Eric White's Blog

The 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine, (also known, at least by me, as the SharePoint 2010 Evaluation VM) is my favorite way to play around with SharePoint development. If you have a computer running Windows Server 2008 R2, you can get up and going quickly with the VM. The VM has everything you need in it to get going with SharePoint development – an operational installation of SharePoint Server 2010, Office 2010, Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, Silverlight, and much more. This means that you can be writing code within minutes of installation of the VM. After downloading the VM, it takes less than half an hour to get up and going. In this post, I introduce a two-part video that walks through the process of getting the SharePoint Eval VM up and running.

Download: 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine

The Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 instances used in these virtual machines are distributed without activation or a valid product key. You will receive activation notifications a few days after your first use, and expiration notifications after 120 days.

The Virtual Machines contained in this package are un-activated 180 day evaluations. They will require activation, or re-arming, after a 10 day period after which they will shut down after 2 hours of continuous operation. You can reset the activation clock a limited number of times (4 or less is what the setup guide indicates). Some time ago, I wrote a blog post, How to Install and Activate the IW Demo/Evaluation Hyper-V Machine, which walks through the process of connecting the VM to the internet and activating it, after which the VM will operate properly for 180 days.

I am going to be posting a few screen-casts in the near future about SharePoint, BCS, and some other fun topics. To make it as easy as possible for you to follow along in those screen-casts, I’ve recorded a 2-part screen-cast that walks through the process of getting the SharePoint Demo VM up and going. Those other screen-casts will take up where these screen-casts leave off.

Here is the first of the two parts:

Here is the second of the two parts:

In the next screen-cast, I’ll show you how to install the AdventureWorks demo database, and create an external content type (ECT) using a table in that database.

I’ve put together a screen-cast that shows how to query an Open XML spreadsheet using LINQ from VB.NET.  If you are using VB, this is a super-easy way to extract data from SpreadsheetML.

You can find the code at OpenXMLDeveloper.org.

DocumentBuilder 2.0 is a much-improved version of the DocumentBuilder class that is part of PowerTools for Open XML. Using DocumentBuilder, you can split Open XML WordprocessingML documents apart, and merge and combine them in a variety of ways. DocumentBuilder deals with the many issues associated with interrelated markup in Open XML WordprocessingML.

This third screen-cast in this 3 part series explains how DocumentBuilder is data-driven so that it is more robust.

You can find a complete list of DocumentBuilder 2.0 content as well as links to download it in the DocumentBuilder Wiki Page on OpenXMLDeveloper.org.

Before watching this screen-cast, be sure to watch the first in the series and the second in the series.

DocumentBuilder 2.0 is a much-improved version of the DocumentBuilder class that is part of PowerTools for Open XML.  Using DocumentBuilder, you can split Open XML WordprocessingML documents apart, and merge and combine them in a variety of ways.  DocumentBuilder deals with the many issues associated with interrelated markup in Open XML WordprocessingML.

You can find a complete list of DocumentBuilder 2.0 content as well as links to download it in the DocumentBuilder Wiki Page on OpenXMLDeveloper.org.

Before watching this screen-cast, be sure to watch the first in the series.

I’ve put together the first of three screen-casts that discusses DocumentBuilder 2.0 in depth. This first screen-cast shows how to download, build, and run DocumentBuilder. In addition, it walks through one scenario of interrelated markup, and shows how DocumentBuilder solves the issues around interrelated markup.

In addition, I’ve put together a DocumentBuilder Resource Center, which lists all the content on DocumentBuilder 2.0. I plan on putting together a number of blog posts and screen-casts about DocumentBuilder over the next two months, and that page will be where I will aggregate links to all of the DocumentBuilder 2.0 content.

The following screen-cast is a bit long – 20 minutes – but it contains important information for developers who want to know how DocumentBuilder works.