio, windows Server 2003 and many more and at no charge. if you are one of those computer geeks that fall in this category then yes, Microsoft have came up with something called "Microsoft DreamSpark".
Unfortunately, it is presently running in 11 countries but soon more and more countries will chip in to this. for more information click here

Silverlight and Sharepoint

Microsoft is focusing on Silverlight to be the roadmap of all the presentation layer across Microsoft technologies. Now this is the time for a due collaboration of silverlight with Sharepoint. Yes, you can be incorporating silverlight in building web parts of sharepoint. Microsoft have recently released a blueprint of silverlight blueprint for sharepoint. Attach is the image that shows how the picture library of sharepoint will look like. There are many such samples available. Ofcourse, this integration of silverlight is very much possible with WSS 3.0 and MOSS. You can also download the source code of the same. for more information visit http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/

IE 8 Beta released

IE 8 beta is been announced and can be downloaded by clicking Download here. There are some new features like Activities and WebSlices will put the power of online services in the hands of users and allow developers to reach beyond the page and keep a persistent connection with their users. Currently available only in English, the IE 8 Beta is especially for developers who can download, test and give their valuable feedback. Do visit www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8 for getting the latest update on the same.

MSDN Technet sessions DVDs

Have you ever experienced of downloading Microsoft webcasts from Microsoft site for viewing it offline ? Isn’t it a very complex process? Back in September 2007, Microsoft,India has taken a very unique opportunity to record webcasts that will be presented to various large organizations in India. The sessions have been conducted on various upcoming technologies by few MVPs and members of DPE team in Microsoft,India. The idea is great, you do not need to download the webcast from MSDN which I do feel is one of the cumbersome work . These all sessions are been packed in two DVDs and are getting shared with various Microsoft partnered companies in India All you need to do is to put the DVD and go through your favorite topic. I had also taken a session of “WCF and .NET 3.5” where in I discussed about new features of .NET 3.5 especially for WCF. For those of you who have attended the session, please drop me your reviews /comments /suggestion. In case, if any body is interested in getting this DVD, please drop me a mail and I will facilitate the same.

Visual Studio Extensions for WSS 3.0

Microsoft has released version 1.1 of the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0! These are the tools that you use to build web parts, site definitions, etc. It can be downloaded from Here. This is a must install for all those developers working on building custom application on and over wss 3.0

2008 Wave Launch

well the month has came and the countdown has begun. Feb 27th is the global launch date. Lot and lot of activities were going behind the scene and there are certain previews coming up and are available as public. If you would like a sneak peek of what the experience will look like, Microsoft have came up with some videos – this is a screen capture of the alpha code,To view click here on youtube. Built on Silverlight 1.0 it provides a virtual event experience based on the LA Launch event

Free Visual Studio 2008 book

Please download this free e-book offer, created to promote the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2008. This includes sample chapters from Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX and Introducing Silverlight 1.0, as well as the entire contents of new publication Introducing Microsoft LINQ.

MVP for 2nd Consecutive year

Today i received the much awaited mail informing me that I got rewarded as an Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for this year 2008 as well. This is for the 2nd Consecutive Year. MVPs is the award that is given to technical community leaders from around the world who foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing real world expertise with users and Microsoft. My MVP Profile can be accessed in Microsoft site by click MVP Profile.