Patrick Verbruggen's Blog

If you have automatic updates on and also enabled extra updates, you should have gotten Office 2007 SP2 pushed onto your machine today (if it hasn’t yet, you can force it by going to Windows Update and clicking “Check for updates”)

If Windows Update doesn’t do it for you, you can also just download SP2 here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B444BF18-79EA-46C6-8A81-9DB49B4AB6E5&displaylang=en

Here’s a list if what’s new in SP2: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953195

Note: if you have a large Outlook message store, it might make sense to wait until the end of the day to install SP2, as the first restart of Outlook after SP2 installation will cause it to update the internal file structure. You’ll get a dialog like this one:

This can take some time if your Outlook data file is large.

Issue 2 of the Microsoft Belux Architecture Newsletter includes an article by my Spikes colleague Marc Vanderheyden, entitled “BPM Misconception: the back-end database doesn’t need to know everything!”. Check it out.

In this setup screen Sun manages to use the word Java 8 times without giving anyone a single clue as to what Java actually is, what it can be used for, why anyone would want it, or why I would need to install it…

Development

• WCF Champ: Funny video comparing old and new ways to create web services
• A guide to Silverlight 3 new features: Tim Heuer highlights the new stuff in Silverlight 3.0
• ASP.NET MVC Best Practices (Part 1): Kazi Manzur Rashid has some good advice for ASP.NET MVC users
• Windows Azure and Windows Server – Licensing Model: Steven Martin outlines the licensing models for Azure

SharePoint

• Demo tip: eenvoudig wisselen tussen gebruikers: A great tip for those of us that regularly do SharePoint demos. Article in Dutch.
• Manipulating remote SharePoint Lists with PowerShell: A nice PowerShell script to interact with MOSS lists
• Microsoft Whitepaper on SharePoint Virtualization: A whitepaper that describes your virtualization options with SharePoint
• How to display Web Application Policies with Powershell: More SharePoint + Powershell magic!
• Downloadable book: Planning and architecture for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server: This book provides information and guidelines to lead a team through the steps of planning the deployment of a solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• How Do I: Enable Forms-Based Authentication for SharePoint: See how you can use ASP.NET forms-based authentication with MOSS

BizTalk

• Dynamic Mapping in BizTalk Orchestration: Rich Wallace explains how dynamic mapping can help with generic message schemas

IT Industry

• 5 years of Gmail: Gmail, IMHO still the best free webmail solution, turned 5 a few days ago
• Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter: By the time you read this, it may already have happened… Or not.

I don’t know what the official release date for BizTalk 2009 is, but if you have an MSDN subscription: it has just appeared on MSDN Subscriber Downloads. Go get it!