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Did you also miss the Web Administration Summit, now it’s available online at IT’s Showtime at Microsoft.

See some of the sessions at:

• Microsoft IT’s Showtime – DK portal
• Microsoft IT’s Showtime – UK portal

Great news, the day has finally come, Windows Vista went RTM (Release To Manufacturing), the final build should be 6000.16386.

Foley mentions “the public announcement that Windows Vista has been released to manufacturing is going to happen tomorrow, November 8, around 11 a.m. PST, sources close to the company are saying.”

Once the RTM has been announced the build should appear on MSDN at the same time according to Microsoft’s press release of yesterday.

Read more at source.

Bernard has posted his monthly list over the recent published IIS knowledgebase articles from Microsoft.

Read his list at source: IIS KBs – October 2006.

Microsoft has released the latest version of the .NET Framework.

The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 is the new managed code programming model for Windows®. It combines the power of the .NET Framework version 2.0 with new technologies for building applications that have visually compelling user experiences, seamless communication across technology boundaries, and the ability to support a wide range of business processes. These new technologies are Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. The .NET Framework 3.0 is included as part of the Windows Vista™ operating system; you can install it or uninstall it using Windows Features Control Panel. This redistributable package is for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

The download to the redistributable package is here. Looks like the final release! The final version of the SDK has also been released here.

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package
• Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components
• Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP
• Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation)

Microsoft has announced a technical preview release of FastCGI for IIS, a new component for Microsoft’s Web server platform.  This release is available immediately for download to Windows Vista, Windows Server codenamed “Longhorn” and previous versions of IIS including IIS 6.0 in Windows 2003 Server and IIS 5.1 in Windows XP.

The IIS FastCGI component enables popular application frameworks like PHP be hosted on the IIS web server in a high-performance and reliable way.

FastCGI provides a high-performance alternative to the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), a standard way of interfacing external applications with Web servers that has been supported as part of the IIS feature-set since the very first release.

CGI programs are executables launched by the web server for each request in order to process the request and generate dynamic responses that are sent back to the client. Because many of these frameworks do not support multi-threaded execution, CGI enables them to execute reliably on IIS by executing exactly one request per process. Unfortunately, it provides poor performance due to the high cost of starting and shutting down a process for each request.

FastCGI overcomes this performance penalty by re-using CGI processes to service subsequent requests, while continuing to ensure single request concurrency. For more information on how FastCGI works, see http://www.fastcgi.com/devkit/doc/fastcgi-whitepaper/fastcgi.htm.

Read more at the IIS.net site.

A few days ago Zend and Microsoft announced a technical collaboration to significantly enhance the reliability and performance of PHP on the Windows platform. The technology preview is in response to joint customer demand for better support of the Windows Server platform.

• The technology engagement between the two companies will include: Technical improvements for PHP, which will be submitted under the PHP license to the PHP community for feedback and contribution.

• Microsoft intends to develop and release an Internet Information Services (IIS) add-on component, FastCGI, that will serve as the interface between PHP and the IIS Web server.

• Zend will establish a Windows testing lab and conduct regular tests and performance improvements to maintain high performance of PHP on the Windows Server platform as PHP evolves.

• Microsoft and Zend will work to help ensure a production-quality PHP runtime environment for IIS 6.0 (Windows Server 2003) and IIS 7.0 (Windows Server “Longhorn”).

• Zend and Microsoft will actively participate in the PHP community, ensuring an open discussion to help developers planning to deploy PHP applications on the Windows Server platform.

Read more at Zend

Microsoft has released a full SharePoint Services package, which includes Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (All Language Packages and Deployment Documents).

Download it: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Beta 2 TR