Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Building a PI Lab for SharePoint 2010 and Excel Web App (Part 2)

Didn't have as much time today, but here are my findings:

1. A standalone ProcessBook installation requires a huge dependency package. So if you intend on deploying this on hundreds of PCs, better think of it. It should be installed on a TS, or deported using Citrix. Of course, for large scale deployments, it is better to plan using Web Parts over ProcessBook...

2. PI Datalink 2010 is supported on Excel 2010 32-bit only. It's documented in the Release Notes but as usual I didn't RTFM, and had a 64-bit installation. The PI-DL installer doesn't tell you anything about this, and it results in the add-in not being installed in Excel as it should be.

3. If SharePoint was a blind date, I think I would stay polite, possibly pay the whole bill, then say goodbye with a kiss on the cheek... i.e. leaving all options open while sending a clear message at once. Web page editing is sluggish, which is unacceptable in 2011 for a web application and I don't care how slow the back-end is. And it is hungry as hell. Even a vanilla installation revealed a lot of clunkiness with some "oops" error messages and dead links. Bottom line is I don't like SharePoint as of now, but I'll have to get used to it.

4. The drawing on my first post isn't right. I'll need to fix it in an update.

O.

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