Wilson posted a note with a little more info and screen shots on what the SRV entry really means if you are using Windows Live Admin Center to manage your domain within Windows Live and want our IM federation to work properly. Thanks Wilson!

Anyone I’ve talked to knows I’m a huge fan of the Live Admin Center functionality, but unfortunately the service I use to host my DNS doesn’t allow SRV entries : (

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The new SharePoint Administration Toolkit was recently released as reported here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/04/30/announcing-the-first-release-of-the-microsoft-sharepoint-administration-toolkit.aspx

Two great areas of additional functionality include a batch site manager.  You can now move site collections around including between content databases.  There are also added features for accommodating for alerts, etc.  when there are web application changes to the addressable URL. 

Download links below:

x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F8EEA8F0-FA30-4C10-ABC9-217EEACEC9CE&displaylang=en

x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=263CD480-F6EB-4FA3-9F2E-2D47618505F2&displaylang=en

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Jason has just finished the first four labs in a series of Windows Server 2008 Application Compatibility labs have been released on MSDN. You can find them as follows:

- MSDN Virtual Lab: Windows Server 2008 - Access Rights, Impersonation

- MSDN Virtual Lab: Windows Server 2008 - Impact of Code Signing

- MSDN Virtual Lab: Windows Server 2008 - Installer Detection

- MSDN Virtual Lab: Windows Server 2008 - Session 0 Isolation

There will be more labs in the coming weeks. Stay tuned and enjoy!

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I admit it, I have a little bit of a software crush going on right now.  A colleague forwarded me an invitation to join the Xobni beta.  I am an analytics geek at heart, and it drives me nuts not to be able to do analytics on my email.  I installed Xobni - it installs as an add-in for Outlook - and have been using it for an hour.  They have a bunch of killer features…a couple of things stood out…

• The Xobni analytics functionality shows me how much email, from who, send/receive patterns, etc…including showing me who is not responding to emails…I have one from 192 days ago…I think that thread is dead, but in this case it actually was a missed opportunity to make a good connection with someone


• Has a “schedule time with” feature…offers up some available times to a colleague…sweet


• Shows all the attachments you have send/received in emails with that contact

Go check it out…I think it is an invitation-only beta going on, but there are ways you can move to the front of the line (tip the bouncer?)…

Alright, back to the chemical business…

Since its launch in 2007 of Australian and international businesses have used SharePoint(R) 2007 to help reduce costs, improve productivity, and increase their competitiveness. This has put CIO’s at the centre of organisational strategy and success; Phillips Fox achieved savings of approximately AU$700,000 and eliminated the manual input of around 16,000 documents a year.

Now, Microsoft invites you to “experience the possibilities” at the SharePoint 2008 Forum.

http://www.microsoftsharepoint.com/strategy/Pages/default.aspx

1. Use calculated members with Scope assignments instead of using IIF The reason this option is faster is because the scope subcube definitions enable the Query Execution Engine to know ahead of time the calculation space for each business rule. Using this information, the Query Execution Engine can select an optimized execution path to execute the calculation on the specified range of cells. As a general rule, it is a best practice to always try to simplify calculation expressions by moving the…(read more)
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What do you think the following code will do?

1. Compile time error
2. Run time error
3. Work fine

   1: static void Main(string[] args)

   2: {

   3:     int x = 10;

   4:     int y = 5;

   5:     Swap(ref x, ref y);

   6: }

   7:  

   8:  

   9: static void Swap(ref int x, ref int y)

  10: {

  11:     int temp = x;

  12:     x = y;

  13:     y = temp;

  14:     Func<int> closure = () => x;

  15: }

If you said 1. Compile time error then you would be correct.  The resulting error message is:

Cannot use ref or out parameter ‘x’ inside an anonymous method, lambda expression, or query expression  

The reason for this is that although C# provides the ability to pass parameters by reference (as opposed to by value), it offers no way to assign to a variable by reference.

This ability exists in C++ :

   1: int x = 5;

   2: int & y = x;

Now y refers to the same variable location as x.

So, what does this all have to do with the original code?  As I described in my previous post Understanding Variable Capturing in C#, since we are using the variable x in a lambda expression (a.k.a. a closure) the C# compiler will rewrite the method so that it looks something like this:

   1: class Capture

   2: {

   3:     public int x;

   4:     public int Lambda()

   5:     {

   6:         return this.x;

   7:     }

   8: }

   9:  

  10: static void Swap(ref int x, ref int y)

  11: {

  12:     Capture capture = new Capture();

  13:     capture.x = x;

  14:     int temp = capture.x;

  15:     capture.x = y;

  16:     y = temp;

  17:     Func<int> closure = () => capture.x;

  18: }

Do you see the problem now?  On line 13 the ref parameter x  is being assigned to the member variable x of the Capture class.  But since you can’t assign by reference this would change the semantics of the method.  The C# compiler is smart enough to know this, so it throws the error.  It won’t generate code that has different meaning than what the user intended.

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It was a busy first day at the ChemITC Spring Cyber Security meeting down in Miami, Florida.  While we have participated in activities over the past year, this is the first conference where we are actual affiliate members.  It was good to catch up with everyone and meet some new folks.  We have a few of our partners who are also affiliate members in attendance.  I enjoyed the conversations with Open Text, Liquid Machines, and AspenTech.

Our Friday presentation with Dow Corning on protecting intellectual property using Active Directory Right Management Services should be spot on based on the roundtable of top challenges I heard today.  I am glad we will be speaking on a topic so relevant to the group.

Tomorrow should be a great day as we will get into the working group sessions.

Cheers!

Lo prometido es deuda: para las personas que asistieron al track de Visual Studio 2008 de Juan Lozada en el que participamos varias personas del área de divulgación tecnológica en Microsoft México en el evento de lanzamiento "Estamos con los Héroes", les dejo acá el archivo de la presentación con todos sus slides. El hospedaje es cortesía de SkyDrive de Windows Live.

Tengo entendido que dentro de poco podremos ver los videos que se grabaron durante la presentación, en cuento estén listos agregaré un link desde acá.

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Have you used the new ClickOnce Publish and Deployment feature in Visual Studio 2008 for Office 2007 solutions?  If so, we need your feedback now - and we need it before May 8th (which is an internal deadline for our team)!  We’re working on Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and would like to know your opinion on a specific feature:

<Start of current scenario:

Currently the end-user is unable to cancel an Automatic Update most of the time.  When the user starts an Office application (e.g. Excel or Outlook) then the VSTO Runtime checks the registry to see if it’s time to check for Addin Updates.  Then if it’s time, it will go and download the ClickOnce Manifests (which is the .vsto and the .manifest files) from the deployment location.  If this process of downloading the manifests takes longer than 7 seconds, then the user is presented with a dialog that gives them the option to click Cancel, which halts the download.  Most of the time no one will see the Cancel because the downloading of the manifests is almost always faster than 7 seconds.

If the user doesn’t click Cancel, then the system makes a trust decision.  If the update is trusted, then it starts to download the actual assemblies.  While downloading the assemblies, the user is unable to work with the Office application.  They have to wait for the download to complete, the addin to get loaded, and then the user can start using the Office application.  Keep in mind that this process usually takes less than 20 seconds.

If the user does click Cancel during the manifest download phase, then the side effect is that the addin is now DISABLED.  If the end user wants to re-enable the addin, then she needs to open Trust Center and go through about 3 clicks to enable it again.

End of current scenario>

So our question is, would you like to ALWAYS get the option to click Cancel during the process of downloading all the stuff?  Keep in mind that sometimes the whole process might be as short as 5 seconds, or as long as five minutes on sloooooow networks. 

Next question for your feedback:  And then if you cancel, should we leave the existing “out of date version” of the Addin as Enabled? 

The reason we disable the “out of date version” of the addin is because we received feedback from many companies saying that they want to enforce updates within the update time window.  Unfortunately we don’t have the ability in Service Pack 1 to make the Enable/Disable feature a option for the developer (or IT department) to specify.  We’re realizing that we have far more customers from companies who aren’t as concerned about “enforcement” of updates.  Your feedback here and now will help us validate the needs of our customers.

You will be happy to hear that we are planning to include lots of enable/disable and cancel options in the next version of Visual Studio.  Your feedback today will help us craft Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008.

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