Preparing for SharePoint 2010

I recently installed Windows 7 on my new laptop that I got for work. The ultimate goal is I want a machine where I will be able to run SharePoint 2010 to do local development. The core requirements that everyone has been hearing about for SharePoint 2010 is:

• 64 bit
  
• Server 2008
  
• 8GB RAM minimum
  

These requirements are going to be pretty taxing. A lot of the mid level companies have been able to install SharePoint 2007 and do some effective solutions. They were able to upgrade using their SharePoint 2003 environment or similar infrastructure which they already had. Many times clients have tons of performance problems even with SharePoint 2007 because they did not have sufficient hardware provisioned but that is beside the point. Thinking about it a little deeper, this probably should not be too big of deal given that many organizations have server virtualization and hardware itself continues to drop in price. So getting to this requirement is possible. I am looking forward to finding out why the server requirements changed.

However who this hurts the most are the developers. All Microsoft consultants that I know, that work with SharePoint, use localized virtual environments. This is going to hurt our ability to develop in remote environments significantly. We need to be able to do localized development and then build solution packages which we deploy into integration, quality and production environments.

Luckily I was told that my new laptop can have an additional 4GB added getting me up to 8GB. So my solution will be to add more RAM, Server 2008 virtual machine and set it up as a dual boot since I am running Windows 2007 64 bit as my host operating system. Still this is just going to be a really tough thing for most of us to get around.

K2 blackpearl 483 Patch

K2 has released an important patch build based on their latest build which supports Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008. This is build 483. In this case, build 483 can be installed on top of either a 4.8210.2.X or 4.8210.3.X.

It is important you get this installed and it should be the last one of these for a little. This was put out because these there were some immediate issued discovered.

Here is the upgrade path.

• If you have a clean machine with nothing on it and install K2 for the first time. Install 4.8210.3.0. Then install 4.8210.X.483.
  
• If you have a machine that has Windows Server 2008. Install 4.8210.3.0. Then install 4.8210.X.483.
  
• If you have a machine with 4.8210.2.450. Just install 4.8210.X.483.
  
• If you have a machine with 4.8210.2.X, prior to the 4.8210.2.450 build. Install 4.8210.2.450. Then install 4.8210.X.483.
  
• If you have a K2 machine prior to 4.8210.2.X (i.e. RTM, SP1, 0803). Install 4.8210.3.0. Then install 4.8210.X.483.
  

The following are the resolved issues that have been rolled into this build.

• KB000474 - Hotfix: After upgrading to K2 blackpearl 0807 (4.8210.2.450) or (4.8210.3.0) some OOB reports might be empty or the View Flow may not display correctly.
  
• KB000475 - Hotfix: After applying KB000450 Uninstall from Add/Remove Programs shows the incorrect version message.
  
• KB000476 - Hotfix: An error occurs in all K2 Rules that evaluates Boolean fields to 0 and 1.
  
• KB000478 - Hotfix: Errors received when delegating a workitem.
  
• KB000479 - Hotfix: A Database Timeout error occurs when upgrading to K2 blackpearl 0807 (4.8210.2.450) or (4.8210.3.0).
  
• KB000480 - Hotfix: An unexpected result occurs when deleting a Process Instance from Management Console.
  
• KB000481 - Hotfix: K2 Server ceases to function correctly when LIM API is used to change process version number.
  

K2 blackpearl supports Windows Server and SQL Server 2008

Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Supported

K2 blackpearl 4.8210.3.0 has now been released. The importance of this release is that Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 is now officially supported!!!

Here is a link to see other new features and functionality of this release - http://kb.k2workflow.com/ArticleAttach/K2%20blackpearl%200807%20Feature%20and%20Functionality%20Changes.pdf.

Specifically some notice changes for 4.8210.3.0 are:

• Out of Office has been cleaned up.
  
• No more InfoPath Temporary files. What used to happen is when you click on a worklist item that is for an InfoPath client event, it would generate an InfoPath form in the form library. If the user closed the InfoPath without taking action, the form would remain in the form library. Otherwise, the temporary InfoPath form would be deleted by in the succeeding rules of the activity where the InfoPath client resides. Apparently they did this to support the Out of Office functionality.
  
• Improvements for team development with TFS.
  
• Debugging issues have been resolved.
  
• String Tables and Environments been updated for K2.net 2003 migrations.
  
• Some performance improvements for Worklist web part.
  
• Plus a tons of other things discussed in the release notes…
  

Visual Studio 2008 is not supported just yet. I know it had been targeted for this release however it should be out soon.

There are two installers for this release. Basically there is:

• 4.8210.3.0 – Which will support the installation of K2 blackpearl on Windows Server 2008.
  
• 4.8210.2.450 – Is a release to upgrade existing 2.8210.2.X installations.
  

Both 4.8210.3.0 and 4.8210.2.450 are really the same from a bit perspective. You can only install 4.8210.3.0 on a machine if no K2 is installed or if the machine has K2 blackpearl version prior to 4.8210.2.X.

Both 4.8210.3.0 and 4.8210.2.450 support running on SQL Server 2008.

This past week I upgraded a client to 4.8210.2.450 and it went pretty smooth. They also had MOSS on Server 2008 in the farm but their SharePoint and SQL machines were on Server 2003. We were able to install of their Server 2003 machines to 4.8210.2.450 and then installed 4.8210.3.0 on the MOSS machine which had Sever 2008. We did not get time to fully test it but a configuration like that should work.

Release Issues

IMPORTANT - build 483 was released