Stefan Goßner, Escalation Engineer for SharePoint (WSS, SPS, MOSS) and MCMS, has announced in his blog post “First set of KB articles for a new Tool which will is planned to ship with WSS 3.0 SP2” some knowledge base articles about a new tool which will ship with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (WSS 3.0 SP2). The tool is called Pre-Upgrade Checker.

Pre-Upgrade Checker

This tools checks your SharePoint 2007 environment for potential upgrade issues if you want to upgrade to the next version of SharePoint but only if you have the upcoming Service Pack 2 installed. It is rule based and an stsadm.exe operation: You can find more information at the article List of all Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server Pre-Upgrade Checker knowledge base articles.

The most important thing about these articles is the message: “The new XSLT-based list view is the default view that will be used in the next version release of Windows SharePoint Services. It will replace the existing list view in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.” (KB956450)

New XSLT-based list view in WSS 4.0

Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 will ship with a new XSLT-based list view with the following improvements (KB956450):

• SharePoint Designer customization support
• conditional formatting and
• improved developer experience with XSLT standard-based language support. ;)

CAML-based custom list views are still working but without the mentioned improvements. The following will not be upgraded to the next version of SharePoint (KB956450):

• A list view that uses custom Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML)
• A list view that is not associated with a feature
• A list view that is associated with a custom feature

By the way: Custom field types with CAML in its RendernPattern will also not be upgraded (KB956451).

Webparts are using controls (.ascx)

The Webparts will use controls so you can use a visual editor when creating your Webparts.

AD Account Creation mode

I have found at this discussion board a post about Questions regarding AD Account Creation mode?. I don’t really know what it is (I think account creation in the Active Directory over SharePoint) but it seems that it’s a feature from the previous version which is deprecated but still supported in WSS 3.0. This feature will not exist in WSS 4.0 as it is written in the document Creating Shared Hosting Solutions on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. This document was linked by David Goebel.

Miscellaneous

The other Pre-Upgrade Checker rules are about large lists, the workflow actions file and new authorized types for workflow in web.config.

Well there are a some rumors dealing with Office 14 and SharePoint 2009 coming in autumn 2009. One of the most interesting articles is the one by Edin Kapic: SharePoint 2009 / 2010 / vNext Rumours. I would love to see some of the features he mentions in his article:

• Native AJAX and Silverlight support
• More offline capabilities
• Microsoft Office files HTML viewers (following the line of OWA and EWA)
• Bi-directional BDC
• Native support for SQL Server tables as SharePoint lists
• Publishing module rewritten, to change the faulty Export / Import process
• More Business Intelligence capabilities for MOSS, as PerformancePoint 2007 matures
• Social networking improvements, maybe with Knowledge Management module included out-of-the-box

Can't wait until the release of a beta version... ;)