Blogging about SharePoint

Although no beta code has been released to the public, and I personally have had no access to it via other channels, we know or can make some intelligent guesses about a few things.

First, what we know:

• 64 Bit!  SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64 bit only.  That means that the web front ends and application servers will run best on the x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 (due out this October). Note that it WILL NOT run on Windows Server 2003, x64.  SQL Server has to be 64 bit as well, but either 2005 or 2008.
  • Source: Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements [MSFT SharePoint Product Team Blog]
  •  Todd Klindt and Shane Young, on Episode 18 of the SharePoint Pod Show, advise (and it seems like common sense) that if you are only familiar with Windows Server 2003, now is the time to learn Windows Server 2008.  You want to avoid having to learn both Windows Server 2008 AND SharePoint Server 2010 at the same time.
    • Windows Server 2008 is different enough from Windows Server 2003 that you should not underestimate this.  In particular, the IIS Admin UI (the IIS 7 MMC) is very different than it was in IIS 6/ Win 2003.
      • For your production farms on physical hardware, your vendor should be telling you what hardware is supported for Windows Server 2008 and providing updated drivers.  If you need to buy new hardware because it’s not supported by Windows Server 2008, start making your business case for the expense now…
      • For your virtual environments (my guess is this means some production environments, many staging, and most development environments), if you are using Virtual PC or Virtual Server, which today do NOT support 64 bit environments, only 32, then you should start looking at Hyper-V. 
        • I’m running Windows Server 2008 x64 Enterprise and Hyper-V on my Dell Laptop D620, and there are a few driver issues and quirks.  Dell does not support Windows Server 2008 on the D620.  If I try to use the highlighter when doing a PowerPoint 2007 presentation, my mouse locks up.
        • Running a VHD from a recent version of Virtual PC under Hyper-V is easy – Open it under Hyper-V, uninstall the VPC Virtual Machine Additions and install the Hyper-V Integration Services. Several Reboots may be required. Note that the machine might want you to go through Windows Activation again.
  • Therefore, the latest & Greatest stack for your 2010 server farm will be SharePoint 2010 servers on Windows 2008 R2 x64 and SQL Servers running SQL 2008 x64 also on Windows 2008 R2 x64.
• We also know several things from looking at the output of the Pre Upgrade Check report that can be produced by STSADM if you have MOSS 2007 SP2 installed.  Joel ran this recently and put the output in his blog.
  • Microsoft is switching from CAML to XSLT for some part of how List Views work.
    • “A list view using custom Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML), a list view not associated with a Feature, or a list view associated with a custom Feature, will not be upgraded to the new XSLT-based list view. A list view that is not upgraded will still render properly in Windows SharePoint Services 4.0, but it will not inherit any benefits of the new XSLT-based list view, such as SharePoint Designer customization support, conditional formatting and improved developer experience with XSLT standard-based language support.” and “It is highly recommended that you manually upgrade all custom list views to the new XSLT-based list views. The new XSLT-based list view is going to be the default view used in Windows SharePoint Services 4.0, replacing the existing list view in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. For more information about this rule, see KB article 956450”.  Note however, that KB article 956450 IS NOT LIVE AS OF NOW.  (You get the page not found message when you go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956450/)
  •   Likewise, Microsoft is using XSLT instead of CAML for how parts of Fields work.
    • “A field type using custom Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) in its RenderPattern element will not be upgraded as an XSLT-based field type. Fields based on this custom field type will be rendered without any custom formatting in Windows SharePoint Services 4.0.” and “It is highly recommended that you manually upgrade all custom field types to the new XSLT-based field types in order to have full rendering and customization support. For more information about this rule, see KB article 956451”
      • This KB article is not live yet either.
    • Furthermore, the fields listed [quoted from the output in Joel’s blog post] look like out of the box fields:
      • HoldsField(Hold Status)
      • HoldStatusField(Hold Status)
      • HTML(Publishing HTML)
      • Image(Publishing Image)
      • Link(Publishing Hyperlink)
      • SummaryLinks(SummaryLinks)
      • LayoutVariationsField(Variations)
      • ContentTypeIdFieldType(Content Type ID)
      • BusinessData(Business data)
      • TargetTo(Audience Targeting)
    • One wonders what will happen to these fields!
  • We know SharePoint workflows are going to be very different because Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 is significantly different – there was an article in … I think it was Redmond Magazine … saying so.  Further evidence is the next item in the log:
    • “Web.config file(s) on this server contain modified authorized types for workflow. Upgrade will replace these file with new versions, and all modifications will be lost. Declarative workflows that use added authorized types will fail. Authorized types that were manually disabled will be enabled. The following files will be replaced:
      C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\8080\web.config” and “It is highly recommended that you track modifications in these files and reapply them after upgrade. For more information about this rule, see KB article 965449”
      • No KB article live for this either…

If you hear anything else about 2010 that you can share, please post a comment here or someplace else (twitter or Linked In) that everyone can find.

Michael