Exam 70-667 requirement

• Installing and Configuring a SharePoint Environment (25 percent)
• Deploy new installations and upgrades.This objective may include but is not limited to: running Visual Upgrade, performing an in-place upgrade, performing a database attach upgrade, analyzing a PreUpgradeCheck report, installing language packs, and scripting installations; analyzing ULS logs, installation error logs, and event logs to identify installation problems; and repairing installation errors
• Configure SharePoint farms.
  This objective may include but is not limited to: configuring inter-server communications, server roles, high availability, InfoPath Forms Services (IPFS), Alternate Access Mappings (AAM), external sites, host headers, and applying and managing patches
• Configure service applications.This objective may include but is not limited to: configuring service applications such as Business Connectivity Services (BCS), Access Services, Visio Services, Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, user profiles, Microsoft Office Excel services, Managed Metadata Services (MMS), and IPFS
• Configure indexing and search.
  This objective may include but is not limited to: configuring FAST Search for SharePoint, crawl schedules, iFilters, crawl rules, content sources, scopes, managed properties, content types, search components, index partitioning, and federated search locations
• Managing a SharePoint Environment (26 percent)
• Manage operational settings.
  This objective may include but is not limited to: configuring logging, quotas, monitoring levels, health reports, security, and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) integration
• Manage accounts and user roles.
  This objective may include but is not limited to: managing user accounts, group accounts, managed accounts, computer accounts, and service accounts; and delegating site collection administration
• Manage authentication providers.
  This objective may include but is not limited to: managing NTLM, Kerberos, claims-based, and forms-based authentication; and configuring Secure Store Service (SSS) and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)
• Deploying and Managing Applications (24 percent)
• Manage Web Applications.
  This objective may include but is not limited to: managing databases, Web Application settings, security, and policies
• Manage site collections.This objective may include but is not limited to: managing site collection policies, features, caching, and auditing; configuring site collection security; configuring multi-tenancy; and configuring site collection quotas and locks
• Deploy and manage SharePoint solutions.This objective may include but is not limited to: deploying and managing SharePoint solution packages, managing sandbox solutions, and managing user solutions

Maintaining a SharePoint Environment (25 percent)

• Back up and restore a SharePoint environment.

This objective may include but is not limited to: configuring backup settings; backing up and restoring content, search, and service application databases; detaching and attaching databases; and exporting lists and sites

• Monitor and analyze a SharePoint environment.
  This objective may include but is not limited to: generating health, administrative, and Web analytics reports; interpreting usage and trace logs; identifying and resolving health and performance issues
• Optimize the performance of a SharePoint environment.
  This objective may include but is not limited to: configuring resource throttling (large list management, object model override); configuring remote Binary Large Objects (BLOB) storage and BLOB and object caching; and optimizing services

SharePoint 2010

In an attempt to get an overall mastery over MSS 2010 I am planning a series of posts and sessions where people can understand the internals of SharePoint 2010 through self learning...Keep tuned..

Back in Mumbai....

Back in Mumbai..Feels great to be back amidst my own. The Mumbai monsoon is in full swing and so are the welcome back parties..Its goin to be back to work Monday..Fun stuff..

Yet another master blaster double ton

and he does it yet again..with so much style. No wonder he is the best ever.
That takes care of the SL tour. Thats it to report on that front.
The SharePoint 2010 learnings are goin on in full swing and at some point I would like to create a section on this blog dedicated to the learnings from that technology. For now, its onto the Whiteboard to understand the fundas..
Flying to India today..the long journey giving me the creeps as usual...

News this week..

With India getting some sound whipping in SL, none of the master batsmen really playing that well...bored of following cricket..
On personal front fly to India July 29th..Whohooooooooo..so thats great...Mumbai monsoons getting better..Some nice outings already planned..
While that is on, packing, finishing all tasks, meeting friends and attending send off lunches going on.
Interest rates hiked in India to curtail inflation and bring the economy back on track..Good news. Plane crash in Pak with low possibility of survivors..well...Bad news..
More to come about my activities for this week soon...

Other events

With the FIFA world cup declaring Spain as a winner..cricket not too much goin on..except Ind-SL series..me onto the HTML5 capabilities..Will blog about findings..

Union Carbide story

The decision from the Supreme Court on the 25+ yr old Union Carbide story has left the nation livid..2 yrs?? WTF does that mean? 15K people dead and lakhs affected and 2 yrs? Time for our law makers to brush up their basics and go for a makeover of archaic laws...

FIFA World cup fever

With the FIFA world cup fever gripping the world, it is time to wear the favorite team Tees...Stories of how a friend's companies staff have started adorning Brazil's shirts while trading or how another friend's colleagues gather around the TV set, their eyes fixated on an amazing goal...These are fun times...One of the very few times the world comes together..Cheers!

Now a US Citizen....

After 14 long yrs of arduous and curvy immigration path, we finally got our US Citizenship last week. Feels good!

Mangalore plane crash

Its been a terrible couple of days reading about the tragedy of the Mangalore plane accident. The heart rendering news article about the two young air hostesses from Mumbai and aspirations killed could not be forgotten...Makes you think ...lucky to be alive!

PerformancePoint Services

With the advent of SharePoint 2010 Insights, there has been more and more focus on how to get data in a meaningful and organized way so that business users can make sense of the enterprise data store. Whether it is Slicing and dicing the data with Excel services or front ending it with some fancy web parts in SharePoint or self servicing features of the BI Platform, Insights has the answer for you...

Added in this offering is also Visio Services, Better Chart, Decomp Tree, scorecard, Graphical controls etc and effective Admin functionalities...Digging deeper into this..

IPL and the related fiascos

While it has been great fun following your favorite teams during IPL 3, you cannot but think about the spirit of cricket or whether we are killing it by commercializing this game. Agreed you can keep the two separate by focusing on the game but with the dangerous mix of bolloywood with cricket - the two most dangerous passions in India are we creating a lethal dosage? So much money and so much exposure for these young 19 yr olds..Is this what we really want? Cannot escape this thought...

Certifications

I was looking at the latest stack of MOSS certifications and found these set of exams:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-sharepoint-server.aspx#tab2

The format seems pretty good and unlike a lot of other Microsoft exams there are no ready made cramsheets that I can see...As I understand it there are about 50-55 questions..multiple choice and you need to shoot straight from the hip...Interesting huh?

Comparison: Azure SQL and SQL Server

An interesting comparison between Azure data services and SQL Server :
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9692818

Looking into MOSS 2010 Features

While looking at the different features of MOSS, and evaluating the sharper focus that 2010 brings came across these:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303422(office.14).aspx

Wishing you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year

It was a very interesting yr...2009..Full of surprises, challenges, successes and the likes...Now lets see what 2010 has in store for us..
Hope its better, fuller and brings out the best in us on all fronts..
Enjoy!

Last week of the yr

As the last week of the yr draws to a close, nostalgic moments of this yr go past in the mind..Lots of interesting events, trips and important of all learnings from this yr..Lets ring out the old and ring in the new..

Happy XMas and a smashing new year ahead..

Zachman framework for enterprises

While organizations grapple with increasing complexity in business place as well as technology implementation, Zachman provides some help in organizing corporate assets in reusable format.

http://www.zachmaninternational.com/index.php/the-zachman-framework

ASP.NET MVC 2 BETA

ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta provides a new Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework on top of the existing ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 runtime.
The framework encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application – the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model. ASP.NET MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development (TDD).


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4817cdb2-88ea-4af4-a455-f06b4c90fd2c&displaylang=en

Money Transfer: The Top Mobile App of 2012?

An interesting piece of information surfeced on Business week regarding top mobile app by 2012. Transferring money apparently will be the most sought after feature in mobile banking

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/11/money_transfer.html