Sunday, July 31, 2011

SharePoint 2010 initialization software and hardware requirements

Hardware requirements

64-bit processor

For front-end servers, RAM – 4GB for development, 8GB for production.

For Database servers, RAM – 8GB for small deployment, 16GB for medium deployments.

80GB of hard disk

Software requirements:

OS:

64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 SP2.

For development environments, we can use either Windows 7 or Windows Vista. But, it is highly recommended that we should not use these OS for production environments.

Database:

64-bit SQL Server 2008 R2 or 64-bit SQL Server 2008 with SP1 and CU2 only or 64-bit SQL Server 2005 SP3.

Remember, to install SharePoint 2010, it checks for all prerequisites required and if it didn’t find any then it starts downloading them from Microsoft site and install them in your server. Below are the listed modules which installs by the preparation tool.

Web Server (IIS) role

Application Server role

Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1

SQL Server 2008 Express with SP1

Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)

Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0

Microsoft Chart Controls for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Windows PowerShell 2.0

SQL Server 2008 Native Client

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET

ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

A hotfix for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 that provides a method to support token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF.

Windows Identity Foundation (WIF)

more information http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485.aspx

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What You Should Know Before Learning of SharePoint 2010

That's the question I received from many people. Although they do not work in Microsoft related technologies, they like to work with SharePoint 2010 [only because the demand and the functions it has]. So, to learn what SharePoint 2010 technologies you need to know or what are the key concepts you need to be strong, that's what we'll discuss in this post.

The technologies/concepts you have to know as a Developer:

ASP.NET/C#: SharePoint 2010 is completely built on ASP.NET 3.5 whereas SharePoint 2007 is built upon ASP.NET 2.0. So, if you know basic ASP.NET 3.5 features then you get better ideas in implementing SharePoint 2010 coding and better understand concepts.

SQL Server: This is very important to know as SharePoint A-Z stores in database only.

Windows Workflow Foundation: There are workflows in SharePoint which is useful to solve business process problems. To create the workflows either in SharePoint designer or custom workflows you should have idea of WWF.

XML/XSLT: I can say everything in SharePoint is XML. So, if you are strong in XML then you rock. XSLT is applying styles for XML.

AJAX/Java script: AJAX is a generic concept and in ASP.NET the implementation is a bit different and you may need to know the general concept on how it works. Along with that you have to know java script.

Windows Communication Foundation: WCF is very popular these days as it has very good features. SharePoint 2010 is using WCF Services instead of Web Services. So, to work with them you have to know it. [For SharePoint 2007 it is not needed]

Silverlight: There are modules in SharePoint 2010 developed in Silverlight. And the integration of Silverlight code to SharePoint is also very easy now. [For SharePoint 2007 it may not be needed, but you can create custom Silverlight module and deploy to SharePoint 2007]

Internet Information Services: You have to know what is IIS and how it works.

The technologies/concepts you have to know as an Administrator:

SQL Server

IIS

Windows Server

SharePoint Designer

So these are things that everyone should preliminary set before learning about SharePoint 2010. No need to know all too deep, but you have complete idea of ​​what it is and how they work. Therefore, it can take a month to learn about these concepts and begin to learn SharePoint 2010. If you try to learn directly from SharePoint 2010 without knowing that these concepts can succeed in making content management, workflow, SharePoint Designer, customize appearance, etc, but do not know what is going on inside and how work. You cannot do coding, etc. So be sure to spend plenty of time to learn this information before you leap. Hope this helps.

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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

SharePoint 2010?

If someone has asked this question there is no single answer to that. SharePoint is a very large and has many features. So if we start talking about them, then it may take weeks to cover all functions.

But in simple words "Microsoft SharePoint is a platform for enterprise collaboration and content management that allows users to connect with each other and share information across an organization. Indirect that solves problems in an organization share documents, security, business processes, maintenance of data, rich user interface and SharePoint 2010 so many features. "

1. Sites:You can create a website within seconds of the user interface. You can set the number of sites that you want as needed and set different permissions for each site. SharePoint 2010 comes with the rich user interface and numerous improvements to the HTML. They replaced all the tables in HTML [SharePoint 2007] with HTML div [SharePoint 2010]. It makes a big difference in the rendering of HTML browser, both in performance and time.

And the main thing is important in the tape. The film is the great revolution and all options are on the page itself. The property of the tape change dynamically / automatically depends on what context you are in. No need to leave the current page and do something. Everything on the page and do the necessary things. This rich user interface and support for the film, is very easy to create and manage content on the site.

SharePoint 2010 sites can be viewed on any browser. One limitation is that it is not compatible with IE6 [I think nobody is using IE6 again]. Therefore, we can say that it is multi-platform. It will be very good for developers and users have their own ideas on using the browser. I IE9 and Mozilla. Previous versions of SharePoint do not like other IE browsers. So this problem has been fixed in this release.

SharePoint 2010 is compatible with the cloud computing as well. Therefore, you can receive is the environment in general or the cloud to provide access to Internet users. This is also one of the main features included in SharePoint 2010.

2. Communities:It is more of Social connections. You can connect to employee [colleague] or users through user profiles, my sites and people search. This way you are connected with others and share information very easily. Another thing in communities section is "Informal Knowledge". This includes tagging, rating and feedback features. For example, many users are searching for a common document then what we could do is, tag that document with relative keywords. So that it will come up in top search results. These way users get whatever they want very easily. Another option is rating. You can give rating to particular document or item.

3. Content:As discussed in previous sections of this SharePoint 2010 for the creation or content management is very easy with the new rich user interface and ribbon. This is very easy to find content on the site administrators and to make changes. You may feel that this is the same change of MS Office files like Word, Power Point in your browser. SharePoint 2010 is dominated by a huge and complex collection of metadata throughout the site with ease.

4. Search: Huhh!!! It is a very big improvement in SharePoint 2010 compared to previous version. The way the search improved is unbelievable and gives the exact search results what user is looking for. There are many ways how they improved search. Here are the main things:

Improved relevancy: Once the user must enter a search word SharePoint detects that the user attempts to try and give accurate results they are looking for.

Refinement & Related Searches: For each search word given it searches for the related keywords as well and give in the result set. If you search for John then it gives search results which has John on top and then Jon, Don etc after it. Because Jon matches with 3 letters Don matches 2 letters etc.

Wildcard search: This is what already known thing and not really need any special explanation

5. Insights: This essentially covers the business processes of an organization. The implementation of the perfect workflow. Improvements SharePoint Designer workflow and added many activities for the 2007 business designer. With them, we can solve many problems without writing custom code. And writing custom code that you can easily create your own activities. With these there are improvements to Excel Services and graphics. In this version of SharePoint, Visio Services. You can create a workflow in Visio, and import them directly into SharePoint. It is one of the most amazing this new version. The biggest advantage is who is good in Visio [I believe that a common person] have the opportunity to do things that will be useful in SharePoint.

6. Composites: This concept comes from the Mash-Ups. Pulling information from different data sources and combining it single place. So, we can achieve this in 4 different ways:

SharePoint designer 2010

Infopath 2010

Business Connectivity Services [BCS]

Access Services

So, finally in simple words we can say SharePoint is:

Quickly create and manage content in your organization

Collaborate in new and easy ways through social capabilities

Search helps to find easy and relevant content

Streamline the business process in organization

Visualize the information or huge data

For complete idea please take a look at this nice video.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=124807

I believe you understood briefly What is SharePoint. Before we end this concept lastly I want to mention, SharePoint 2010 is only supports 64-bit. [There is no 32-bit anymore. ]So, all the infrastructure and the software like [Windows Server 2008, Sql Server etc] should be 64-bit.

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