Microsoft

New Solution Packages Enable Commercial Edition Customers to Get Up to Speed Faster

DotNetNuke Corp., the company behind the most widely adopted Web Content Management Platform for Microsoft .NET, introduced support for two innovative new products from Microsoft: WebMatrix and Razor. New adopters of DotNetNuke with limited technical experience can take advantage of the WebMatrix development environment to efficiently build their web site. More experienced developers can leverage the deep DotNetNuke integration with Razor to more quickly and easily create powerful extensions for the DotNetNuke platform. Version 5.6 of DotNetNuke also now includes a Configuration Manager feature which simplifies web site administrative tasks. In addition, the new DotNetNuke Solution Packages enable customers to get up to speed faster and take full advantage of the commercial editions of DotNetNuke.

Highlights:

• Available today is deep integration of the new Razor scripting syntax which Microsoft launched at CodeMash last week. Supported as a core aspect of the DotNetNuke platform, Razor enables developers to quickly and easily create custom extensions for their DotNetNuke web site or web application.
• Through support of WebMatrix, new adopters of DotNetNuke with limited technical experience can now take advantage of the WebMatrix development environment to efficiently build web sites.
• DotNetNuke 5.6.1 features a new Configuration Manager that allows a host user to manage the various configuration files that control the run-time operation of DotNetNuke. Administrators can now select the desired configuration file and load it into a multi-line textbox in a web browser where modifications can be made manually and changes can be saved where they will take effect immediately. Administrators can also upload a Configuration Merge script which can be used to automate many of the more repetitive and complex configuration operations.
  

Yesterday, I received an email from SilverStripe Co-Founder, Sigurd Magnusson. For all the years I have been corresponding with Sigurd, I don't think I've ever seen him as excited as he was this time in breaking the news. SilverStripe, a web development company delivering open source content management systems (CMS) has achieved Certification for Windows Server 2008 R2 for version 2.4.0 of their flagship product, SilverStripe CMS. This is a world first, as the software is the only truly open source web application to achieve certification on the Windows platform.

What is a little different about this story is that it is not only SilverStripe's press relations people making a big deal about this story. Microsoft is making a big deal about the accomplishments of SilverStripe. Andrew Gordan, Microsoft's New Zealand’s Platform Strategy Manager writes:

A large amount of the innovation in the software world is happening on the web and in the cloud, and in addition to that, we are seeing increased awareness and acceptance of open source software on the Microsoft Windows platforms.

Microsoft's Certified for Windows programs are well known for indicating software and hardware products that have been thoroughly tested to work well on Microsoft Windows and as of today, SilverStripe CMS is the first Open Source web application to complete the comprehensive testing necessary to achieve "Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2" status.

In his own blog post, Sigurd mentions that the certification for SilverStripe has been a long but rewarding road. A large proportion of the SilverStirpe's  community and clients use Microsoft servers, databases, and other technology. Over the past three years there an effort has been made for the SilverStripe CMS to work with Microsoft's operating system, web servers, and SQL Server database product.

A few days ago, I read Mary Jo Foley's article titled Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted. According to an interview with the President of the Server and Tools Division at Microsoft, the company will be shifting support for Silverlight away from the PC and Mac desktop and toward the phone market.

So what’s a developer to make of Microsoft’s messaging (or lack thereof) about Silverlight at its premiere developer conference?

I asked Bob Muglia, the Microsoft President in charge of the company’s server and tools business, that very question and got what I consider to be the clearest answer yet about how Microsoft is evolving its Silverlight strategy.

“Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone,” he said. Silverlight also has some “sweet spots” in media and line-of-business applications, he said.

But when it comes to touting Silverlight as Microsoft’s vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime, “our strategy has shifted,” Muglia told me.

Microsoft plans to be using HTML 5 to replace the functions currently being provided by Silverlight 5.

It is not the point of this post to debate the merits of HTML 5, Silverlight and even Flash. What is my point though, is that Microsoft appears to me to be desperate. Desperate to come up with a strategic plan that will carry them beyond the day of Windows PCs. Microsoft is desperate to become innovative for the sake of innovation that they're really confusing a lot of their developers. If only after a few years of support, Microsoft is shifting focus of it's Silverlight platform...what potential developer in his or her right mind would support another future Microsoft endeavor? Just take a look at the comments to Bob Muglia's blog post discussing this topic and I think you'll see my point.

Below is a consolidated list of content migration tool I have come across, and most of this are primarily for content migration to SharePoint Platform.

(1) MetaLogix

https://www.quest.com/metalogix/

SharePoint Site Migration Manager- For migrating content from SPS 2003 to SharePoint 2007 Platform

Web Content Migration Manager for SharePoint - For migrating content from various below listed platforms to SharePoint 2007:

Barb Mosher has written a great summary at CMS Wire on Google's new Sites API which allows content owners to move content in and out Google Sites. As Mosher points out, this new API and some additional tools will allow content owners to "pull stuff out of SharePoint and place it into Google Sites" which is sure to bring "real heat between Redmond and Mountain View" in their quest for customers.

Until now, content and data inside Google Sites stayed inside Google Sites. And there was no easy way to migrate additional content and data into it. With the introduction of the Google Sites Data API, that has changed.

The API support almost all of the functionality currently available within Google Sites including:

• Retrieve, create, modify, and delete pages and content.
• Upload/download attachments.
• Review the revision history across a site.
• Display recent user activity.

Which brings us to the point. With these new capabilities, you can now not only move data out of Google Sites, but you can move data into Google Sites and possibly out of other similar applications, like SharePoint.

Whether Google Sites and the new API will be a threat to Microsoft and SharePoint is questionable. But, once again I think these type of events emphasize that those content management systems that get the most attention from us these days are those applications that open up and work with other third party applications.

There is a reason why such topics as CMIS, open source, and API are in the spotlight with folks interested in content management. No one really wants to be stuck with a vendor that doesn't play well with others. It just strategically isn't a good idea to have your content controlled by a single vendor, so why do it? I suppose I'm rhetorically asking that question to both customers and vendors. 

Those that have followed my blogs over the years know full well that I'm operating system neutral. At work I use Windows and Linux right next to each other. At home my family uses a mix of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux PCs. I have my likes and dislikes with each operating system. I don't drink the kool aid with any of the systems as I'm not easily impressed with what I see.

Working for a large organization, it should be no surprise to all that my workplace is going down the SharePoint path for its "enterprise software" solution. What may be surprising to some is that SharePoint confuses me.

I found a great list on the blog/news section for the ocPortal CMS, 10 IE compatibility problems that you might not have realized. While the post is related to ocPortal, the Internet Explorer compatibility issues likely will apply to any CMS viewed by the browser.

I forgot who sent the tweet on Twitter but I was pointed to some very interesting research (2005) posted at the Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge site.

Microsoft vs. Open Source: Who Will Win?

Using formal economic modelling, professors Pankaj Ghemawat and Ramon Casadesus-Masanell consider the competitive dynamics of the software wars between Microsoft and open source.

Work is currently underway to provide an extension so that SilverStripe can run on Microsoft SQL Server 2008.  The SilverStripe module allowing for this connection to the SQL Server is currently still being developed, but the alpha version according to Sigurd Magnusson does work.