This blog aims to follow an ongoing development project which I am using as a model to test and cover every area of development relating the Sharepint and Biztalk that I except to use as part of general business activities. These products cover a wide set of functionality on an any individual customer project, there are areas that you don't touch. Rather than simly ignring them, I'm using an ongoing project to set mysefl development objectives to cover as wide an area of this functionality as possible and push my developer skills into the areas that you donlt bother with as part of the usual learning process.

Step 1 - A working environment.

While doing this process, I decided that I'd build a fresh environment on Windows 2008 r2 so that I could start to play with the new O/S and get into the detail. I'd originally started on Windows 7, but after hitting the restrictions and limitations that you get trying to run Sharepoint on WIndows 7 I decided to bite the bullet and do it properly. So, after creating a bootable VHD via Windows 7, I installed Windows 2008 r2 onto this VHD - which I have to say, worked like a dream. I did have a couple of issues but these were down to my knowledge rather than any problems. The main one being that wireless network access is disabled by default on Windows 2008 r2....which for a Server is a very sensible default option to take. However, as I was installing this onto a laptop, which only had connectivity via the wireles adapter, I thought I'd hit a hardware compatibility issue until I rebooted Windows 7 and had a sniff around the web until I spotted an article indicating that twirless was disabled and how to enable it, after which things worked like a dream.

So, I installed SQL2008 and Visual Studio 2008, both without a hitch, then installed Biztalk 2009 which was again too simple - I was becomng suspitious. Then I got to MOSS. Currently MOSS only works with SP2, and there is no install package for MOSS with SP2, so you have to create your own slipsteamed install by copying the MOSS ISO image onto a disk drive, expanding the SP2 files into the updates directory of this install and performing the install from here.

This worked great, however, it wasn't until later that I noticed that I had not been given the option about which install type I wanted and that it had defaulted to install the Web Front End intstall. What this meant was that I had no indexing service, which meant that I couldn't set up session state which then prevented workflow from operating. Asthis was my whole development objective I was gutted. I searched around for solutions and didnt get anywhere. I suspect that this might have been particular to my environment or how I had done things as I did not see anyone else with the same problem. 

Looking on the Microsoft site, I noticed that there was a WSS install that had SP2 bundled in. So I thought I'd give this a try instead (if it worked I could always upgrade). After downloading (and removing the MOSS install) I was relieved to see the Installation Type selection when I started the install. So, afte selecting FULL, the installation continued liek a dream and 15 minutes later I had a Sharepoint environment with Workflow enabled. All I needed to do then was  re-run the MOSS install and the upgrade resulted in a fully working MOSS environment... Result.

Last step was to create a sharepoint site, then load up the Biztalk WSS adapter and I'm good to go.

One more thing. I'd also used the VS Sharepoint Extenstions 1.2 for development, but thought I'd go with the 1.3 this time to see how much better it is. From my initial play I'd say its much better than before, but will keep you upto date with my findings. Next step, put together my requirements for my test app.......