Will SPS and CMS be a single server ?

Hay, I found this post today from Mauro Cardarelli 

Although it is far from a surprise, it looks like Microsoft is finally admitting that they are merging SharePoint Portal Server and Content Management Server.  The next version of Office System, due some time in 2006, will offer a “single server” that merges the technologies of the two products.

This makes perfect sense… and is a good thing.  We saw it coming with the Connector currently offered and SPS needs content management capabilities… without the need to purchase another product.  This is another example of what appears to be Microsoft taking a good thing (SPS 2003) and making it a whole lot better!

more info here

IBF 1.5 is available for download

Patrick Tisseghem pointed us to the new version of IBF, i’m so eager to try it out, IBF is  a powerful framework, but version one was needing more desgining tools enhancements in btw ( Thank you Patrick for the wonderful session you made here in Cairo; it was great smart clients session and made me love IBF even i didn’t work so much with it ), what about this one :), Patrick says it’s have many enhancements, so let’s check them.

download it from here.

Sharepoint Multisection/pages survey

Ted Teng on MSD2D, shows us in this article how to create a multisection survey, his idea is simple yet effective, create a separate survey per each section and then modify the survey form in fp2003 to remove the headers and add "Next" link to the next section (sharepoint survey).

Read the full article here

what a good sharepoint consultant ought to know…

Tim Heuer point out the area of knowledges should be known for Sharepoint consultants.
read it here

Very good post Tim

Fun with TemplateIDs in SharePoint

An interesting post from dwinter

"Today I’m taking a slight break from direct coding examples to introduce a simple topic which will be useful later when I write about customizations in SharePoint.  Don’t fret though, I’ll be writing about Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal next week for those of you just reading this for code."

Do you want to become a great developer?

Fredrick Normen posted his book collections help you be a good developer, read it here

very nice post Fredrick

In this post I will give my suggestions of books that in my opinion could make you become a great developer. Remember that books will only give you theoretical knowledge and not the practical knowledge, so you also need to use your knowledge and do some practical programming to success. You will also learn from your mistakes and the best way to succeed is to follow those who have succeeded.

SHA-1 broken !

SHA-1 has been broken. Not a reduced-round version. Not a simplified version. The real thing.

The research team of Xiaoyun Wang, Yiqun Lisa Yin, and Hongbo Yu (mostly from Shandong University in China) have been quietly circulating a paper describing their results:

• collisions in the the full SHA-1 in 2**69 hash operations, much less than the brute-force attack of 2**80 operations based on the hash length.

• collisions in SHA-0 in 2**39 operations.

• collisions in 58-round SHA-1 in 2**33 operations.

This attack builds on previous attacks on SHA-0 and SHA-1, and is a major, major cryptanalytic result. It pretty much puts a bullet into SHA-1 as a hash function for digital signatures (although it doesn’t affect applications such as HMAC where collisions aren’t important).

The paper isn’t generally available yet. At this point I can’t tell if the attack is real, but the paper looks good and this is a reputable research team.

More details when I have them.

Custom Site templates in Sharepoint

Patrick pointed out this nice article about creating Custom Site Tempaltes in sharepoint and either this approach should solve the upgrading problems ?

Do we need to create custom site definitions in order to avoid upgrading problems? That is a question I have heard so many times. My answer is always two-fold.

• Yes, you avoid upgrading problems since you isolate the modifications in your own site template. It is of course more difficult and requires a lot of knowledge on the underlying XML (CAML) infrastructure, but once you can do it, it is a good approach. Kris his article is a good start, but do not underestimate the additional work you will have to do.
• No, because you will have those upgrading problems anyway. Suppose that Microsoft adds new features to their existing site definitions, your own work will have to be modified again to incorporate those changes. If the changes are big, you will probably end up redoing a lot of stuff anyway.

So, my advice is always, think before you act. When you dive into the customization of site definitions, you are starting something you could regret in a couple of months. Well, that is my feeling anyway. How about yours?

Building Web Parts the smart way

A new MSDN article for U2U guys .. Patrick and Jan are explaining how to use smart part to build web parts with rich content and ease in development.

 

Customizing Sharepoint context menu

A good article covers an issue we usually are asked to do by the customers which is customizing the the sharepoint context menu to add or remove items.

Drop-down menus in Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enable actions that relate to a specific document in a document library to be viewed and invoked. This article shows how these document context menus can be extended to add custom menu items. The document first explains how SharePoint document library context menus work, and then demonstrates how custom menu items can be added.