The Industry Insiders

In BI and in SharePoint there is a great community which transcends the many partners, contractors etc. that specialise in this field.  We all keep in touch as we move companies and change roles as best we can using LinkedIn, Face book etc.  So I asked a friend of mine Darren Wray what he was up to know he runs a large Sharepoint Practice (and Microsoft Gold Partner) called Interakting and he mentioned all the upgrade work they were doing, usually as part of a large overhaul of the design of an older site.

I thought that there would be a lot of good advice coming form this work so Darren has asked one of his top SharePoint guys Raymond Little to write this up and so you can read all about it here

Although I understand what Powershell is I didn't understand really get it until I worked with James on our last TechNet road shows.  I did know that there were special extensions and support for it in SQL Server 2008, so I suggested to our good friend Richard Siddaway that he might be best placed to right an introduction to the use of Powershell in SQL Server 2008 for interested DBA's and Powershell experts alike. 

For those of  you that don't know Richard, he is a Powershell MVP and currently leads the UK PowerShell User Group. Richard has presented to the Directory Experts Conference 2007, at various events at Microsoft UK, including the last Community Day, and for other UK User Groups. 

Richard can be contacted by e-mail at RSiddaway@centiq.co.uk  and he blogs at http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/

Adrian Beasley sent me this article the other day explaining how he managed to connect his Windows mobile 6 phone to connect to Exchange Server 2007.

It's certainly worth a read if you're struggling to get connectied and are running out of ideas...

Read it here...

Some extra resources that may also be of interest:

Configuring SSL and Exchange Active Sync

Active sync error messages when trying to sync a mobile device

Understanding Active Sync mailbox policies

Publish an Exchange server for OWA

Active Sync solution centre

Client side features in Outlook 2007

Jennifer Stirrup from Aspective has written another great business intelligence article for us on her experiences of presenting data in SharePoint. Jennifer rightly points out that getting the numbers right is not enough, easy to understand and compelling visualtisations are also needed by the business.

It's about time there were a few business intelligence posts on Industry Insiders so I am pleased to get an article about the Microsoft BI and the importance of users in form Jennifer Stirrup from Aspective - a Vodafone company. Jennifer has over ten years experience in working with SQL Server, and has specialised in BI and reporting for the last 6 years. Jennifer is currently working towards her Microsoft BI certification.

Adrian J. Beasley has provided us with another excellent article titled A General Defence Against Injection Attacks on Websites written in his inimitable fashion tackling the challenging subject of how to validate user input.

SharePoint has been a phenominal success as a product for Microsoft.  It has successfully penetrated almost every industry as collaboration & portal platform.  SharePoint's role in the enrichment of secondary education has been particularly strong.  Read this article titled, "Introduction to SCORM and SharePoint Learning Kit" from Alex Pearce, Network Manager of Hillcrest School in Birmingham.  Thank you Alex!

Many thanks to Richard Siddaway for his article on protecting AD objects from Accidental Deletion. Well worth a read if you've ever deleted the wrong thing from AD.

Thanks to David Harley for sharing some of his vast experience of the anti-virus industry in his article titled An Insider's Guide to Comparative Anti-virus Reviews.

David explains in detail how independant labs evaluate software and includes links and guidance for further research.

Thanks to Adrian J. Beasley for providing yet another excellent article, this one's titled Software Restriction Policies and PowerShell Code Signing - Adrian provides a wealth of practical advice how to make the most of one of the most powerful yet under used security features of Windows XP, Server 2000, Server 2003 and Windows Vista