Here are my highlights from SPC 2009. I have listed vary broad topics. Details on some topics can be found in my previous posts + my colleague’s posts.

Product Highlights:

• Public beta first half of November\
• RTM first quarter (April) 2010)
• 6 SKUs.
• New SKUs for the Internet and FAST
• Better integration between the server products and the client products.

Search:

• OOB web parts are all public
• Search API identical for SharePoint 2010 and FAST.
• Custom rank model for boosting and ranking.

SharePoint Search 2010:

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  • Scales better for the enterprise. e.g. can have multiple index.
  • Introduction of partial index for better fault tolerance and improved query time.
  • Enormous improvements and focus in Social Search.
  • Crawling infrastructure vastly improved. e.g. content source priority, better logging and more control
  • Introduction of BCS Services for search.
  • Improvements in the BDC infrastructure. e.g. item level security, crawl by association
  • Shallow navigators.
  • Introduction of PowerShell for all admin functionality.

FAST Search for SharePoint: (all the above and)

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  • Better visual and dynamic experience
  • Sorting of managed property supproted
  • Thumbnails and native support for application viewers
  • User Context to enable result differentiation by the user’s context
  • language coverage is much better.
  • Automatic entity extractions.
  • Deep navigators

Developer:

Not sure where to start. There are so many new concepts and technologies in play it is overwhelming. Lots to learn and keep up with.

• Native support for SharePoint development in Visual Studio 2010. They have yet to make some inroads but this is a good start.
• The new SharePoint Designer 2010. Haven’t played with this too much.
• Support for SharePoint installation on Windows 7 and Vista. Huge win for developers.
• Client object model for JavaScript, WCF and Silverlight and the RESTFul API’s.
• Switch from SSP to Services. This has huge impact in planning, development, extension and services.
• Believe it or not “Access Services”. You have to get your hands on it to know what i mean.
• Visio Services.
• Business Data Connectivity services for full fidelity data with complete CRUD.
• Managed Enterprise Metadata framework.
• New capabilities in Floksonomy and Taxonomy.
• Sandbox Solutions.
• Developer Dashboard

Few last thoughts. There are architectural differences between the new version vs. any previous versions of SharePoint. Consultants and partners have to make a conscious effort to consider these new architecture when deploying and developing new solutions. The conference was a great spring board to look at all the features in the new version. Thanks to all that have kept up with our blogs.