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In addition to my normal tasks, I'm now taking on the lead technical reviewer role for the Microsoft Press 'SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit' and I got my first batch of chapters today. This book contains forty-six (yes 46 !!) chapters plus appendixes and I can see that this is going to be a tremendous resource for people working with SharePoint. Furthermore, I can see that I'm going to be well maxed out over the next couple of months as I work carefully through each chapter.

Many of our customers are well excited about the SharePoint Products and Technologies and in particular Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (WSS) which allows teams to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration, benefits that help increase individual and team productivity. WSS is a component of the Windows Server 2003 information worker infrastructure and provides team services and sites to Microsoft Office System and other desktop programs. It also serves as a platform for application development. WSS can use either or a full licensable version of SQL Server or a version of the Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine 2000 (MSDE - with storage and thread limits removed). Whilst the advantages offered by full SQL Server are obvious (e.g. performance, high availability clustering), some customers will be looking to reduce license fees by avoiding SQL Server. One 'gotcha' was highlighted to me today that is worth remembering ... WSS only includes search (restricted to the one site ) when installed with SQL Server. WSS with the Desktop Engine does not include any indexing capabilities at all.

One item of news today - Microsoft announced today the beta version of its legacy integration solution, Host Integration Server 2004 which represents a significant advance for customers seeking to connect to their IBM mainframe and midrange systems in a more cost-effective, industry-standard and efficient manner. Host Integration Server 2004 will include enhanced features for securing cross-platform access and will offer improved application and data integration capabilities, giving enterprise developers and administrators a complete, seamless host integration experience.