If you're considering attending the SharePoint Conference 2008 (March 3-6 in Seattle), be sure to register today, since the early bird discount is about to end.

Register here: http://www.mssharepointconference.com

I've heard a bunch of feedback from customers to the tune of "why doesn't Microsoft release a search server?"  Well, here it is! 

Microsoft Search Server 2008 was announced today. It's essentially an updated and rebranded version of SharePoint Server 2007 for Search, with some new features like:

• Simplified Installation Experience
• Enhanced Administration Interface
• New Federation Capabilities - supports OpenSearch 1.0/1.1 (see screen shot)
• Performance and Stability Enhancements
• No Preset Document Limits

(The federation features will be added to MOSS via a no charge, post-SP1 update, due out early next year.)

Search Server 2008 will be available in 2 versions:

• Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSS)
• Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express (MSSX)

Microsoft is giving Search Server 2008 Express away for free:

• http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/serverproducts/searchserverexpress/download.aspx
• http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/AQTU11406112007-1.htm

What is SharePointPedia?  SharePointPedia.com is a public-facing social computing application built on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. It's designed to enable users on the Web to find and share content about SharePoint and related stuff.

Anyone with a Windows Live ID can register and submit content recommendations, leave comments, and vote for the best content.

Be sure to check it out!

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 admit - this doesn't necessarily fall into the SharePoint world...but it's funny:

BTW...the XBOX 360 hardware issues are resolved at this point. I think. Well, I know mine works fine!

I need a new blog template.  Got any suggestions?  Email me by using the 'Email me' link in the lower left hand of this page.

WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 do not need a fix to work with this year's DST changes.

WSS v2 and SPS 2003 need to install the update, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924881.  The update includes an updated timezone.xml file.

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.

Ever wish you could get some help on SharePoint but don't know where to turn?  If so, be sure to check out the MSDN SharePoint Community Forums: http://mssharepointforums.com.

I will be monitoring the forums along with MVPs, SharePoint product team members, and the community at large.

I've gotten some questions about using Office SharePoint Server 2007 to crawl websites that use Forms-based Authentication (FBA) or Cookie-based Authentication (CBA). SharePoint Server 2007 supports this functionality with a hotfix. (If you don't have the hotfix installed, only the logon page will be crawled.)

You can download the hotfix here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B3C932A5-B3C0-4473-8EA5-62AE44190878&displaylang=en

Before you install the hotfix, be sure to review this KB article:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934577/en-us

I've gotten a lot of questions from customers who are moving to Office 2007. Most of the questions are around items like the value of the new Office UI, ease of deployment, and integration with MOSS 2007.  The best place to get information on these topics is the Forrester report: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/itanalyst/docs/07-17forrester2007office.aspx.  The report does a good job at providing an independent voice on Office 2007 and its benefits and limitations.

The word I'm hearing from customers who've moved to Office 2007 (and MOSS 2007) is that it's well worth it.

In Excel 2003, there was a feature that let you sync changes from an Excel 2003 spreadsheet to a SharePoint List and vice versa. In Excel 2007, this feature was deprecated.  I get asked about the lack of this feature all of the time.

Good news!  Back in June, we published an Excel 2007 add-in that puts this functionality back.  You can get it at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=25836e52-1892-4e17-ac08-5df13cfc5295&DisplayLang=en.

There's also a companion MSDN article entitled "Publishing and Synchronizing Excel 2007 Tables to SharePoint Lists": http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb462636(office.11).aspx