Hi Again WSUS Admins!

Not sure if you noticed in todays' release yet, but by popular demand, we are pleased to announce the addition of recommended updates to be made available to WSUS servers from Microsoft.  

Today, Tuesday, April 25th, two recommended updates were made available including the Windows Desktop Search 2.6.5 for XP and Windows 2003, and the Update Rollup for Windows XP Media Center 2005 for Media Center 2005.  Both are classified as updates.  To synch recommended updates from Microsoft Update servers, be sure to check the updates classification under synchronization options in the WSUS server admin UI. 

Cheers - Bobbie

Are you at MMS this week?

If so, we'd love to hear your impressions of the WSUS presentations.

It's going to be real code up there - no PowerPoint fakery, or mock-up vaporware.  And yes, we even know about one particular semi-random crash.  We're hoping we get him a fix this week before he stands before the hordes, but... This brings me back to the previous post topic of MMC.  The crash he may hit is due to MMC shutting down views - we didn't handle OnShutdown correctly. 

Which is better?  Hitting a crash in a demo you know about - or the one you didn't? Well, of course we're hoping he won't hit it all, but forewarned is forearmed... (and don't start me on jokes about horses with infinite numbers of legs.)

If Craig hits the crash during the presentation - tell him "Hello from the Devs!" for us, and don't snicker too loudly, okay?

As promised, some thoughts on one of the key technologies used in the next version of WSUS's UI.  I'll try to key the titles with "Developers' Blog" - you can skip over the "color commentary" if you just want "How do I use WSUS" and "What's coming?"  I'm pointedly trying to avoid revealing new features - Bobbie gets to do that sort of thing.

When we started working on plans for WSUS 3.0, the development team had a choice to make.  Did we continue the HTML administration site, or make a break and go to something Win32 based? 

On the plus side for HTML, we had a great looking site (if it ain't broke, don't fix it) and administering a remote server was no additional development effort. 

On the downside: we had Javascript to support; XML generation; the HTML itself was so dynamic that WYSIWYG editors weren't much help; and none had readily available end-to-end compilers that helped us debug data transformations.  By the time we went from C# to XML to HTML and Javascript - a single bad code change was really hard to find.  This set of technologies were also responsible for performance issues as customers scaled up their deployments.  Using the existing UI, the administrator's view of the server was "stateless."  Every time you navigated to a different page, we had to generate everything from scratch.  You couldn't benefit from querying a list of updates on the server - then refer back to them later on.  Sort the list of updates? We had to query the server again for the updates, sort them, generate the XML, transform the XML to HTML... You get the idea... Changes in the dev team also meant we'd lost a lot of the great expertise in the existing technologies.  The developer responsible for much of the fantastic "look & feel" of the WSUS 3 UI is from the original dev team - you'll have him to thank for a tool that looks good beyond being functional.

So... Win32. 

(To Be Continued...  Hey, I've got code to write.  MMS is just around the corner, you know.  We're trying to avoid sending the presenter with a bunch of cardboard cut-outs and a sock puppet.  Send us feedback - Bobbie says you like to hear from developers, so here I am.)

I've promised Bobbie that I'll try to get into the community a little more, and give the Developers' point of view. 

My name is Matthew Wetmore, and I've been with Microsoft a little over ten years.

I was a Unix geek, and came to Microsoft when a recruiter responded to my complaints about various technologies with "So, you want to come fix it, then?"  My passion these days is finding great technologies, and helping them become more accessible for end-users.

If you search back through old newsgroups, you'll see my background in the Windows Installer (the "DLL Hell" problem space,) and Group Policy (the Group Policy Management Console - GPMC).

I joined the Windows Server Update Services team late in the SUS WUS WSUS 2.0 cycle to work on reporting features and the server API re-design.  I'll initially talk about some of the technologies being used, and after plans/features finalize and become public: I'll talk about some of the fun there.  In the meantime, you can read about Software Patents (good, bad, indifferent - you decide!) and imagine all the goodies we're eager to talk about.

Today you will see a new product category in WSUS for Windows Live™.  

Windows Live™ online services include web-based products for consumers, such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Toolbar. Updates will be offered for both beta and final products, and will include security updates, critical updates, and tools. For more information, go to http://ideas.live.com.     Beta and later final updates for Windows Live Toolbar will be available via WSUS.