Why use (local) or “.” as a SQL Server Name

You learn something new every day I suppose and I was taught something today that was complete news to me. Keep in mind I'm not exactly a database expert, so for those DBAs out there you can go ahead a stop reading now. I've used (local) or a period as the server name in connection strings and thought it was just a simple way of forcing usage of the local machine name. I guess that's true in part, but there's more. Using either of these tells SQL to use Shared Memory and does not require that either Named Pipes or TCP/IP protocols to be enabled. It's probably not much use in a production environment, but great for developing on local SQL instances.

Let me know if you find this useful, as I'd like to know if I'm the only SQL dummy out there.

Chris

2007 Product Launch

We finally did it, by that I mean launched our 2007 product line. At least from a technical perspective anyway. We now have to refocus a lot of efforts on the marketing side of everything as it's, as we aren't fortunate enough to have a marketing engine as big as Microsoft's. We started the process of building our 2007 products way back in August of 2005 when Microsoft invited us to participate in the Office "12" Technology Adoption Program. Since that time we've built several prototypes two alphas, two betas and a couple release candidates on our way to finishing on February 5^th. This has been by far the biggest software project I've ever been involved with and by far the most satisfying. We finished the final project plan back in early August, set for a release date of February 5^th in which we actually hit. There were a lot of long days and nights, and I can tell you I must be the most blessed man alive to have the privilege of getting to lead the team I have. These folks worked day and night many times especially the last 30 days or so, as they were as determined as I was to hit our date.

So what does a company like ours do when they finish a product this big? Well of course the first thing we do is throw a party, actually two parties. The night of release there was four of us left at the office finishing the final details and we actually were complete at 9pm, which is much better than the midnight I was figuring it would be. Three of the four of us went for a frosty beverage and dinner, while Darrin had to make his way back to Springfield, IL that night so he passed.

On Thursday we had a big happy hour party at Growler's Pub, the official KnowledgeLake bar and grill. Most of the team made it plus pretty much the rest of this organization. Friday night I threw a party (or should I say my wife threw a party) at my house for the development team, which basically meant an excuse for a bunch of nerds to play pool, throw darts, sing karaoke and play guitar hero. Of course we ate too much and polished off a bunch of the finest St. Louis brew (Schlafly's).

So what happens now? The first order of business for our team is to finish Capture Server, which we had scheduled to be two weeks behind the rest of the products. We are pushing it three weeks as we pretty much drained that team dry to have them help us finish Imaging, Capture and Connect. So if you are waiting for this, it will RTM on the 26^th and be ready for download on March 5^th. The other big thing we have to get done is our new Web Site, which should be launching about the same time as Capture Server. This will really mark the beginning of our marketing campaign as we don't want to pump up things too much until we have a nice sleek place for everyone to see demos and download the literature. After that you'll be able to find us at most major shows this year, so if you plan on going to events such as AIIM, Tech Ed, WPC or SharePoint Connections be sure to stop by and say hello.

Regards,

Chris

If you install FrontPage before SharePoint…

You will encounter some strange security problems such as not being able to get to your sites without using the page name. Okay, let me slow down here, we've been testing our software on so many different SharePoint configurations these last few weeks, I've seen just about every stupid thing that can possible happen. The problem I encountered was when installing IIS on Windows 2003, the FrontPage option is selected. This sets up FrontPage Extensions on the Default Web Site, and maps some of the sub directories (vti_bin in my case) to application pools created by FrontPage Extensions. When you extend your Web Application to the Default Web Site, this virtual directory will not be changed.

Is it okay to just access the pages? In my opinion, the answer is no. This puts these directories into a potentially insecure of application pool and one subject to even possible deletion later on as administrators will eventually realize they are not necessary. Also, since application pools should be pre determined accounts with limited rights, you should put the entire SharePoint site under one application pool.

Here are some things you can do to prevent this from happening:

• The obvious one is not to install FrontPage Extensions.
  
• Delete the Default Web Site before extending it.
  
• Don't use the Default Web Site as a SharePoint site, but create a new one on a new port.
  

I hope this ends up helping someone at some point, and my apologies for the lack of detail, I'm writing this in a major hurry while it's on my mind.

Regards,

Chris