Microsoft made available June 11 the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server-Project Server 2007 Connector. The PS-TFS Connector provides a deeper level of integration between TFS and Microsoft Office EPM 2007 by streamlining the flow of data between TFS and Project Server 2007, Microsoft officials said.
They said the connector builds on the Project desktop integration and is another step Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., is taking to help customers bridge the gap between project management and development organizations and to eliminate inefficiencies between the two groups.
Finally emerging from beta after Microsoft told an already anxious customer base in May of last year it would eventually be available early in first quarter 2007, Service Pack 1 of Virtual Server 2005 R2 has at last emerged from beta. But some customers looking for a feature that Microsoft brochures said it has may be disappointed today to learn they really should have said it's a feature that SP1 supports: Volume Shadow Services.For users of Windows Server 2003 on physical systems, the support is actually good news. They already have VSS, which currently enables them to take backup "snapshots" of their hard drives while they're running, for possible restoration to an earlier state in case of an emergency. After SP1 is installed, their existing VSS software will take similar snapshots of virtual hard drives as well as physical ones.
Microsoft has quietly hired Tom Hanrahan, formerly the Linux Foundation's director of engineering, to become its Director of Linux Interoperability. As part of his responsibilities, Hanrahan will manage the Microsoft/Novell Interoperability Lab that Microsoft began staffing up earlier this year.
Hanrahan began his Linux career at IBM's Linux Technology Center in Beaverton, Oregon, where he served as senior program manager in charge of software development and testing.
In this position, he oversaw the work of many of IBM's leading Linux kernel developers and sub-maintainers. In September of 2003, he moved to the OSDL where he served as director of Linux engineering. After the OSDL merged with the Free Standards Group to form the Linux Foundation, he continued to serve in the role of director of Linux engineering.
At a morning session introducing many to the window-less Server Core installation option in the forthcoming Windows Server 2008, Microsoft product manager Andrew Mason made it official: Windows Virtualization Services (code-named "Viridian") will become the ninth role available for the trim server option, joining Internet Information Services 7 announced last Monday and other common, unattended role such as DNS server, DHCP server, and Active Directory Application Mode.
Yesterday's TechEd demo of building an XNA Game Studio Express version of Asteroids using C# appeared to indicate the resurgence of low-level programming languages in experimental development. But this morning, Microsoft's lead program manager for the Common Language Runtime team, Mahesh Prakriya, may have one-upped C#, showing another XNA revamp written by IronPython developer Jim Hugunin, of the exact same demo package, but using Microsoft's dynamic language IronPython instead.
Developers can now take a first hand look at Microsoft's next major upgrade of its flagship database platform. The company this week released the first CTP of SQL Server 2008, until now known as Katmai.
Microsoft launched the CTP and bowed the official name of the database at Tech-Ed in Orlando this week. SQL Server 2008 won?t ship before next year but Microsoft will issue new CTPs every 60 days, rather than issue a beta, a plan it announced after the release of SQL Server 2005.
"We felt it was a better way to get feedback from the community," says Kimberly Colley, a SQL Server product manager. "We can release them on a more regular basis. We will be adding new features and functionality on a regular schedule."
Microsoft said Friday it had named Craig Eisler to head the Macintosh Business Unit, replacing Roz Ho, who had spent seven years with the division and spearheaded much of the Redmond company's recommitment to the platform.Eisler was formerly development chief for the company's DirectX platform, however he left the company to work for mobile software developer Action Engine as its CEO and then helping AOL launch its wireless offerings in 2005.
NWhen it comes to the new security functions in Windows Vista, User Account Control is the one people tend to scratch their heads over, Gartner Analyst Neil MacDonald said during his presentation on implementing Vista security at Gartner's IT Security Summit here on June 4.
"It's one that has plenty of people confused regarding what, exactly, it is," MacDonald said. In fact, UAC isn't one capability; rather, it's a set of Vista capabilities that collectively help to limit the ability of applications and users to make unsanctioned system changeswhether the user is running as an administrator or as a standard user.
The group responsible for MSN and Windows Live has set up its career shop at whyyouwillworkhere.com. There is video featuring Microsoft employees and job information for six geographic regions.
The "browse the planet and find yourself" slogan is appealing.
It's an interesting recruitment approach that could backfire. There's a kind of news and blog biasor presumptionthat all the good talent is headed to Google and that in online search it's game over, Microsoft lost. Some people might look on the Microsoft Web site as a kind of desperate effort. I don't.
A tool for determining whether or not computers can handle the Windows Vista operating system has been updated, with some useful new features.
According to the Windows Vista team blog, the public beta for Vista Hardware 2.0 is now available. Most of the updates in the most recent version revolve around ways to pick groups of computers for testing.
The first is called "Customized Inventory," and allows the choosing of computers within specific organizational units in a particular Active Directory domain.