Lawrence over at the MS SharePoint Team Blog has his monthly post on recommending reading for January.

• MOSS Search Word Stemming: Part 1 and Part 2 – written by Mike Taghizadeh, SharePoint Ranger; clarifies one of the most esoteric topics about SharePoint Search. If you’re interested in SharePoint Search, then subscribe to Mike’s blog because most of his posts have been and will be focused on this feature area.
• Custom Master Pages and Site Definitions in WSSv3 (and MOSS2007) – written by Robert Bogue, SharePoint MVP; provides some good “in the trenches” details about implementing a custom Master Page and making the appropriate modifications to the Site Definition.
• SharePoint Solution Generator: Part 1 (create a site definition from an existing site) and Part 2 (the internals of the created site definition project) – written by Serge van den Oever; provides a walkthrough (full of screenshots) on how to use the SharePoint Solution Generator stand-alone utility program that is part of the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, which is scheduled to be released in Q1CY2007.
• Write your own Custom Authentication Provider (in C#) for SharePoint to use: Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 – written by Liam Cleary; provides a comprehensive guide (with sample code) to developing a custom ASP.NET 2.0 Auth Provider (with membership and role providers) and doing the necessary configuration tasks to get MOSS working with it. In case you’re worried about having to change auth providers too often, check out the innovative Universal Provider Framework developed by Adam Buenz, SharePoint MVP, which will get you up and running with nearly any custom database type in less than 30 minutes.
• Using the Business Data Catalog to connect to an Oracle database – written by Luis Du Solier, SharePoint MVP; provides a walkthrough (with plenty of screenshots) of using SharePoint Server’s BDC features to retrieve and interact with information stored in an Oracle database. Speaking of Oracle, I’m very pleased to highlight that the Microsoft Information Center for Oracle Customers website (http://www.microsoft-oracle.com) is now running on MOSS!
• Whitepaper: Bringing Web 2.0 to the Enterprise with the 2007 Office System – written by Arpan Shah, Group Product Manager for SharePoint; explores how the 2007 Microsoft Office system allows enterprises to adopt Web 2.0 ideas and technologies to create high-value, user-driven applications for the Internet and intranet.

Click here Recommended Reading for January for all the appropriate links