SharePoint 2009 Conference Notes

I unfortunately did not get selected to go to the SharePoint Conference however I have tons of notes from other colleagues that I have gone through. Greg Galipeau, colleague of mine, puts tons of great notes on his site (blog 1, blog 2, blog 3). Since the dust has settled, I started to sift through a couple presentations from the conference. It is still early to tell how things are going to play out.

Here are a few notes I took while scanning over a couple SharePoint 2009 Conference presentations.

Terminology Changes

• Web Application renamed to Service Application
  
• Content Database renamed to Service Application Database
  
• WSS now called SharePoint Foundation
  

System Requirements & Installation Process

• OS – Windows Server 2008 SP2 or R2 and 64 bit
  
• SQL – 2005 SP2 or SQL 2008 and 64 bit
  
• Prerequisites
  
  • SQL Native Client
    
  • Geneva Framework
    
  • Sync Framework
    
  • Chart Controls Framework
    
  • Filter Pack
    
  • SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
    
  • Web Server Role
    
  • Application Server Role
    
• Installation has not really changed too much, the wizard has stayed pretty much the same but been rebranded.
  
• The configuration wizard is now available through Central Administration.
  
• There is a new Farm Configuration Wizard that is available inside of Central Administration.
  

System Administration

• Managed Accounts –SharePoint can manage password changes. SharePoint will auto-generate the password or you can get reminders for when the password needs to be changed.
  
• stsadm is being replaced by Windows PowerShell. It is supposed to have more functionality and power.
  
• Backup and Restore
  
  • Can be run on separate threads.
    
  • Have the ability to do Configuration only backups.
    
  • Available in Central Admin to do granular backups of site collections, web or lists.
    
• HTTP Request Monitoring
  
  • Has the ability to throttle performance during high peaks of usage. If a threshold is exceeded get requests will receive 503 errors, timer jobs may not start but put requests are still allowed.
    
  • This is added to protect the server during peak loads. It will evaluate available memory, CPU utilization, the ASP.NET queue and wait time queue. It is checked on a regular interval of 5 seconds.
    
• Logging
  
  • Will be more compressed by default.
    
  • Ability to have a SQL Logging database.
    
    • Opinion - This was very interesting because to me because searching and management of logs can potentially be easier.
      
• Best Practice Analyzer – uses best practice rules and will alert if there are issues. The rules can be customized and it can be executed by time jobs.
  
  • Opinion - Let's see where this goes but it could be helpful for clients who do not have lots of expertise in house and they commonly make configuration mistakes.
    
• Patch Levels and Upgrades – Servers and databases can be run at different patch levels as necessary but must maintain a level of compatibility.
  
  • Opinion - This is important as it would have helped me with a client I had; however this does not negate good Configuration Management of the SharePoint farm.
    

SharePoint Lists

• SharePoint Lists can now handle 50 million items per list versus the previous 2,000 item UI limit.
  
• As the list grows, there will still be a performance impact.
  
  • Opinion – I am still not a believer in managing highly relational or referenced data in SharePoint lists. This should be done in database tables.
    

New Development Tools

• Developer Dashboard – is used to monitor page load and performance. It will show times it takes to load components on a page, database query information, check out status, web part processing times and critical events. Its purpose is to provide developers with a better tool to diagnose problems with web parts or lists that may take a long time to load.
  
  • Opinion - This should be pretty useful and know several clients that could take advantage of it.
    
• Visual Studio 2010 will address many of the issues that we were having with SharePoint development. Reality was SharePoint 2007 development was very difficult because we did not have the development tools like what we have for ASP.net, Win Form, SQL Server, etc . Debugging was a major challenge and that has been fixed. Microsoft heard this loud and clear and it has been fixed.
  
• Business Connectivity Services – basically a new version of the BDC but allows you to do a read and write.
  
• LINQ to SharePoint – will provide better strongly typed way to get code out of SharePoint lists.
  
  • Opinion – This is created because writing dynamic CAML queries is very challenging based on the structure of that query language.
    
• Client Object Model – this allows for SharePoint API code to run on external machines and not just on the SharePoint machine itself.
  
  • Opinion – This is will be very beneficial, we will see if it will do everything we need it to do.
    
  • 
    

General

• SharePoint Workspace – If you are familiar with the product called Groove, it has been rebranded as SharePoint Workspace. This tool will provide a rich offline user experience with SharePoint 2010. If you tried Groove with SharePoint 2007 it did not work very but I suspect they will do the job now. There is a need for this especially with support mobile personnel, like a sales team.
  

Improved cross browser support (sorry, little details).