http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2004/12/26/332467.aspx 

This post outlines how to consume web services within a data view web part without writing any code at all (well, ok.. XSLT might be considered code.. but at least you don't have to break out Visual Studio :-) )

NOTE: He is using frontpage to accomplish this... make sure that you heed his advice on creating the part on a page that is not one of your default pages (as it will unghost it).. You can build the parts in a dev environment and then export them and import them onto the pages that you want to put them on in production. this allows you to work around the nasty problem Frontpage has with un-ghosting pages

Hope that helps, I have had more than one person ask me about Web Services in SharePoint !

I know I was excited to see this released on Scott Guthrie's Blog

Microsoft has released the source code for thier built in ASP.NET Providers that ship with the product. I can't tell you how many folks I have seen try to get thier brains around how to implement a custom provider only to give up. Having these as examples to work from gives us a GREAT reference architecture for building the custom providers that will allow us to benefit from the ASP.NET 2.0 enhancements that we were told would make our lives so much easier !

Enjoy !!

Got some more information onthis feature from the SharePoint Team Blog

This is one of the most exciting features of the next version of ShrePoint that has not been evangelized much from what I can tell. I think this feature will allow organizations to present information in thier portal from MANY different line of business apllications and allow users to mix and match the information the way they need to.

It also allows Administrators to associate business data with users of the portal for use in custom web parts. Way Way Cool... Can't wait to get my hands on it !

We are kicking off a group project to build Business Intelligence Dashboards using Microsoft SharePoint as our Application Platform. I am excited to work through a project with our members and hopefully get into some of the reasons why you have to think through the project and what the various steps of the process will be.

I'd like to use some of the up front IA Minded processes that we are adopting here at Geniant and see how this process will help us design a better system overall.

A couple of Geniant Folks gave a presentation to our internal group on Web 2.0 and emerging patterns in design. I missed the meeting (unfortunately) but they posted the slide deck. I found it of interest by itself !

Enjoy !

I found this article quite some time back when I was investigating MSN desktop search for a company I was working for at the time. Due to the branding, etc... they didn't want to implement.

Now that Desktop Search has been released, I have installed it and found it to be quite useful. I thought I would try the shortcuts outlined in Mark's article to see if they work in the current version of Desktop Search. Sure enough they do. If you type:

@sps,http://my-portal/search.aspx?k=$w into your desktop search bar, you can then type "sps search term goes here" and search for something in your intranet portal located at http://my-portal (of course if your portal name is different, you will have to replace it from the example :-) )

@google,

Alan Josephson turned me on to this project by the Patterns & Practices team at Microsoft. I have been a big proponent of the P&P's Application Blocks and Guidance. This is an AWESOME project that will give developers a reference architecture when building SmartClient Applications.

I Love this Stuff :-)

I have used MSn Seach of and on for a while. My only complaint before was the branding of the tool with MSN. From a corporate perspective, this didn't set well with some clients.

Microsoft has released Windows Desktop Search as the corporate version of their desktop search tool. This tool can be pushed out with Group Policy settings, etc. Finally, a desktop search tool I can recommend to clients. It's awesome. You can also configure custom search sources to search your intranet portal, your profile database in SharePoint, etc... too cool.

Windows Desktop Search
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/enterprise/downloads.mspx#EBB

Administrators Guide
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows/sear ...

Microsoft posted this benchmark test on performance differences between using SQL 2000 vs 2005 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

One thing I would note is that they are using 64bit platform for the SQL Server. Due to the performance enhancements in 2005 to take advantage of the 64bit capabilites, I can see how quite a lot of the performance difference is more efficient use of the hardware. Compelling reason to upgrade if you can !

I had installed this way and did some limited testing. i thought it was faster but I had not taken time to do any scientific testing :-)

Steve