Paul Andrew

My SharePoint Conference Talk on SharePoint Scalability

Paul Andrew — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:18:26 GMT

It's posted here: http://www.youtube.com/user/sharepointconference#p/search/0/w3bxy5UbCro

Platformer Move Left Glitch Fix

Paul Andrew — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:49:00 GMT

I have been trying out code samples on Windows Phone. The platformer game sample moves a player left and right by tilting the phone in the direction to travel. The sample code as published on 10/4/2011 has a problem where the player gets stuck when you tilt to move left until you tilt a lot and he flys over left. This happens because the collision code detects a collision with the ground tile at low speeds. Here is my update for the HandleCollisions() method which avoids the problem.

 /// <summary>
 /// Detects and resolves all collisions between the player and his neighboring
 /// tiles. When a collision is detected, the player is pushed away along one
 /// axis to prevent overlapping. There is some special logic for the Y axis to
 /// handle platforms which behave differently depending on direction of movement.
 /// </summary>
 private void HandleCollisions()
 {
 // Get the player's bounding rectangle and find neighboring tiles.
 Rectangle bounds = BoundingRectangle;
 int leftTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)bounds.Left / Tile.Width);
 int rightTile = (int)Math.Ceiling(((float)bounds.Right / Tile.Width)) - 1;
 int topTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)bounds.Top / Tile.Height);
 int bottomTile = (int)Math.Ceiling(((float)bounds.Bottom / Tile.Height)) - 1;
 
 // Reset flag to search for ground collision.
 isOnGround = false;
 
 // For each potentially colliding tile,
 for (int y = topTile; y <= bottomTile; ++y)
 {
 //
 // The y loop checks all tile rows that the player intersects with from top to bottom. The x loop checks
 // each tile that the player intersects with on that row depending on the players direction of travel.
 // The collision tests are required to go in the direction of travel so as to avoid detecting collisions
 // with the platform that the player is running on in the horizontal direction. Instead a ground
 // collision will be detected and corrected first in the vertical direction and since the player position
 // is moved back up and is no longer in line with the platform when the horizontal collision check occurs.
 // This direction of travel identification is only required because the collision correction assumes that
 // the axis to bounce the player back is the axis with the smallest overlap. This isn't always 100% true.
 //
 if (velocity.X < 0)
 for (int x = rightTile; x >= leftTile; --x)
 HandleTileCollisions(ref bounds, x, y);
 else
 for (int x = leftTile; x <= rightTile; ++x)
 HandleTileCollisions(ref bounds, x, y);
 }
 
 // Save the new bounds bottom.
 previousBottom = bounds.Bottom;
 }
 
 /// <summary>
 /// Calcualtes and corrects collisions of the player position with items on the level map. This method identifies the depth of the 
 /// collision in the x and y axis and moves the player position back to a location that would not overlap with the object it
 /// collided with. It does this in the axis with the smallest collision as a guess as to the direction the player should bounce
 /// off the object being collided with. This method does a nice job of having common code for collisions regardless of the
 /// direction of travel on the axis as one way is +ve and the other is -ve.
 /// </summary>
 /// <param name="bounds">the bounding rectabgle in pixels for the player sprite as calculated by the GetBoundingRectangle property</param>
 /// <param name="x">the x location of the tile on the map in the range 0 - 19</param>
 /// <param name="y">the y location of the tile on the map in the range 0 - 14</param>
 void HandleTileCollisions(ref Rectangle bounds, int x, int y)
 {
 // put the code in here from within the for loop in the original HandleCollisions() method
 }

System Reset, Hello World Windows Phone Development

Paul Andrew — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:02:36 GMT

On Monday this week I just started a new job on the planning and strategy team in the Windows Phone division at Microsoft. I’ll be working on the developer platform for the team and the work will likely be a lot of research, analysis and coding. Right now, I’m brand new to phone development so I’m trying to learn as much about writing phone apps ASAP. I am also very much looking forward to all the new stuff I have to learn.

I have really enjoyed my time working in the SharePoint team. It’s a great team with really good people and a fantastic product. I hope a lot more people will get good value from all of the technical content that I’ve been involved in for SharePoint. Thank you to all the people I’ve worked with in the SharePoint community. The SharePoint MVPs have been really great to work with especially and I’ve made lots of friends from this group.

This will be somewhat of a reset for me. This is not SharePoint, and it’s not Windows Workflow Foundation that I worked on before that. So, I’m looking to collect pointers to guides for trying out all the things available to developers of Windows Phone apps. I’ll publish what I learn and some Windows Phone developer getting started references as I go. If you have a favourite code sample on Windows Phone, please send me a link!!

Video published of the Full Farm Failover demo in the SharePoint 2011 Conference Keynote

Paul Andrew — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 05:02:07 GMT

You can watch the demo that I worked on here: http://www.mssharepointconference.com/pages/keynote.aspx

Skip through to 42 minutes to see the 10 minute demo.

Watch as SharePoint 2010 handles the network cable to the SQL Server being disconnected and fails over to a secondary SQL Server machine thanks to SQL "Denali" Always On.

SharePoint Scalability Report and the SharePoint Conference 2011 Keynote Demo

Paul Andrew — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:45:00 GMT

We just published the Scale Test Report for Very Large Scale Document Repositories on Technet. This is all the details of the scale tests we did to help support the increases that we made in the SharePoint Limits and Boundaries document.

The first keynote demo at the SharePoint Conference 2011 used the same SharePoint farm and we've spent the last 3 weeks setting it up with SQL Server "Denali" CTP 3 for the conference.

Alternate link to the paper as the LinkId is currently broken:http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27573

New SharePoint 2010 Implementers Courseware, Two Courses: Internet Sites Implementers and Enterprise Content Management Implementers

Paul Andrew — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:00:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce that TechNet have published two new Training Courses for Implementing SharePoint Solutions. Each of these courses contains 15 modules representing 5 days of instructor led training and each module includes video lessons, hands on labs, and a quiz.

SharePoint Enterprise Content Management Implementers Course

This course teaches implementers how to leverage features in SharePoint Server to implement an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system. ECM systems are designed to manage large amounts of content, including content in the form of documents and content in pages, wiki libraries, blog posts, and other types of non-document content. Document management is the heart of ECM. Document management in SharePoint Server consists of a rich feature set that includes tight integration to Microsoft Office client applications, standard version-control features, and innovative features that allow SharePoint Server to bridge the gap between a folder-based mindset of the typical user and the metadata-based mindset of a records manager. This course develops the key skills that are necessary to deploy SharePoint Server for ECM solutions at organizations of any size. Larger organizations should start with this course and supplement it with expertise in large-scale ECM implementations, whereas medium and smaller organizations may find all they need in this course to implement their systems successfully.

SharePoint for Internet Sites Implementers Course

This course describes how to implement and brand a SharePoint based public web site using SharePoint web content management (WCM). Once the course is completed, you will be able to implement a SharePoint deployment of a branded web site with structured content management. You will also be able to successfully plan, deploy, monitor, and maintain an Internet site on SharePoint. No development experience is required, but experience with HTML and CSS is recommended.

New Demos of SharePoint 2010 web site capabilities

Paul Andrew — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:36:16 GMT

We have two new demos of SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites capability demos.

The first one shows a SharePoint 2010 based web site that includes search, web analytics, social networking integration, and web content management.

http://www.demomate.com/content/SharePoint/SharePoint_2010_Customer_Engagement_Demo.html

The second one shows the same web site, calling out additional search features, showing a mobile view of the site, and showing integration with WebTrends.

http://www.demomate.com/content/SharePoint/SharePoint_2010_Customer_Engagement_2.html

For more information about SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites see: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/internetsites/Pages/Home.aspx

Articles about Scaling SharePoint to Large Content Database Capacity

Paul Andrew — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:46:38 GMT

Today we announced new scalability limits for SharePoint content databases. SharePoint 2010 implementations can make use of scale up and scale out. Scale up means increasing hardware resources available so that the software can do more. Scale out means increasing the number of servers that you are loading up and for SharePoint this also means increasing the number of SharePoint Content Databases that you work with.

With the new content database capacity limits we have guidance for scaling up with SharePoint and using more hardware resources:

Read the detail about SharePoint 2010 and Remote Blob Storage

Paul Andrew — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:28:00 GMT

What is Remote Blog Storage (RBS) and what can it do for me? View the second part of this SharePoint Team Blog article.

Additional articles on RBS with SharePoint 2010:

It's also important to note that using an RBS provider, whether the Microsoft one or a third party one, does not increase the data size scalability of SharePoint. All the limits numbers apply whether your data is all in SQL Server or if BLOBs are moved out using an RBS povider. Although there are many benefits of RBS providers, they do not break through the SharePoint supported content database size limits.

Announcing: New Larger Content Database Size Limits and RBS Clarifications

Paul Andrew — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:06:55 GMT

Today we are updating the SharePoint Boundaries and Limits document on TechNet with larger content database size limits and we are clarifying the value in Remote Blob Storage (RBS). With these changes to the SharePoint software boundaries the discussion of scale limits moves to other areas such as appropriate hardware, SQL Server configuration, disk IO bandwidth, planning and pre-production testing.

Full details are on the SharePoint team blog here. Key changes:

The 200 GB content database size limit is being increased to 4 TB with new requirements and considerations to help customers successfully scale to larger storage sizes. The old 200 GB content database size limit is still supported with no additional requirements for consistency.
For document center and records center site templates with more strict requirements outlined in the Boundaries and Limits document there is no explicit content database size limit.
All known issues with large content database sizes are detailed in the boundaries and limits document. This empowers customers to make their own decisions about how to implement their systems.
We are clarifying that Remote Blob Storage (RBS) does not offer a way to increase the SharePoint content database size limits. The content database supported size limits apply to the sum of data stored in SQL Server plus data stored outside of SQL Server using an RBS provider. A description and the value of RBS is detailed in the team blog post.
The Microsoft SQL Server FILESTREAM RBS provider is now supported allowing for iSCSI connections to lower cost NAS storage. The SQL Server RBS provider is one option for RBS use with SharePoint and there are a number of ISV’s who also have RBS providers.

As part of the work required to increase these limits we have completed scale lab testing with a SharePoint farm with two content databases with a total of 30 TB of data across 120 million items. A report on this scale lab will be published in the near future.

Feel free to post a comment on this blog if you have any questions about this and I'll answer them.

My Favourite SharePoint 2010 Scalability Articles

Paul Andrew — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:35:38 GMT

The scalability test results for SharePoint large scale document management is here.

The SharePoint 2010 support boundaries and limits document is here.

New RBS whitepaper just published

Paul Andrew — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 05:11:57 GMT

RBS is an add-in technology for SharePoint that stores large binary data such as word documents outside of the primary SQL database. It is useful to move some of this data onto less expensive storage media.

A new paper on Remote Blob Storage (RBS) has just been published which is really helpful in understanding it.

Get the paper here.

Referenced from this SQL Server page.

And it was authored by these guys.

Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services (VSEWSS) v1.3 Released

Paul Andrew — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:25:03 GMT

The VSeWSS v1.3 is now released and is available for download here. You should uninstall the VSeWSS 1.3 CTP and install this version. There is no difference to the project file format so Visual Studio 2008 projects using the VSeWSS format should not require any upgrading from the CTP.

The tools are available in 9 languages including English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), and Chinese (Traditional). They are intended to be used with the Visual Studio 2008 install of the same language.

Please note: These are the development tools for SharePoint 2007 and require Visual Studio 2008. The development tools for SharePoint 2010 are included with Visual Studio 2010. You can upgrade your VSeWSS projects to Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 using an upgrade tool available here.

New features in v1.3 over the v1.2 are:

Runs on x64 bit machines
Fast deployment commands
WSP View improvements
Command line build support
Solution Generator supports Publishing Sites
New RootFiles templates
Web part rename assistance
CopyLocal support for adding dependent DLLs
Conflict resolution dialog for deployments

These features were all available in the CTP. More details of the new features, and other important installation tips are in the release notes on the download page. Please review the release notes.

The best place to get assistance in using VSeWSS 1.3 is in the SharePoint 2007 Development MSDN Forum.

New SPDisposeCheck release available

Paul Andrew — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:26:50 GMT

I've been working on the SPDisposeCheck tool with a few other guys and we've just finished a new release. You will find lots more information about the new release at Roger Lamb's blog.

Live Chats to Learn more about SharePoint with the MVP Experts

Paul Andrew — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 04:10:44 GMT

The ever popular MVP chats are back. Cross posting from here.

Do you have questions about SharePoint? Want to learn more about the recently launched SharePoint 2010? By popular request, SharePoint MVPs from around the world are participating in a live chat event about SharePoint. These Q&A events are a great opportunity to tap into the vast knowledge of these industry professionals who are regarded as the best in their field.

Please join us on Wednesday Sept 29th at 9am PDT or noon EST. Learn more and add these chats to your calendar by visiting the MSDN event page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx

VSeWSS Import Tool Released

Paul Andrew — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:49:05 GMT

We completed and published the SharePoint VSeWSS Import tool. This tool is an add-in to Visual Studio 2010 and it adds a new SharePoint project template for importing a VSeWSS project.

VSeWSS or the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services are the Microsoft tools for creating SharePoint 2007 projects on Visual Studio 2008. In Visual Studio 2010 we have built in tools for creating SharePoint 2010 projects. This import tool takes a VSeWSS project that is targetted at SharePoint 2007 and migrates it to Visual Studio 2010 where it is targetted at SharePoint 2010.

The import tool is distributed as source code so you will need to compile it before using it. There's a batch file provided for this and you just need Visual Studio 2010 installed and to run the batch file.

The import tool works at the project level, not the solution level. So if you have a solution with multiple projects you will need to import them one by one and get them all going.

Love my new Microsoft arc mouse

Paul Andrew — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:18:00 GMT

I just got a new Microsoft arc mouse and I really like it. I'm down in New Orleans this week for TechEd USA so using it on random surfaces at the event and in my hotel and it's been working great. I also like how the wireless works when presenting, unlike my previous mouse which would get overloaded with all the attendeed WIFI traffic making it unusable when presenting. The design is very appealing to me with the magnetic hold for the transceiver and the steel hinge to close it which also turns it off.

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=112

My new favourite travel mouse. My last favourite was this one but I would not use that in my office because it's too small.

Benign OWSTimer unhandled exception popup – System.Security.Cryptographic.CryptographicException

Paul Andrew — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:58:52 GMT

Have you seen this popup exception message from the Visual Studio Just-In-Time (JIT) Debugger?

Here’s the resulting event log error:

An unhandled exception occurred and the process was terminated.

Application ID: DefaultDomain

Process ID: 6148

Exception: System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException

Message: Keyset does not exist

StackTrace: at System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException.ThrowCryptogaphicException(Int32 hr)

at System.Security.Cryptography.SafeProvHandle._FreeCSP(IntPtr pProvCtx)

at System.Security.Cryptography.SafeProvHandle.ReleaseHandle()

at System.Runtime.InteropServices.SafeHandle.InternalFinalize()

at System.Runtime.InteropServices.SafeHandle.Dispose(Boolean disposing)

at System.Runtime.InteropServices.SafeHandle.Finalize()

If you see this error message from SharePoint 2010 you can relax, nothing bad is happening. When SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 are both installed on the same machine you may see this error every 24 hours. This occurs when the OWSTimer service has a regular process recycle and in the shutdown of the old process an exception is raised. The exception doesn’t interfere with the normal process shutdown and recycle and is only ever seen if you have a JIT debugger installed on the machine. You should never see this error on a production SharePoint 2010 server, because you should not be installing Visual Studio 2010 on those servers. You can safely ignore these exceptions and close the window, or leave it there. You actually cannot debug the process, because it will already have been closed by the time you click the button and start your debugger.

You can avoid the popup exception message entirely by disabling JIT debugging on your machine. Bear in mind this will disable JIT debugging for all applications on the machine.

To configure the server to no longer show a dialog when an unhandled exception occurs, use the registry editor to delete the following registry keys:

· HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug\Debugger

· HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgManagedDebugger

On a 64-bit operating system also delete the following registry keys:

· HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug\Debugger

· HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgManagedDebugger

More details on JIT Debugging are at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5hs4b7a6(VS.80).aspx

VSeWSS cannot be used on a SharePoint farm installation

Paul Andrew — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:58:16 GMT

I saw a call stack today from an attempt to use VSeWSS 1.3 on a SharePoint 2007 farm installation. VSeWSS is the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It requires WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 and also Visual Studio 2008. The SharePoint installation needs to be standalone and not part of a farm. If you install on a machine that is part of a farm here is a likely call stack from an exception during deployment of a simple web part.

[DATE] [TIME]    Error
System.InvalidOperationException: Feature 'XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX' is not installed in this farm, and can not be added to this scope.
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Tools.Reflection.ReflectionUtility.InvokeMethod(MethodBase method, Object instance, Object[] parameters)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Tools.Reflection.ReflectionUtility.InvokeMethod(Type type, String methodName, Object instance, Object[] parameters)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Tools.SharePointProxies.SPProxy.InvokeMethod(String name, Object[] parameters)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Tools.SharePointProxies.SPFeatureCollectionProxy.Add(Guid id)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Tools.SharePointProxies.SPSiteFacade.AddFeature(String url, Guid id)
   at VSeWSS.Server.Services.SPService.AddSiteFeature(String url, Guid id)

Getting Started with SharePoint 2010 Development

Paul Andrew — Wed, 12 May 2010 17:15:56 GMT

We just published an online course for developers to learn about SharePoint 2010. This is updated for RTM. If you have some experience developing with .NET then you can learn SharePoint. The course includes:

10 modules introducing developers to SharePoint 2010
55 short instructional and demonstration demos
Hands on labs that you can download or try online with MSDN Virtual Labs
Test your skills quiz’s
Code samples for each module

If you want to run the Hands on Labs on your own machine we have instructions for installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7. Or you can download a SharePoint 2010 hyper-v virtual machine that can be used with the Hands on Labs.

SharePoint 2010 Developer Virtual Labs Online

Paul Andrew — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:55:17 GMT

Three new MSDN Virtual Labs are live running SharePoint Server 2010 and Visual Studio 2010. You can work on these labs and learn SharePoint 2010 development without having to install SharePoint 2010 or Visual Studio 2010 on your machine. All you need is a web browser that can support our remote desktop ActiveX control and you can run these labs on our servers.

MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a Visual Web Part in Visual Studio 2010

After completing this lab, you will be better able to work with existing Web Parts and Linq and also you will be more familiar with connecting two web parts.

MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a BCS External Content Type with Visual Studio 2010

After completing this lab, you will be better able to build a BCS External content type, create a Business Data Catalog Model project, configure the External Content Type for offline use, and open the list using Outlook.

MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing SharePoint 2010 user interface with Silverlight in Visual Studio 2010

After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a basic Silverlight application that displays a SharePoint list inside a datagrid and deploy the Silverlight application to SharePoint, and also create a Silverlight application that displays SharePoint list data in a graph using the Silverlight Graphing controls.

Installing Scanner Drivers for my Networked Canon MP980

Paul Andrew — Sun, 02 May 2010 03:21:00 GMT

I really like my Canon MP980 scanner. It scans 35mm negatives nicely and I can go to it anytime and scan a document which I can direct to any PC at home. But it’s really hard to install the drivers. And I tend to reinstall OS’s a lot. I’m using Windows 7 32 bit.

(1) Download the files needed from Canon for the MP980 Drivers Page.

You will need:

MP980 series MP Driver Ver. 1.03 for Network (Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000)
mp980swinns103en.exe
MP Navigator EX Ver. 2.03 (Windows 7/7 x64/Vista/Vista64/XP/2000)
mpnexwin203ej.exe

(2) Run the driver installer mp980swinns103.exe. Even if you’re logged on as Administrator it will fail saying you need to be a member of the Administrators group. Do not dismiss the error dialog.

Now locate the installer files at C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp\mp980swinns103en where [username] is your login name.

You’ll see MSETUP4.EXE, don’t use this, instead go to the WIN subdirectory. Right click on the MSETUP4.EXE there and choose Troubleshoot Compatibility. Choose Troubleshoot Program. Choose it ran on a previous version and that it needs more permissions. Choose that it ran on Windows XP SP3.

The installer should now run. It needed to restart in the middle of installing and it failed a couple of times and I just chose try again.

Choose Cancel on Network Setup of the Card Slot, then I seem to have to continue it, but just remember you can’t get rid of the drive once it’s mapped. I’m trying to avoid this drive mapping since I think it is causing Explorer hangs.

(3) Run the scanner software installer mpnexwin203ej.exe.

I don’t seem to need any of the other software downloads to scan or print.

Software should be simpler.

-- Update I'm running Windows 7 x64 now --

I have a new machine with 8GB RAM and so I have to use Windows 7 x64. The 32 bit OS can't access more than 4GB of RAM.

I've found that the Canon drivers now refuse to install if I set compatibilty to XP SP3 so my previous install trick doesn't work any more.

I got it working again by logging out from my domain joined account, which is in the administrators group, and logging in as the machine administrator.

I added the My Printer application this time as well so the download files are:

mp980swin64ns103en.exe - this is the 64 bit network printer and scanner driver, it's the second driver on canon's list

mpnexwin203ej.exe - this is MPNavigatorEX which let's you work with the scanner

mypwin250en.exe - this is My Printer which gives you access to printer settings and ink levels

Error occurred in deployment step – moving a workflow project to a new SharePoint 2010 machine

Paul Andrew — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:54:11 GMT

If you get your first SharePoint 2010 workflow project from someone else, chances are you don’t have a Workflow History list on your SharePoint machine. This will result in this error message when you try to deploy the workflow from within Visual Studio 2010.

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Activate Features’: Failed to create workflow association ‘WorkflowProject1 – Workflow1’. Cannot find SharePoint list with name “Workflow History” or GUID “4eac61bf-6b3b-4f7d-b73c-f073ccc4364d”.

The easiest way to resolve this error is to start a new instance of Visual Studio 2010. Create a new SharePoint 2010 Workflow project and step through the wizard. During the create project wizard it will create the Workflow History list and you can then deploy the project you got from someone else.

This product requires Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 or above

Paul Andrew — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:53:00 GMT

You can download SharePoint Foundation 2010 now.

The download page says it works on Windows 7 Enterprise; Windows 7 Professional; Windows 7 Ultimate; Windows Server 2008 R2; Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2; Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

If you try on Windows 7 or Windows Vista you get this error dialog.

Setup Errors

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):
This product requires Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 or above.
Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.

There is an article on MSDN which describes installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 that I helped write. It is now up to date for the final release of SharePoint 2010.

The reason for the error is that SharePoint 2010 is only intended for use on Windows 7 and Windows Vista by developers. Production uses should use Windows Server,

Using BCS from Visual Studio 2010 for deployment to SharePoint Foundation 2010

Paul Andrew — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:59:00 GMT

Business Connectivity Services is the new version of the SharePoint 2007 technology called Business Data Catalog. The base of this technology is now available in SharePoint Foundation 2010 which is the free version of SharePoint. This means you can build an External Content Type in Visual Studio 2010 and deploy it to SharePoint Foundation 2010 and the code in the External Content Type retrieves the data which is then shown in a standard SharePoint list.

Great technology. I wanted to link to the trick to making the External Content Type deploy from Visual Studio 2010 to SharePoint Foundation 2010 which doesn't affect SharePoint Server 2010.