It's amazing how fast time flies... and how little projects are constantly sidelined by other projects.

The SharePoint Configuration Analyzer is one of those personal projects that I've been meaning to update for a very long time.  I'm proud to announce that after many conversations with a variety of people, I've been able to find someone that will be able to move the project forward.

The next version of the Analyzer will offer both read and write functionality as well as a pluggable architecture.  The main goal of this project is to roll as much analysis and reporting services into one comprehensive tool as possible.  One of the biggest problems that I've seen over the past few years is the constant introduction of small tools that invariably have the same objective, yet they look at the world from a different standpoint.  In an centrally organized world, this approach might work effectively however without a centralized effort this often leads to two distinct characteristics - duplication and confusion.  Should I use this tool or that one for analyzing ____? Unfortunately, the answer has never been decisively use this tool called X. 

By improving SCA.exe, it's my hope that analysis and reporting confusion will be reduced.  Instead of 30 engineers writing 60 tools, the hope is that we'll have 30 engineers writing and improving 1 common set of analysis rules.  This will not only reduce, and eventually eliminate, duplication but it will hopefully ensure refinements are pushed out in a much more timely fashion.

It's a lofty goal, but one worth pursuing.

For more details, check out my post from last year which broadly discussed the list of improvements as well as Keith Richie's announcement that he'll be spear heading the next release of SCA.  Feel free to post comments or suggestions on how to make v.next something you would use in your everyday operations.

-Maurice