SharePoint...

New Blog

2010-04-15T21:28:00.001-07:00

My blog has moved to a new location... SharePointCoder.com

My new dream Laptop

2009-12-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/precision-m6500?c=us&l=en&s=bsd

PROCESSOR	Intel Core™ i7-920XM Extreme Edition 2.00GHz 8MB
Operating system	Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit
Memory	16.0GB, DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM, 4 DIMMS
VIDEO CARD	1.0GB ATI® FirePro® M7740 Graphics
LCD	17" Wide Screen WXGA+ LCD Panel w/ microphone
RAID CONFIGURATION	All Hard Drives, Non-RAID, 1 or 2 drive total configuration
HARD DRIVE	256GB Mobility Solid State Drive
SECOND HARD DRIVE	256GB Mobility Solid State Drive

It's only $8,000....

Now where to get the funding??

Installing SharePoint 2010

2009-11-23T06:43:00.000-08:00

I have completed my first full installation of SharePoint 2010!! It was quite easy once I got to the SharePoint install. I did all of this on the Windows 2008 R2 server and it worked great! I have AD, SQL 2008 Enterprise & SharePoint 2010 all running.

I took plenty of screen shots and I'll posting what I found here soon! Once I'm done with that document I'm going to start configuring SP and see what I can break :-) I made sure to do this on a VM so I can make backups before I do anything!!

Installing SQL 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2

2009-11-23T06:36:00.000-08:00

I was scouring the web looking for why I could not install SQL 2008 on my Win 2008 R2 VM. I came across the idea of using slipstream and Voila it worked!

So here you go Slipstream with SQL 2008 & SP1

Steps:

1.Install the prerequisites of SQL 2008:

       MS.NET Framework 3.5 SP1

2.Extract the service pack to a folder on the server using the following command:

        SQLServer2008SP1-KB968369-x64-ENU.exe /x:E:\SP1

3.Run the service pack to install the Setup files

         E:\SP1\x64\setup\1033\sqlsupport.msi

4.Run the Setup.exe file from the SQL 2008 source media by specifying the /PCUSource parameter:

        F:\Setup.exe /PCUSource=E:\SP1

Thanks

SharePoint 2010 Search

2009-11-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

I was working on putting everything I knew about SharePoint 2010 search and then I came across this great document that already had everything in one place. Good job Microsoft!

SharePoint in Plain English

2009-10-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

A good video that explains what is SharePoint..

Here is the Link to the Microsoft Site
SharePoint in Plain English

14 things I like about SharePoint 2010

2009-10-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

I tried to make this a true top 14 list but I kept moving items around, changing them and deleting them that I just gave up and made it more of 14 things I like instead of a countdown of the new featues of SharePoint 2010.

Well here is my quick 14

14. Multiple browser support

13. LINQ to SharePoint

12. Large list throttling

11. Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools

10. No more SSP

9. Saying good bye to BDC and saying hello to BCS

8. Relational lists with referential integrity

7. No more web service calls thanks to .Net, JavaScript & Silverlight SharePoint Client Object Model

6. SharePoint Designer. No really it’s much better in 2010

5. Banish your pesky SharePoint developers to the Sandbox but still Monitor

4. Remote Blob Storage

3. Developer Dashboard

2. Shared Content Types & Metadata fields thanks to the Managed Metadata Service

1. Multiple Index servers… Searching across farms just got easier

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 - Professional Developers Evaluation Guide

2009-10-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

Link to Document. http://bit.ly/4lwWok

The guide does a good job of walking you through of the new features in SP 2010. It even has 6 labs or Walkthroughs as they call them at the end.

Here is a little excerpt from the document of what's new

Summary of What’s New

SharePoint 2010 includes numerous new capabilities and features for professional developers most of which are highlighted in this document. Here is a summary of what’s new.

Developer Productivity

Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Project Types and Items
Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools extensibility
Visual Studio Extensions For SharePoint Upgrade
Windows 7 and Windows Vista Operating System Support
SharePoint Designer 2010
Developer Dashboard
Team Foundation Server 2010 Integration
Rich Platform Services

SharePoint Ribbon
SharePoint Dialogs
Silverlight Web Part
List Lookups and Relationships
Business Connectivity Services
LINQ to SharePoint
Performance Enhancements
Solution Throttling
Event Enhancements
Workflow Enhancements
Client Object Model
REST APIs

Flexible Deployment

Sandboxed Solutions
SharePoint Online
Upgrading Solutions

SQL Diskspace

2009-10-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

Did you know you can run a SQL command to find all the fixed drives on a SQL server? Okay okay this might be old news to some but I thought this was cool


 xp_fixeddrives

Microsoft Research

2009-09-29T19:26:00.000-07:00

Didn't even know Microsoft had a Research site. They have some cool stuff on there. http://bit.ly/1txidF

SharePoint database schema

2009-09-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has the SharePoint database schema listed http://bit.ly/2amOmP Just make sure to heed their warning about altering the database.

Execute your timer job immediately with STSADM

2009-09-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

By using the STSADM operation execadmsvcjobs

 stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

you can force the timer job to execute immediately. This helps out when you really don't want to wait.

Paint .Net

2009-09-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

Well I downloaded Paint.Net over the weekend expecting nothing more than the MS Paint that comes with every Windows OS. Don't get me wrong I like MS Paint for editing my screen shots but past that I don't have a use for it.

Well Paint.Net is nothing like MS Paint. I'm a not a designer by any stretch of the imagination and Paint.Net let me edit several photos in no time.

I found it be just as powerful as Adobe PhotoShop because... 1. It is free not $700+ like PhotoShop and second because of the great user group that is creating free plug-ins left and right. Here are a couple examples
http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5271
http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=24491

Here is the info

Paint.Net - http://www.getpaint.net/
plug-ins - http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5271

The Internets

2009-08-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

You can thank sputnik for the Internet.

Document Library names

2009-08-27T04:31:00.001-07:00

I've always been a very strong advocate of NOT using Special characters when naming anything in SharePoint (Sites, Libraries, Content Types, Site Columns, ect..) Well the other day I broke that rule and tried naming Library with a dash - in it since it has worked in the past for Content Types and Site columns.... I know I know not a good excuse.

So in my development SharePoint VM I created a library call Test-Test_123 inside the following site http://apdev:1212/ It created the library just fine and the name reflected Test-Test_123 and I didn't think anything of it until I started to reference the library in code and I kept getting an error that it could not be found.

Turns out all special characters except underscores _ will be stripped out of the underling name. So the URL looks like http://APDev:1212/TestTest_123

I don't know why this only seems to happen in Library names but it does. I guess shame on me for breaking my own rule...

Unable to generate a temporary class

2009-08-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to generate a temporary class (result=1). error CS2001: Source file 'C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\yfefake_.0.cs' could not be found error CS2008: No inputs specified at ...

I was getting this error and it turns out to be an easy fix. The Domain Account running the IIS application pool needs Read & Write Access to the Temp folder C:\WINDOWS\Temp.

Laser TV or LED

2009-08-19T19:39:00.001-07:00

I know I know the past few posts have nothing to do with SharePoint but... oh well here is another one not about SharePoint

I guess the battle is no longer LCD & Plasma but LED and Laser

LED
http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/detail/detail.do?group=televisions&type=televisions&subtype=ledtv&model_cd=UN55B8000XFXZA

Laser
http://www.ibtimes.com/contents/20090804/laservue-is-greenest-big-screen-tv.htm

TRON Legacy

2009-08-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

Offical Site

The movie will be out in 2010... Do we really have to wait until next year?

Thanks Eben for finding the trailer

SPDiag video

2009-08-05T20:48:00.001-07:00

Just in case you can't get enough of the SPDiag tool here is a great video on how to use it.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/ee221106.aspx

DB2

2009-07-23T06:52:00.001-07:00

Well today it's DB2.

I haven't dealt with DB2 in oh ... ever so I found myself searching the web for information and came across Michael Thomas' site "DB2 Survival Guide" and can't tell you home much that web site has helped me.

http://www.michael-thomas.com/tech/db2/db2_survival_guide.htm

I also needed to find all of the columns inside of a table and what type they were.

SELECT ColName, TypeName, Length, Default, NULLS FROM syscat.columns WHERE tabname = 'MYTable'

I found all of the column names inside Syscat.Columns by using the following lines of code in my Tester Jobber



IBM.Data.DB2.DB2DataReader dr = dB2Command1.ExecuteReader();

while (dr.Read())           
 {                  
       if (dr.HasRows)                  
         {                       
                 sb = new StringBuilder();
                  for (int i = 0; i <>
                    {                           
                      if (columnNames.Length != 0)
                               columnNames.Append("  ");
.
.
.

I was also under the impression that DB2 could only be run on Unix/Linux but to my surprise they have a free Express version that can be run on Windows :-)

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/download.html?S_TACT=&S_CMP=

Control Complexity

2009-07-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

I was sent the following quote from a colleague of mine and figured I would pass it on.

"The purpose of Software Engineering is to control complexity, not to create it" - Dr. Panela Zave

How to create Class from XML

2009-07-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

I've had to convert an XML file to a class a couple times over the past few weeks and I'm tired of having to look it up so I've added it to my blog.

Open up Visual Studio's Command Prompt...

XML to XSD
xsd.exe ImportsCollection.xml /language:CS

XSD to CS
xsd.exe ImportsCollection.xsd /d /language:CS

Toggle Read Only Attribute

2009-07-13T13:27:00.001-07:00

Below are 2 ways to toggle the SharePoint Read Only attribute. I’ve used both of these to update the Created column for content migrations.

1st Option: SharePoint Object Model

public static void ToggleCreatedReadOnly(string siteURL, string ListName)
{
    using (SPSite site = new SPSite(siteURL)) //http://APDev/sites/TestSC/
            {
                using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
                {
                    try
                    {
                        SPDocumentLibrary spdocLib = (SPDocumentLibrary)web.Lists[ListName];

                        SPFieldDateTime spDT = (SPFieldDateTime)spdocLib.Fields["Created"];
                        spDT.ReadOnlyField = false;
                        spDT.Update();
                        spdocLib.Update();

                        SPListItem myitem = spdocLib.Items.GetItemById(65);
                        object myval = myitem["Created"];
                        myitem["Created"] = DateTime.Now;
                        myitem.Update();
                        spdocLib.Update();

                        spDT.ReadOnlyField = true;
                        spDT.Update();
                        spdocLib.Update();
                    }
                    catch (Exception ex)
                    {
                        string msg = ex.Message;
                    }
                }
            }
}

2nd Option: SharePoint Web Services

public void ToggleReadOnly(string DestinationSiteURL, string DestinationLibrary, bool ReadOnly)
        {

            if (!DestinationSiteURL.EndsWith("/"))
                DestinationSiteURL += "/";

            DestinationLibrary = DestinationLibrary.Replace("/", "");

            string XML;

            XML = "<Method ID='1'>";
            XML += "<Field Name=\"Created\" DisplayName=\"Created\" Group=\"_Hidden\" Type=\"DateTime\" ReadOnly=\"" + ReadOnly.ToString().ToUpper() + "\" Required=\"FALSE\" Format=\"DateTime\" StaticName=\"Created\">";
            XML += "</Field>";
            XML += "</Method>";

            string ListVersion;

            XmlNode ndUpdate = new XmlDocument().CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element, "Fields", "");
            ndUpdate.InnerXml = XML;

            XmlNode List;
            XmlNode ndReturn;

            using (Lists.Lists SPLists = new Content_Migrator.Lists.Lists())
            {
                SPLists.Credentials = _frmContentMig.DCred;
                SPLists.Url = DestinationSiteURL + "_vti_bin/Lists.asmx";

                List = SPLists.GetList(DestinationLibrary);
           
                ListVersion = List.Attributes["Version"].Value;

                ndReturn = SPLists.UpdateList(DestinationLibrary, null, null, ndUpdate, null, ListVersion);
            }
        }

They are fairly easy to use it just which ever makes sense.

SharePoint Diagnostics Toolkit

2009-07-10T08:35:00.002-07:00

Where have you been hiding?

I haven’t been able to dive into all of the uses but here are a few

With SPDiag…
· Use Live Capture to collect data in real time to monitor the farms performance.
· Create a snapshot record of the farm in an xml file that holds information on the hardware, installed software & logical structure
· Filter data to show specific information related to a server

I really like this tool because it all the information is right there in front of you... It has the Servers in the farm, SP Build, SQL Database Info (Size, Files, Filegroups & Options), SP Accounts (App Pools and Services), Logs (IIS, ULS, Event & Performance). With all of this information all in one place it can defiantly cut down the amount of time it takes to diagnose issues.

Here is a screen shot of what the main UI looks like once you connect it to a server

The toolkit was published 2/4/2009
Download Info
- X86
- X64
- User Guide
You will also want to download & Install MSChart for performance monitoring

It's been a while

2009-07-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to start a blog (again) for a while. This one is going to be used as my online notebook where I can post SharePoint issues & resolutions I run into as well as code snippets that I want to save for a later date...