This week, SharePoint 2010 news emerged from Microsoft's TechEd 2009 conference. Mary Jo Foley gleaned and recapped useful details, relying heavily on Lars Fastrup's post from TechEd 2009 about the SharePoint 2010 demo. He says that he saw several presentations in other sessions at TechEd that unofficially revealed the UI for SharePoint 2010 because the presenters were using SharePoint 2010.
What I wonder is, will people be seriously upset that IE 6.0 won't be supported? Or will they be more upset that SharePoint 2010 will be 64-bit only?
For what it's worth, the faceted search feature Foley and Fastrup both mention is explained in more detail at the Codeplex website, where it was a project until late last year: "MOSS Faceted Search is a set of web parts that provide intuitive way to refine search results by category (facet). The facets are implemented using SharePoint API and stored within native SharePoint METADATA store."
Microsoft consultant Leonid Lyublinski says about faceted search: "...a good faceted search solution involves exposing the facets in dynamic taxonomies so that the user can see all of the refinement options at any time." He cites an example of a user searching for music who could drill down by genre, artist, title, year, or a site designed to show special facets of cuisine and location for categories involving restaurants but not categories involving plumbers.
Randy Williams at Synergy points out the budgetary considerations the system requirements for SharePoint 2010 imply: "Got any 2003 machines? It’s time to start planning the upgrade if you haven’t already….not only do you need to upgrade the WFE and application servers, you also need to do your database servers as well. There will be no support for SQL Server 2000….The basic idea is that those that are 32-bit or running Windows Server 2003 will not have an in-place upgrade option."
And finally, the SharePoint Team gets the last word:"So, what can you do today to get into the best shape for SharePoint Server 2010?"
1. Start by ensuring new hardware is 64-bit. Deploying 64-bit is our current best practice recommendation for SharePoint 2007.
2. Deploy Service Pack 2 and take a good look at the SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Checker that’s shipped as part of the update. The Upgrade Checker will scan your SharePoint Server 2007 deployment for many issues that could affect a future upgrade to SharePoint 2010.
3. Get to know Windows Server 2008 with SharePoint 2007, this post is a great starting point.
4. Consider your desktop browser strategy if you have large population of Internet Explorer 6 users.
5. Continue to follow the Best Practices guidance for SharePoint Server 2007.
6. Keep an eye on this blog for updates and more details in the coming months.