Site Defs Vs Site templates

Site Definitions


Files are on disk, better performance.
Highly customizable and extensible (XML and .NET code is much more flexible than UI)
Can provision multiple webs
Complex to create
Requires admin access to server for deploying.
Modifying the site definition after provisioning at least one site from it is not supported and might break existing sites.

Site Templates


Files are in database, less efficient.
Not easily extensible (You are limited by what UI offers)
Can only provision one web
Easier to create
Installable from a Web UI by site owners.
Custom templates can be modified without affecting existing sites that have been created from the templates.

MOSS 2010 Key Features

Key Features


New User Interface including new Ribbon
Web Edit
Silverlight Web Part
Rich Theming
Multiple Browser Support
Visio Services
SharePoint Designer
Business Connectivity Services (the evolution of the Business Data Catalog)
SharePoint Workspace
Rich Media Support
Central Administration

SharePoint 2010 is packed with exciting new features. Content authors, administrators and developers can all expect an improved experience.

Content Authoring Improvements
Improved WYSIWYG Editor (Web Edit with Live Preview)
Improved Theming
Silverlight Web Part
Ribbon Toolbar
Administration Improvements
Streamlined Central Administration
Best Practices Analyzer: analyzes farm health and can automatically fix common configuration errors out-of-the-box. Extensible and rules-based.
Unified Logging Database
Resource throttling for large lists and libraries
Development Improvements
Visual Studio 2010 Tools including a Package Designer and Web Part Editor
LINQ for SharePoint
Developer Dashboard: Page-level debugging/trace output
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) replaces Business Data Catalog (BDC) with SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 will provide BCS-specific tooling.
Client Object Model (OM) is a new SharePoint API that runs on the client and can be called from JavaScript, .NET, or Silverlight

Social Networking in Business

Here is a very good presentation on Enterprise 2.0 ...


AIIM New England Social Networking Presentation

Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server

When you create or customize SharePoint solutions, it is usually best to develop the solution on a local computer where Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed. This article describes how to install a development environment with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The development environment that you create by using these instructions will not support SharePoint farm installations, and you should not host active production sites with this configuration. These instructions will enable you to get started with an environment that is specifically suited to developing SharePoint custom solutions.Click on the below link for complete article
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(v=office.14).aspx

How Search Has Improved in SharePoint 2010

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/how-search-has-improved-in-sharepoint-2010-007161.php

8 Ways Web Content Management has Improved in SharePoint 2010

8 Ways Web Content Management has Improved in SharePoint 2010

Make the Most of SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint's complexity still puzzles many IT pros. BUt users say SharePoint has more advantages than what just meets the eye.Here's how one company uses it to keep a project involving a large cast of players and documents on time and on budget.

Article Highlights
• 41% The number of IT pros who plan to implement or upgrade to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOS ) by the end of 2008.
• Share point’s capability around the storage of unstructured data is one of its strengths
• One goal of SharePoint was to eliminate paper to reduce printing and shipping costs and support environmental sustainability efforts
• Culhane and Fahrenkrug saved about $250,000 (about Rs 1 crore) by reducing the amount of paper they had to print and ship to the various architects
Read full article

Intranet Roadmap

Getting Started - Intranet 2010
The Intranet Road Map is an intranet guide, portal and tutorial for those creating a corporate intranet or those wanting to improve an existing intranet. To begin the intranet tutorial, Click here

Virtualization and Cloud will Take IT Ahead

Organizations are increasingly looking at virtualization and cloud (both public and private), to ensure efficient utilization of existing infrastructure, says Sanjay Mirchandani, senior vice president and CIO, EMC in an exclusive interview with CIO.in

Article Highlights
Virtualization and cloud are the technologies that will help enterprises meet almost all business needs, going forward.
Being a user as well as vendor of technology gives the “users’ edge and trustworthiness.

Read full article

SharePoint 2010 Launch

May 12th, 2010, is the launch date for SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010 Microsoft officially announced

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/03/05/sharepoint-2010-office-2010-launch.aspx

in reference to: http://blogs.msdn.com/arpans/ (view on Google Sidewiki)

Choose tool for business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010

Discusses the tools available for business intelligence

Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=167170

in reference to:

"Discusses the tools available for business intelligence Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=167170"
- MOSS2010 SharePoint Technical Documents and Diagrams (Moss2010) (view on Google Sidewiki)

Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products

Compares and contrasts the search technologies that work with SharePoint Products 2010:

•SharePoint Foundation 2010
•Search Server 2010 Express
•Search Server 2010
•SharePoint Server 2010
•FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint
Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167733

in reference to:

"Compares and contrasts the search technologies that work with SharePoint Products 2010: SharePoint Foundation 2010 Search Server 2010 Express Search Server 2010 SharePoint Server 2010 FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167733"
- MOSS2010 SharePoint Technical Documents and Diagrams (Moss2010) (view on Google Sidewiki)

Hosting Environments in SharePoint 2010 Products:

Summarizes the support for hosting environments and illustrates common hosting architectures.

Download:http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167086

in reference to:

"Summarizes the support for hosting environments and illustrates common hosting architectures. Download:http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167086"
- MOSS2010 SharePoint Technical Documents and Diagrams (Moss2010) (view on Google Sidewiki)

Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010:

Describes common ways to build and scale farm topologies, including planning which servers to start services on.

Download :http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167089

in reference to: MOSS2010 SharePoint Technical Documents and Diagrams (Moss2010) (view on Google Sidewiki)

PLANNING Moss

Planning for user access
The greatest challenge of the design was planning for the various classes of users. Fortunately, I discovered some friendly clip art on Office Online to represent our users and this helped us to visualize our task. Planning for user access involves coordinating zones across the server farm and planning for authentication.


A key design choice is to configure remote employee access through the Default zone. In fact, the Default zone requires the greatest amount of consideration. Office SharePoint Server 2007 places the following requirements on how the Default zone is configured:

§ When a user request cannot be associated with a zone, the authentication and policies of the Default zone are applied. Consequently, the Default zone must be the most secure zone.

§ The index component requires access to content through at least one zone to crawl content. By default, the index component uses NTLM authentication and attempts to index content through the default zone first. There are ways to work around this behavior. You can find more information in the supporting article. Also see Plan authentication methods.

§ Administrative e-mail is sent with links from the Default zone. These include e-mail to owners of sites that are approaching quota limits. Consequently, users who receive these types of e-mails and alerts must be able to access links through the Default zone. This is especially important for site owners.

§ Host-named site collections are only available through the Default zone. All users who are intended to access host-named site collections must have access through the Default zone.



In the model, the Default zone is used for remote employee access for the following reasons:

§ Employees can access links in administrative e-mail regardless of where they are located.

§ Internal server names and URLs are protected from being exposed when the zone associated with a user request cannot be determined. Because the Default zone is already configured for remote employees, URLs do not expose sensitive data when this zone is applied.



Another key design choice is the configuration of authentication for remote employees. The article contrasts two choices:

§ Forms authentication using an LDAP provider to authenticate against the internal Active Directory domain controller. The caveat to this choice is this: if users connect to sites both internally and remotely, two different user accounts are created in Office SharePoint Server 2007. That is, one account represents the user when using Windows authentication and a second account represents the user when using forms authentication. Consequently, both accounts require permissions to sites and documents.

§ Integrated Windows authentication using NTLM. This method relies on using ISA Server 2006 to authenticate users and then to send the user credentials to Office SharePoint Server 2007. ISA Server uses forms authentication to authenticate users against the Active Directory environment. ISA then forwards the Windows credentials to Office SharePoint Server. This approach does not result in two different accounts for users who work both internally and remotely, greatly simplifying permissions management. This method also simplifies the management of crawl rules as the default crawl behavior works with this configuration.



After planning for the Default zone and remote employee authentication, planning for the rest of the zones and authentication methods is straightforward. In the sample design, partners access sites using forms authentication. This requires a separate directory and provider, such as a Microsoft SQL Server database and provider, to store partner accounts in the perimeter network. The advantages of this approach are that you can manage partner accounts separately, and you do not need to add partner accounts to the internal employee directory. Authentication for the remaining classes of users is predictable.



The final design point to emphasize when planning for user access

in reference to: Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Investing in Logical Architecture Design Samples (view on Google Sidewiki)

system requiremnets moss 2010

There has been a few questions about the name of SharePoint 2010.
Basically, we presently have three SharePoint server versions:
1. Windows SharePoint Services
2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard
3. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise


From now onwards it will be just Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (without the “office”).



There has been a few name changes to SharePoint in previous years, but I wont go into that now.

Some of the main systems requirements are:
1. Requires 64bit Microsoft Windows 2008 or 64bit Microsoft Windows 2008 R2

2. This implies it requires 64 bit hardware on its environment
3. No support for Internet Explorer 6 anymore – only IE 7 and above (XHTML 1.0 compliant)
4. SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 on 64 bit

Some of the features are:

Better support for Internet facing sites
More security features & flexibility in managing permissions
Email management for users
Faster search
More storage options such as SAN, NAS, RAID etc. (currently only SQL)
Improved taxonomy management

Better Dashboards and reports
Records and archiving policies
Easy to use templates
More commands
Microsoft Groove is renamed as ‘SharePoint Workspace Manager’
Integration with other CMS products
Improved infopath form capabilities
More workflow types
Native support for Mozilla Firefox 3.0 and Opera
Better support for Mobile devices
Easy migration from SPS2003 and MOSS 2007
Snapshot backup and recovery
Granular recovery at item level

in reference to:

"There has been a few questions about the name of SharePoint 2010. Basically, we presently have three SharePoint server versions: 1. Windows SharePoint Services 2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard 3. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise From now onwards it will be just Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (without the “office”). There has been a few name changes to SharePoint in previous years, but I wont go into that now. Some of the main systems requirements are: 1. Requires 64bit Microsoft Windows 2008 or 64bit Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 2. This implies it requires 64 bit hardware on its environment 3. No support for Internet Explorer 6 anymore – only IE 7 and above (XHTML 1.0 compliant) 4. SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 on 64 bit Some of the features are: Better support for Internet facing sites More security features & flexibility in managing permissions Email management for users Faster search More storage options such as SAN, NAS, RAID etc. (currently only SQL) Improved taxonomy management Better Dashboards and reports Records and archiving policies Easy to use templates More commands Microsoft Groove is renamed as ‘SharePoint Workspace Manager’ Integration with other CMS products Improved infopath form capabilities More workflow types Native support for Mozilla Firefox 3.0 and Opera Better support for Mobile devices Easy migration from SPS2003 and MOSS 2007 Snapshot backup and recovery Granular recovery at item level"
- Microsoft SharePoint 2010 – features, system requirements | Jeremy Taylor (view on Google Sidewiki)