Patrick Verbruggen's Blog

BizTalk

• BizTalk Adapter Pack V2.0 Beta – Released!: The BizTalk Adapter pack v2.0 Beta can now be downloaded from Microsoft Connect.
• BizTalk Performance: Some checks to run when your BizTalk Server performance isn’t up to par.
• Cleanup BizTalk Servers MgmtDb: Johan Hedberg blogs about cleaning up the BizTalk Management database.

SharePoint

• Why two SharePoint Search services?: Jag explains why MOSS has two Search services
• SharePoint Permissions:Jeremy Thake outlines the minimal permission levels required to perform certain actions in SharePoint
• Building a SharePoint Development Environment: Rick Kierner & Jeremy Thake describe how you can set up a standardized SharePoint development environment.
• Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout: A really interesting SharePoint development system performance comparison.
• Using SharePoint instead of email attachments: Todd Klindt’s has created a solution to use SharePoint to mail around links to documents instead of the actual documents themselves.

Development

• A New Look for Visual Studio 2010: Jason Zander takes the covers of the new WPF-based look for Visual Studio 2010

Software

• Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks: AppleInsider has more Snow Leopard screenshots
• Ballmer: Office 14 not this year: Apparently we’ll have to be a bit patient before we see the next version of Office.
• Apple Announces Safari 4—The World’s Fastest & Most Innovative Browser: According to Apple, Safari 4 is the fastest browser around. Do we need to read anything into this announcement given the fact that IE8 has just been RTM’ed, or is this just coincidence?

Industry

• Gmail outage: It’s on moments like these when we suddenly all realize how important a single company like Google has become in our daily lives and business…

All SharePoint websites by default have a mobile version. You can get at it by pasting /m behind your normal URL. If your website is at http://www.mysharepointwebsite.com/ then the mobile version is at http://www.mysharepointwebsite.com/m/. The idea is that you can use the mobile version from devices with limited capabilities and bandwidth.

The result you get is (by design!) extremely basic. It’s a text-only rendering with very limited functionality.

Bit if you have an iPhone, you don’t need to limit yourself to that. It’s perfectly possible to use most of SharePoint’s functionality from an iPhone. Here is a screenshot from our company SharePoint Intranet site on my iPhone:

Most things (even the “Ajax-y” parts like collapsing and expanding lists) work just fine, and since the iPhone is capable of displaying most commonly used document formats – including pictures, PDF files, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheet, even in the new Office 2007 format – you can look at documents and pretty much use most of the features of any SharePoint web site.

It’s not very fast, and you probably do not want to do this a lot over your 3G connection (SharePoint web pages can get pretty big…), but it does work, and if you have a fast WiFi connection it’s actually not too bad.

BPM

• Is the BPMN/BPEL Debate a Dead Horse?: Keith Swenson wonders about continuing the BPMN/BPEL debate

BizTalk

• BizTalk Hotrod Issue 5: Get the latest issue of the BizTalk Hotrod PDF magazine.
• BizTalk 2009 – what is new for EDI/AS2: The BizTalk Server 2009 EDI Product Team lists the new features for EDI and AS2 in BizTalk Server 2009

SharePoint

• Free SharePoint Developer Resources: Kirk Evans has a list of SharePoint developer resources so long that we can all stop blogging about SharePoint development now
• SharePoint WebPart or ASP.NET WebPart?: Wictor Wilén outlines the differences between using a SharePoint Webpart or an ASP.NET webpart.

Development

• Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight v2.0: Philip Destoop announces the release of "PRISM", Microsoft’s Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight v2.0.
• Setting up a basic n-tier CSLA .NET for Silverlight project: Rockford Lothka describes how to set up an N-tier CLSA.NET for Silverlight Project

Software

• Windows 7 RC set for April 10, 2009: Neowin claims that the Windows 7 RC will come to us on April 10.
• How can I install Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 to a virtual hard disk (VHD) file?: A step-by-step procedure to install Win7 of Win2K8R2 on a VHD file using Windows 7’s built-in capabilities
• IIS7 Load Balancing & Routing Module Now Available!: Application Request Routing (ARR) enables Web server administrators and hosting providers and to increase Web application reliability and scalability through rule-based routing and load balancing of HTTP server requests

Industry

• Microsoft Thrive: Microsoft has launched Thrive, a web site for IT Pro’s where they can find information about career advancement, gaining new skills and aligning IT and Business.
• Above the Clouds Released: Cloud Computing, the long-held dream of computing as a utility, has the potential to transform a large part of the IT industry, making software even more attractive as a service and shaping the way IT hardware is designed and purchased.

Mobile

• Start Windows: Steve Clayton has a cool video about the new Windows Phones

I’ve been doing online banking for more years than I care to remember, since long before I had internet access. I think I started out with a 2400 baud dialup modem over a regular telephone line, using a dedicated application I got from my bank and installed on my PC. Ah, those were the days! I still fondly remember the familiar shrieking sound of a connecting modem. I swear I could hear seconds beforehand if the connection would succeed of fail…

Anyway, my bank (Fortis) has been using the DigiPass authentication and digital signature device (see left picture)  since the beginning. The Digipass doesn’t require me to get out and insert my bank card: it uses a PIN code and a calculated code instead.

I’ve gone through several DigiPass devices over the years (their battery lasts for several years, but it isn’t replaceable, so you need to get a new one when the battery goes flat).

Today, my 3rd DigiPass device failed on me with a flat battery. When I called my bank to get a new one, they simply told me to throw it away and to swing by the local branch office to get a card reader instead (see picture on the right). No more DigiPass!

The card reader – as it’s name implies – requires you to insert your bank card in order to use it. I don’t like that, as I’m really, really (did I say really ?) bad with putting things back into places where they belong and where I can depend on them to be there.

And so now I’ll have to get my bank card out of my wallet every time I want to do online banking, and then remember to put it back when I’m done. It’s that last part that’s bound to go wrong.

As I pay about 90% of all purchases electronically with my bank card, it’s only a matter of time before I will stand at some supermarket checkout lane or shop counter with my purchased goods all packed, and 15 impatient customers behind me, announcing with a red face to the clearly annoyed cashier that I’m unable to pay because I left my bank card at home, in the card reader, on my desk.

I went to a Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) technical training today.

BPOS is Microsoft’s offer for productivity apps hosted in the cloud. It offers the following

• Email, calendaring, contacts, etc through Exchange Online
• Document collaboration and workspaces with Office SharePoint Online
• Web-based conferencing and meeting with Office Live Meeting
• Instant Messaging and Presence with Office Communicator (soon)

Setting up all of these services can be a major cost and resource hurdle for small and midsized companies. Exchange alone often requires a lot of dedicated resources, specialized in-house knowledge, security, bandwidth, etc.

With BPOS, users simply pay a low monthly per-user cost, and don’t have to worry too much about the infrastructure, configuration, sizing, bandwith, security, storage, backup, etc. Configuration and management is done through web-based tools for creating and managing user accounts, access, sites, storage, etc. Also, there’s tooling and support available to migrate your existing email system to BPOS.

With BPOS, small organisations can be up and running with robust and professional email solutions, on-line collaboration, web conferencing and IM in a matter of days or even hours.

I do NOT get Microsoft’s product naming policy. What are they trying to achieve with naming a product something like Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and then naming another product from the same family tree Windows SharePoint Services v3.0? I don’t know about you, but I find I have to explain the difference between these two constantly to almost every customer I talk to about – eh…. – shall I call it MOSS?

With MOSS, it seems as if Microsoft is trying to explain the entire positioning, versioning, and feature set of the product using just it’s name only. I can understand the reasoning behind it, but do they really think that this makes it easier and less confusing for potential customers to understand?

The silliest example was when Windows XP SP2 came out. The official name of that service pack was (take a deep breath): Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies. I mean: come on! By the time you’ve told all your friends that they should install that thing, SP3 was already available.

The only result seems to me that people invent all kinds abbreviations (MOSS, WSS, SP2, …) and use those instead of the product names, thereby defeating the whole purpose of having descriptive product names.

Then at the same time, some of their product names are really genius. BizTalk Server immediately springs to mind here. “BizTalk” is a great name. It manages to conjure up images of business, communications and linking business together for the purpose of –eh- doing business, yet it is abstract and distinct enough to really stand out.

And then there’s the “duh” school of product names. SQL Server is the prime example here. How much more obvious can you get? Yet at the same time, how much more understated can you get given the fact that SQL Server has become so much more than just something that responds to SQL queries?

I wonder what SQL Server would be called if it’s name would have to be re-invented today. Would it be something bland yet ”markety” like “Microsoft Storage Solution Server with Advanced XML, Data WareHousing, Integration and Reporting Capabilities”, or would it be something like “DataStore Server”?

Development

• .NET Developer technologies: what’s here to stay, what can you focus on?: Katrien De Graeve takes a step back from all the new stuff and outlines focus areas for .NET Developers
• Getting Started with Oslo – Introducing “M”: Bart De Smet takes you step by step through an Oslo example.

SharePoint

• Small SharePoint Deployments: Not all SharePoint sites have thousands of users or need to be spread over dozens of servers. This article describe things you need to consider in small MOSS deployments.
• SharePoint + PowerShell: Zach Rosenfeld has some interesting points re. manipulating MOSS with Windows Powershell.
• Site Features vs. Site Templates vs. Site Definitions: Jeremy Thake lists pros and cons of using Site features, templates and definitions

Software

• Roland Weigelt’s GhostDoc: GhostDoc is a free add-in for Visual Studio that automatically generates XML documentation comments for C#. Either by using existing documentation inherited from base classes or implemented interfaces, or by deducing comments from name and type of e.g. methods, properties or parameters
• thirteen23 blu: Thirteen23 has a fantastic-looking WPF-based Twitter client called Blu (formerly *chirp). I would use this app exclusively in an instant if it would JUST LET ME RESIZE ITS WINDOW. How in the name of everything holy is it possible that someone who can build an app this good-looking can neglect absolutely basic functionality like a simple resizable window and font (my eyesight is not very good) is completely beyond me. Looks is not everything, guys, you need the brains too! Get your priorities right!
• Microsoft Recite: Michael Kogeler talks about Microsoft Recite, a Technology Preview from Microsoft for easy note-taking on Windows Mobile
• What’s New in Windows Mobile 6.5: Miel Van Opstal outlines what’s new in Windows Mobile 6.5

Hardware

• Nokia busts out its own 8 megapixel slider: the N86: Now that everyone and their girlfriend have a 12 megapixel digital camera, the good ol’ megapixel war is starting al over again in the mobile phone world. Pretty soon, your will need at least a dozen megapixels in your mobile phone just to not be regarded sub-human.

Social

• MS Community.be: MSCommunity.be is the landing page for the Belgian Microsoft community. The purpose of the site is giving you an overview of all the events being organized by the Belgian user groups so you’ll never miss out on an event anymore.
• Rai.tv: Who’d a thunk it? RAI TV, Italy’s state broadcaster, has a great Silverlight web site.
• App Store Legal Smackdown: iFart Mobile vs. Pull My Finger: Sometimes reality is funnier than fiction. The two bigshots (no pun intended) of fake farting applications (I’ve been waiting for years to use those 3 words together!) battle it out in court.

BizTalk

• BizTalk SQL Agent Jobs: Paul Gu explains the BizTalk SQL Agent jobs
• Batch files to stop and start the BizTalk and SQL Services: Thiago Almeida has a simple batch file to stop and start BizTalk and SQL on your machine.

SharePoint

• Microsoft Unveils New Enterprise Search Road Map: Strategy features FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for Internet Business: FAST Search for SharePoint, a new search server that will add the high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP into Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, will be available as a part of the next release of the Microsoft Office system

Development

• Data Access Options in Silverlight 2: Dan Wahlin sums up the options you have for data access in Silverlight.
• Integrating Silverlight and ASP.NET MVC: Tim Heur explains in detail how to integrate Silverlight in ASP.NET MVC
• 8 ways to be a better programmer in 6 minutes: secretGeek has an express path to improve our programming skills. Try it out!
• Firefox and Firebug: A Developer’s Swiss Army Knife: Geared for getting at the code (HTML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript), Firebug is a no-nonsense tool for Firefox that does just what it needs to without overkill features
• Message Passing–Sync or Async?: Bartosz Milewski puts up an interesting discussion re. message passing. Are you sync or async?
• Azure Services Platform Videos: A great bunch of “How do I…” videos for Windows Azure.
• XAML guidelines part 3: Jaime Rodriguez has compiled a draft of XAML Guidelines, and made them available for download.

Software

• Ultimate Windows Tweaker updated, works on Windows 7: WinVista Club has released an update to their Ultimate Windows Tweaker, which now features more than 150 tweaks for Vista. Windows 7 beta testers looking to do a bit of tweaking may want to try it as well.

Social

• How people in various countries view Darwin’s Theory of evolution: I’m amazed to see that far less than half of all Americans believe that evolution is true. I had no clue the proportions were so high. For that matter: more than a quarter of Belgians either say evolution is false or are not sure.

Industry

• Ghastly working conditions in a Chinese keyboard factory: Let’s hope that Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, and others take note.

BizTalk

• BizTalk Orchestrations: John Charles Olamendy has a good introduction to BizTalk Orchestrations.
• Adapters Supported By BizTalk 2006 R2: Next time you need to list all BizTalk adapters (creating a response to an RFP, for example), you can refer to this handy table listing all adapters and versions.

SharePoint

• How to Create a Cloneable SharePoint Virtual Machine: How to use sysprep to automate the process of creating a cloneable MOSS VM

Development

• Developer Introduction to Workflows for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007: Want to get your feet wet using Windows Workflow in SharePoint? MSDN tells you all about it.
• Alternative logging for Azure services: Jon Udell describes alternative logging methods for use in Azure cloud services
• Debugging Silverlight in a Web Role on the Development Fabric: Jim Nakashima has a great sample on how to add Silverlight to the Web role in Azure, and configuring the Silverlight debugger.

BPM

• Comparison of BPEL engines: Someone has taken the trouble to set up a comparison table of BPEL engines on Wikipedia. Some people have too much time on their hands…

Software

• A Few Windows 7 Shell Commands: How to create shortcuts to some handy Windows 7 OS commands
• Google Sync Beta for iPhone, WinMo and SyncML Phones: Synchronize your iPhone or Windows Mobile devices with Google Calendar and your contacts.

Hardware

• Amazon’s Kindle 2.0: New Wireless Reading Device: Amazon launches the Kindle 2. I want one, but I’ll have to wait.

Social

• Does the Space Shuttle’s Computer Really Run on Just One Megabyte of RAM?: Well, apparently it does. Good to see that not everything need gigabytes of RAM.
• On February 13th, UNIX Time Will Reach 1234567890: Next Friday (the 13th, BTW) at precisely 11:31:30 pm UTC, the Unix “time” command will reach 1234567890. Something bad is bound to happen Make sure you have backups…

BizTalk

• Microsoft sees uptake on BizTalk server: “Regardless of the hype, we actually are seeing a significant amount of customer interest in doing SOA," said Burley Kawasaki, director of Microsoft’s connected systems division.

SharePoint

• Twitter SharePoint web part: Aidan Garnish has created a Twitter web part for your SharePoint site
• Register an assembly as a safe control in the Web.config file: Brett Maytom show a couple of different methods for adding assemblies to the SharePoint web.config file.
• Guidance on what things to group together in a Solution Package: Jeremy Thake weighs the pro’s and con’s of different ways of putting together SharePoint solution packages.

Development

• Silverlight Cream for February 04, 2009 — #507: I can’t believe I missed this 506 times already…
• US ISV Developer Evangelism Team : Webcasts Help You Get Started With Azure Services Platform: If you’re a developer and you’re new to Azure Services Platform, here’s a great place to start. The ISV Innovation site has posted a Web seminar that teaches you what Windows Azure is, and what is provided by the Azure Services Platform.
• Using an Existing ASP.Net Web Application as a Windows Azure Web Role: Jim Nakashima explains how you can convert an existing ASP.NET application to a Windows Azure Web role.
• WPF Application Quality Guide: In light of the rapid adoption of the WPF and the continuous requests from partners and customers, Microsoft’s WPF team has created the fourth preliminary release of the “WPF Application Quality Guide”.

Software

• Updated list of Microsoft codenames ready for download: Mary-Jo Foley has a new version of the Microsoft codenames list up for download.
• Things to Know About This Beta Release of Windows 7: Not THE but A list of bugs in Windows 7 (I could add a few to the IE8 list )

Industry

• Microsoft tightens Windows 7 security at behest of bloggers: Bloggers wrote up a storm about a flaw in Windows 7 UAC. Microsoft first blew them off ("It’s by design, stupid…") but now promises to make changes.
• Belgian ISV’s are still hiring .NET developers, SharePoint developers, UX designers: Hans Verbeek has seen that many Belgian ISV’s are still hiring!

Social

• Microsoft teams and products on Twitter: Adam Kinney lists Microsoft product teams and groups with Twitter accounts.
• A Black Hole Overflows From Galaxy Centaurus A: The universe can be a beautiful (but dangerous!) place, and NASA has the images to prove it!

This is a tag cloud generated by TwitterSheep from my Twitter followers’ bio’s. Pretty accurate, if you ask me

You can change it by following me on Twitter.

Say what you want about Google, they remain one of the driving forces behind the Internet. Here’s 10 years of Google condensed in about 120 seconds.

Software

• Flash on iPhone Hopes Dashed: So there you have it. No Flash (for the foreseeable time) on iPhone. Now how about Silverlight?
• Google Earth: Check out the new version 5.0 of Google Earth, still one of the best time-wasters ever invented . Next best thing to actually going to all these places.
• Windows 7 Search Connector for Microsoft Support: With the Microsoft Support Search Connector, you can start searching the Microsoft support website right from within Windows Explorer.
• Microsoft: Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade possible: So you will be able to upgrade your license from Windows XP to Windows 7, but not your actual installation: you will need to do a clean install.

Development

• WPF XAML Data Binding Cheat Sheet: One of the best things about WPF is the advanced data binding support, the Binding class that is used to create data bindings has many interesting and useful options, but they’re not easy to remember, so NbdTech has created a very detailed “cheat sheet” for the WPF Binding class.
• Silverlight & WPF Control Browser: Mike Taulty has built a Silverlight & WPF Control Browser. It allows you to easily look at WPF and Silverlight controls, built by yourself or by 3rd parties.

SharePoint

• Integrating SAP data in SharePoint using the BDC: A Microsoft white paper describes how to integrate data from SAP 6.4 and Netweaver 5.0 by using the SharePoint Business Data Catalog
• How to automate the deletion of backups in SharePoint Server 2007 and in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by using a Visual Basic script: This article describes how to automate the deletion of backups in SharePoint 2007 and in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by using a Microsoft Visual Basic script. The article has an example Visual Basic script that deletes backups that are more than a certain number of days old.
• BDC – The Hello World Example: Sahil Malik has a great "Hello World"-type example of using the Business Data Catalog. The article also describes how to extend it with specific finders, custom actions, and associations.
• Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009: Subscribe here for this conference.

BizTalk

• Mapping a Repeating Source to a Delimited List: Stephen Kaufman shows how you can map a repeating source to a delimited list in the BizTalk mapper.

Hardware

• Apple to allow iPhone’s apps run in the background? : iPhone apps can’t run in the background (I know, it was a shock to me too when I learned…). Actually, it’s not so much that they can’t, it’s just that Apple won’t allow it (don’t ask me!) The iPhone world is buzzing with rumors that Apple is considering a change in this policy.

Social

• TechDays Agenda is online (and impressive): Hans Verbeek informs us that the Microsoft Techdays Belgium agenda is now available.
• Ma.gnolia goes down the drain: Ma.gnolia, one of the better-known social bookmarking services, has suffered a major data loss a couple of days ago. Despite several days of (what I can imagine to be very frantic) recovery efforts, they seem to be incapable of restoring service.

SharePoint

• How to Leverage Project Server 2007 with PerformancePoint Server 2007 Monitoring and Analytics: This white paper provides an overview of the PerformancePoint Server software and how it can be used to develop dashboards with the existing Reporting and Analysis Services databases created with Project Server 2007. Sample data files are also provided for using with corresponding sections of the white paper.
• Essential SharePoint Developer Tool: SPDisposeCheck: Jan Tielens points to a must have tool for every SharePoint developer that wants to make sure that his code isn’t causing any nasty memory leaks due to forgotten Dispose calls.
• SharePoint 2007 – Site Collections and When to Use Them: Bob Mixon explains SharePoint Site Collections
• WSS vs. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Michael Gannotti discusses the differences between Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as well as the appropriate uses of both.
• SharePoint for Developers Track: Follow this learning track to become a skilled SharePoint developer
• SharePoint and VHDs: Fooshen’s blog offers some insight on cramming as much SharePoint-related functionality as possible into a VHD.
• Show Custom Locations in Office File Dialogs: Christian Glessner shows how you can make your life easier by adding SharePoint save locations to your Office file dialogs

BizTalk

• Enterprise Statistics for BizTalk Server: More people are using BizTalk than you may think

Software

• Sacrificing security for usability: UAC security flaw in Windows 7 beta (with proof of concept code): Long Zheng describes a possible fatal flaw in the Windows 7 UAC design.
• Engineering Windows 7 : Our Next Engineering Milestone: No Beta 2 for Windows 7, instead it goes straight to RC
• Migrating your on-premise email to Exchange Online: Peter De Haas lists some documents that can help you migrate to Microsoft Online Services
• How to Install Windows 7 Beta on an Acer Aspire One Netbook: Gary Short explains how to install Windows 7 on your Acer Aspire One netbook using a USB memory stick.

Development

• New Oslo SDK is live: Jon Flanders points to the new Oslo SDK.
• Understanding WCF Services in Silverlight 2: David Betz has a very extensive description about using WCF services in Silverlight