It's 6pm - where are your virtual machines?

I mentioned last time that I'd share a couple more of my SharePoint-related highlights from Tech Ed. On a general note, despite the fact this wasn't my first Tech Ed I'm still amazed at the scale - an estimated 14,000 people in total apparently. Incredible when you think the team can feed 14,000 people in one hour in one room! As my colleague remarked, even Jesus only managed 5,000 ;-)

Anyway, things I didn't mention last time:


Virtual Machine Manager

- Microsoft beefs up it's story on managing virtual machines with Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (part of System Center family). I know other products out there have much of this functionality, but let's face it, for many of us management of virtual machines currently extends to the Virtual Server 2005 admin website. Some of the things I liked were:

• 'library' of virtual machines including metadata - including the facility to have template machines which can be used as building blocks
• fast 'physical to virtual' conversions
• Intelligent Placement tool - analyzes all your physical hardware you have allocated to virtual machines and provides a recommendation as to where to put a new VM. This is based on information it has gathered (analysis of hardware etc.) but the parameters can be weighted, such as processor, memory, disk space etc.
• ability to delegate starting up (etc.) of the VM from the physical box, without granting them remote access to the physical machine or other VM management capability

SharePoint development thoughts

- On other matters, an interesting (and accurate I feel) angle on SharePoint development - whilst the current dev experience is often painful, this is an issue with the tools rather than the platform. Ted Pattison talked about the 'denial, anger, acceptance' cycle often seen in .Net developers starting SharePoint development. SharePoint 2003 developers on the other hand think everything is slick in comparison ;-) Remember that in the .Net world, the tool (Visual Studio) is developed and released in parallel with the platform (.Net). In the SharePoint 2007 world, for whatever reason (likely to be pressure to release at same time as Office client apps) this hasn't been the case, and so the tools are perhaps 18 months behind the client. So there may well be a time when you look back and chuckle at the idea of generating feature files/solution packages without an MS-developed tool.

- Some interesting examples of using the DataView web part from Dustin Miller. This thing alone can get you a long way to building composite applications in SharePoint. Most SharePoint developers will already be switched on to this idea (using WSS as a development platform rather than building from scratch in ASP.Net), but it could be the future for a lot of reasonably simple apps. Some of the functionality includes:-

• Display data from SQL, XML or web service
• Join disparate datasources without code (need at least a string value [or other 'joinable' type] to join on)
• Implement in-line editing (a la DataGrid)
• Perform conditional formatting (if x == 1 show a, otherwise show b)
• Use in a connected way with other web parts

..all without code. Very cool indeed. Note that the control renders using XSLT which can also be customised to get the required output. Also impressive is that SPD actually provides help by allowing in-line editing of the rendering in the design view, and mini-wizards to help with conditional formatting. The underlying XSLT is then written by the tool.

So it's not all bad with SharePoint development ;-)

SharePoint content at TechEd

Some good SharePoint content this week here in Orlando, which is good as it's pretty much the reason I'm here ;-) Thought I'd call out a couple of the things I've heard which have grabbed my attention:-

• an update to VSeWSS which addresses some of the issues I and other people have had with it, specifically the fact that it's not flexible enough for some scenarios. The next version will allow editing of the files generated (manifest.xml, feature and element definitions) before being packaged into the .wsp file. This will allow you to add feature receiver definitions or otherwise modify the generated XML. A CTP should be available in July.
• hearing MS's experiences on their internal MOSS deployment, believed to be the biggest in the world. How d'ya fancy managing 134,000 site collections running on 130 web front-ends?
• an extremely interesting 'participation' session on SharePoint deployment (see my features vs. Content Deployment post) lead by Andrew Connell. This is an area of SharePoint close to my heart (though I'm by no means saying I have all the answers) so it was good to have a beer afterwards with Andrew and continue the discussion. I'll be writing about this more soon.

On a general note it's great to see many SharePoint experts speaking here. A full summary of information useful to SharePoint implementors to come soon :-)

Going to TechEd Orlando

I'm off to TechEd U.S. tomorrow, it looks like there'll be some interesting SharePoint content. I'm also going to the pre-conference session and had a tough time deciding between Bill English/Andrew Connell's session, and Patrick Tissegham/Ted Pattison's session. Decided to go for the latter after much debating, should be good.

I know I've left it late, but if any UK-based SharePoint people are going out, leave me a comment (even if you only read this once out there) if you're interested in hooking up.

Chris.