Check out this great site that is designed to help .NET Developers to learn to build solutions with SharePoint: http://MSSharePointDeveloper.com

·         User Management

The site includes some great info, such as:

·         An Introductory Whitepaper

·         Benefits of SharePoint for Developers

·         A SharePoint VPC

·         Hosted MSDN Virtual Labs in C# and VB.NET

·         Video Interview with SharePoint MVPs

·         Screencasts

·         Web Casts with SharePoint MVPs

·         Quickstarts

·         Labcasts

·         Presentation Download

·         Hands on Labs Download

·         Additional Resource Links

Check it out!  http://MSSharePointDeveloper.com

I get a lot of questions regarding the use of SharePoint as a solutions platform. I personally think it's a great tool for many (but not all) applications. The reason?  SharePoint lends something that we like to call the "productivity tier," which is missing from most platform architecture stacks.  We're all used to the UI tier, application tier, and data tier.  Those three, however, fail to address a common requirement, which is being able to accomodate things like frequent changes to business processes, human workflows, tie-in with unstructured information, and data or visualization mashups that an end-user might want to create.  SharePoint can help with all of those scenarios.

So let's say you're going to use SharePoint as your platform. Then the main question I get is "give me a methodology for team-based SharePoint development that combines custom code that I write and content that will be managed inside of SharePoint".

To that end, here's a great doc:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=65F21935-CBC0-4178-8C08-4C56F721C87D&displaylang=en

The document suggests implementation scenarios, tools, and development environments for SharePoint-based solutions.  It's quite handy.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Now that MOSS 2007 has been out for a while, I'm getting a lot of requests for deeper knowledge and guidance. In that regard, I’m pleased to announce that we've recently released Advanced SharePoint videos and whitepapers on TechNet.

I just wanted to take a moment to remind everyone about the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool.

Official description:  The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool comprises models of both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) that allow you to explore the necessary infrastructure for either deployment based on usage requirements. This tool uses the System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP) as an engine to provide for data collection, visualization, simulation, and report writing. The tool can be used in pre-sales and feasibility studies of a deployment project to give you a rough estimate of hardware requirements.

The tool is able to consider variations in usage, size of installation, networking technology, scale, and availability.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb961988.aspx

Thanks to everyone who attended my session yesterday - here are my slides:

http://cid-af33896098c1bc02.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Jamison_SAF2007_Composite%20Apps%20with%20Office.pptx

I'm out in Redmond this week speaking at the Strategic Architecture Forum on Composite Applications. I think we'll see more focus on building applications using composite architectures in the future. The idea is to enable reuse at the end-user level...not just at the developer level. I'll talk more about how SharePoint plays a role in composite applications over the next couple of months.

SharePoint content databases can be any size. There are no hard limits.  There - I've said it.

I hear customers and partners still claiming that there's a 50GB size limit. There is NOT. It's a guideline, not a rule. Let's say you want to store 1TB of data in SharePoint...no problem. You could have 2-3 content databases with 400GB each. Or one very large content database. SQL 2005 and MOSS 2007 would handle that fine.

So why the limit?  Managability. It's simply faster to restore smaller databases.

The 50GB myth comes from a practical limitation that administrators put on themselves; it's simpler and easier to manage a SharePoint environment when databases are small. Many customers I work with still don't have the hardware, people, and time that they need to have a real recovery plan.  Why?  Because in many cases, SharePoint grew out of pure business need and caught on like wildfire. I know large customers who are still running SharePoint like a departmental application. Once they realize that it's a business critical application - at enterprise scale - governance (along with funding) is added to the master plan.  Do you want to convince your manager or business lead (i.e. the one with the budget) that you need more resources?  Shameless plug: get them a copy of my book.  They will understand SharePoint better and realize the need for governance, planning, and better resources for IT.

One more thing: If you're looking for a better way to backup and restore SharePoint, especially for large databases, check out Data Protection Manager 2007. Why? It supports change-only, agent-based backups and single site/single file restore in WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007.  I'll be doing some testing with large content databases over the next couple of weeks and sharing my results.

In the meantime, here are some great posts by Joel Oleson on database and site collection sizes:

Content Database Size:  http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2006/08/01/684691.aspx, http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/08/03/687995.aspx

Site Collection Sizing: http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/01/31/tips-on-site-collection-sizing.aspx

I've gotten a lot of questions about SharePoint limitations lately. SharePoint can scale to hundreds of millions of documents and items and host terabytes of data.

This article (Plan for software boundaries) provides recommendations for acceptable performance: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/6a13cd9f-4b44-40d6-85aa-c70a8e5c34fe1033.mspx?mfr=true.

I'll be discussing the myth of the 50GB limit on content databases in my next post.

If you're in Orlando for TechEd, be sure to attend my session entitled Composite Application Architectures: Using the 2007 Microsoft Office System.  

We'll discuss how the 2007 Office System isn't just a great set of products; it's an application platform that supports industry standards and provides key application and integration services via composite application architectures. I'll show some features in Office Enterprise 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 that enable great solutions as part of an overall composite application architecture. This session covers common architectural patterns and the core services provided by Office and SharePoint with two fun examples.

It's all happening tomorrow (6/7) at 9:45AM in Room N310 A.

The Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that helps developers visualize the different programs, servers, services, and tools that will help them build solutions. It allows them to drill down to each product and technology and learn about new features, objects, Web services, namespaces, and schemas required to extend Microsoft Office and build custom Office Business Applications (OBAs).  Check it out here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb497969.aspx

Need to ramp up on Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS)?  Interested in IT Pro and Developer topics for SharePoint?

Come to Microsoft's Waltham office this Saturday, February 24th, from 8:30 to 6:00 PM. A great set of community speakers will be presenting on WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007. The goal is that folks will leave with what is possible with SharePoint, get started on a new implementation of a SharePoint solution, or extend an existing one.

Check out: http://www.sharepointguy.com/SharePointCodeCamp07/default.aspx.

Thank you to those of you who attended today's architecture council meeting!  We had a fantastic discussion on composite application architectures and the capabilities provided by the 2007 Office system. 

My slides are available - click here to download.

It's interesting to see these software trends continue.  We discussed three key concepts:

1) more agile software - business solutions developed in minutes rather than months

2) the productivity tier - designing software to accomodate ad-hoc and people-centric processing rather than just structured workflow

3) further levels of abstraction - we've abstracted away disk access, operating system functionality, programming frameworks, and now with SharePoint, database table structures and data binding logic.  What's next?

Until next time,

Scott

The next architecture council will be held on December 11, 2006 from 10:30am to 3:30pm.

I will be speaking at 11:00am on Composite Application Architectures using the 2007 Office System.

Here's the rundown:
The 2007 Office System isn’t just a great set of products; it’s a tremendous application platform that supports industry standards and provides key application and integration services.  Learn how the features in Office Enterprise 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 enable great solutions as part of an overall composite application architecture.  This session will cover common architectural patterns and the core services provided by Office and SharePoint.

For more information on the arcCouncil and arcStream, check out Bob Familiar's blog.

Hope to see you there!

When building applications to solve a specific business need, I'm a big fan of using the 2007 Office System as a base platform.  Why?  If you're building a web application, it often takes a lot of code and will still limit user functionality. If you develop a rich UX application, it will serve the user better, but it's one more application that the user has to learn and use to get their job done.

With an application built on top of the 2007 Office System, you can do things like let the user stay in their preferred application - say Microsoft Outlook, for example.  This is an example of an Office Business Application (OBA).  OBAs are an emerging class of applications that connect users to exising LOB systems through the familiar Microsoft Office interface.

For a great example, check out the OBA Reference Architecture Pack for Supply Chain.

What do you think?

Thanks to everyone who attended last week's Beyond TechEd events!  Here's the full set of slides:

Core Infrastructure Optimization

Infrastructure Optimization

Best Practices for Secure Messaging

Longhorn Server

SMS and MOM Overview

Deployment in an Hour

Microsoft Office System – Business Productivity Optimization

Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization

Office Client Overview

SharePoint Overview

2007 Office System Development

Exchange 2007

Unified Communications

Application Platform Optimization and Developer Productivity

Business Intelligence

dotNetFX 3.0

SQL Server Developer Productivity

BizTalk 2006

We've officially released the Microsoft Certified Architect certification. This will be a hard one to get.  I plan to get it - you?