Microsoft News Tracker

David Boschman has a list of useful ASP.NET 2.0 publications. Two I have seen mentioned several places are:

• Security Practices: ASP.NET 2.0 Security Practices at a Glance
• Major Changes for Visual Web Developer 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 from Whidbey Beta 2 to RTM

He has more by following the link.

Renee Boucher Ferguson in eWeek reports Microsoft Extends Business Solutions Suite:

With the new, new “Project Green” under way, Microsoft Corp. is tapping its Windows SharePoint Services platform for additional functionality for its Microsoft Business Solutions suite.

The Redmond, Wash., company is building out functionality across its MBS product suite—which includes Great Plains, Axapta, Navision, Solomon and Microsoft CRM—that will enable users to leverage WSS’ prebuilt business process applications as a starting point for integrating components and, in a lightweight fashion, enable users to build composite applications.

The WSS applications—Microsoft announced 30 of them earlier this month—are preconfigured business process templates that encompass movable Web parts that users are able to manipulate using the WSS portal.

WSS, based on Microsoft’s .Net Framework, is complementary to Project Green in that it provides users with role-specific interfaces for tapping back-end application functionality.

Project Green was/is an attempt to unify the disparate Microsoft Business Solutions (that were acquired via acquisition) on a common code base and to cut down overlap. The 30 WSS templates are here.

Catching up with an item from earlier this month, here’s the August 2nd Microsoft press release:

Microsoft Corp. today announced the acquisition of eight .NET-based application adapters from iWay Software to be made available by Microsoft in early 2006. This acquisition reflects Microsoft’s commitment to BizTalk® Server by providing customers with a single architecture, customer support and licensing process. In addition to the adapters in Microsoft’s newly expanded portfolio, iWay and other industry partners will continue to deliver additional adapters that address the needs of enterprise customers.

“We’re committed to making Microsoft® BizTalk Server the most complete offering for our customers. Part of that commitment is providing adapters for the most commonly used line-of-business applications and technologies,” said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Business Process and Integration Division at Microsoft. “Our existing adapter partners will continue to be a critical part of our strategy to provide total connectivity in complex IT environments.”

The adapters Microsoft purchased will help BizTalk Server customers connect more easily to third-party applications from Amdocs, JD Edwards, Oracle Corp., PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems Inc. and TIBCO Software Inc. iWay customers that have purchased licenses for the .NET-based adapters will receive a license for the corresponding Microsoft adapter with the purchase of Software Assurance.

From CNET:

The software giant plans to have a “release candidate” of Visual Studio 2005 and a “community technology preview” of SQL Server 2005 at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles the week of Sept. 12–barring any production-related glitches, said Prashant Sridharan, lead product manager in Microsoft’s developer division.

Sridharan added that both products will be available to all customers on Nov. 7, the latest delivery deadline for the products.
…
Also in September, Microsoft will release the third beta for the server component of the Visual Studio Team System collaborative programming application, which will ship in the first quarter of next year, Sridharan said.

Just like he promised, Harold Wong reports that the Exchange 2003 SP2 CTP was made available for download on Friday. Get it here.