Hi folks, we’ve used our SharePoint expertise and knowledge to distil SharePoint 2010 product feature set, to provide a rich 5 day course for you.

I believe with SharePoint in particular that as a developer you *need* to know details about the SharePoint environment that is running your code, and as an Admin, you need to know what and how the developer provides the additions/customisations that they do.

Check out the details and you can register with Microsoft here.

We’re really excited about the offering and have a great Christmas break.

See you soon… ho ho ho…

A few tidbits to share with you so far.

WSS has gone through a name change (there was a time when WSS stood for ‘Web Storage Server’ that SharePoint V1 + Exchange 5.x were based on) and is now called SharePoint Foundation 2010.

I’m guessing that this name is more inline with Microsoft’s thinking around getting SharePoint as the backend/foundation in Companies, as Office is standard on user’s desktops.

Setting up your Development Environment:

(no more WSPBuilder…the SharePoint tools are baked into VS2010 beta 2. A nice feature is that you can select what a ‘Deploy’ does, or a ‘ReDeploy’ by essentially adding all these actions to your config, such as ‘restart IIS’, recycle app pool, make web.config change… You just package them up – nice!)

1. SharePoint 2010 Beta Center - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514561.aspx *** Great place to Start ***
2. SharePoint 2010 SDK - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ee557253(office.14).aspx
3. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 - http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010/default.mspx (this will work with the upcoming beta release of SharePoint 2010)
   Point to note: .NET 4.0 introduces WF4.0, however at this point SP2010 supports only 3.51. There are some *very* significant changes in Workflow between these 2 versions and we’ll have to wait and see the outcome. Performant 10-30x faster, reduced memory footprint, more flexible, clean XAML, more events etc etc.
   
4. One last little point – where is the Public SharePoint 2010 download….unfortunately not yet will be soon and should be up on Dev Center Downloads - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/aa905690.aspx

In the meantime, be sure to check out the changes and enhancements to the SharePoint 2010 API model and some of the new capabilities such as:

1. Powershell everything
2. Check out LINQ/ADO.NET Entities integration and querying data
3. Performing JOINS in CAML
4. Client.svc – client side proxying, batching of requests and sending them through to SharePoint 2010. Very fast, as we only send what we need.
5. Workflow exporting/importing from Visio->SPD->VS.NET->Deploy.
6. Sandbox Solutions – now we can target our SharePoint Solutions to the Site Collection Level (rather than previously targeting only the farm). When we create this solution in VSNET2010, it rebinds to a ‘fake’ Microsoft.SharePoint.dll (v14.0.0.39 from memory) that introduces all the restrictions in your code and provides special intellisense. Commands such as ‘Run Under Elevated Security’… get caught on compile as these are not allowed.
   
   Could you be in the situation where your code compiles but the *real* SharePoint ‘foundation’ says ‘no!..that instruction is not allowed’ – it’s possible, as you’re not actually compiling against the real DLL.
   
   Currently there are several projects that you can’t sandbox based on their type – such as Workflow Projects. These still need to be targeted to the Farm.
   
   Worth checking out – specifically if you’re hosting SP sites.
   
7. AJAX through out – even WebPart editor toolparts you can introduce AJAX there for alot of the lookups etc.
   
8. Other noted feature is that Throttling is on by default – so if you say “list.Items.AllItems” and that returns back 50000 usually, SP2010 will error. You have to explicitly ask to make the request without Throttling (couple of properties you set before hand)
   
9. Your WSSv3.0/MOSS sites can be *supported* in SP2010 and stay at their existing UI Level (look and feel), then at a later point we can flick the switch and see your site under the newer/AJAXY UI – through the APIs we can change it back SPWeb.UIVersion = 3 or 4.

Enjoy,

Mick.

Grab a look at the SDK – here - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256.aspx and interestingly the BDC (now – Business Data Connectors) and BCS (Business Connectivity Services) are the enhanced former 2007 BDC.

BCS = http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556826(office.14).aspx

I’ve got lots to talk about and show but where to start….maybe “once there was a developer…” :-)

Stay tuned.

Mick.

Last week I met up with Leonid (MCS SharePoint consultant) whom has a great upfront and practical view on life. Funny guy.

He mentioned to me about a SharePoint Faceted Search – which is a series of Search Web Parts that drill into the Search Index and return metadata tags, content types and a bunch of other stuff to give you accurate search results grouped by Author, Content Type, etc. (what ever you want)

Add them to the search results page of your SharePoint Search and you’re away. The webparts examine the Query String and have a bunch of customisations that allow you to tweak it just the way you like.

Great work Leonid!!!! (he’s a very clever guy – SharePoint Search is one of his passions…Red Wine is the other :) )
You can contact him via e.mail on: xsearch a.t. microsoft dot com

Standard View – notice the red regions, categories with the exact number of results. Where std. search says “..about 512 results”

Adding a Couple of Categories – and looking at Content Type Search.

Here I clicked on Author – Mick Badran and a Content Type of ‘Word’. You can see how the ‘advanced search’ is being visually built for me.

The best thing I like about all of this is that the RHS Web Part is totally customisable. The results all come from an XML File (property of the webpart) that you can customise – we can have icons, map different words/terms for things like ‘Word’ as a content type.
You can even add/remove your own.

The webpart has collapsible sections to it (you can even set how many items you want visible when collapse in the section!) and the collapsing/expanding is driven off Javascript calls back to the Server, so no round tripping.

Simply download, install the Solution, Activate the Feature for your Site Collection and add the Web Parts to your page. Easy as that to get started.

Brilliant – absolutely Brilliant (I’ve already had some of our users emailing me to say how easy it is)

Grab them here from CodePlex - http://www.codeplex.com/Wikipage?ProjectName=FacetedSearch

---- snip from the CodePlex Main Page ----

Project Description
MOSS Faceted Search is a set of web parts that provide intuitive way to refine search results by category (facet).
The facets are implemented using SharePoint API and stored within native SharePoint METADATA store. The solution demonstrates following key features:

• Grouping search results by facet
• Displaying a total number of hits per facet value
• Refining search results by facet value
• Update of the facet menu based on refined search criteria
• Displaying of the search criteria in a Bread Crumbs
• Ability to exclude the chosen facet from the search criteria
• Flexibility of the Faceted search configuration and its consistency with MOSS administration

With the SharePoint conference starting this week I’m sure there’ll be some great messaging coming out.

When we’re given the green light I’ll talk about the many fantastic improvements on the way to a SharePoint site near you!!!

Stay tuned….

This whitepaper is typically centered around the BTS SharePoint Adapter and WSS V3.0/MOSS 2007.
(I’ll be posting details on SharePoint 2010 integration shortly… :) )

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=dd4e843d-2121-4016-8391-d763d0ff0a08

BizTalk + SharePoint: 1+1=3: Integration Best Practices

Brief Description

The integration of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 and Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 brings a whole new set of capabilities to end users. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server gives BizTalk Server a “face,” providing human workflow features and dashboard functionality.

Hi folks, I recently came across a tool (or enhancements to stsadm) that runs a series of rules against your farm to see if it passes some of the core requirements for upgrading to ‘a future release of SharePoint’ from WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007…so I’m guessing SP2010 :)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd793607.aspx

Check it out and let me know what you think – I haven’t run it yet…looking into it.

Have fun,

Mick.

Great to see some public information surfacing around SharePoint 2010 and development.

To get started (if you’re not already) here’s the SDK with a CHM file and PDF/XPS on “how to customise the ribbon”.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=94AFE886-3B20-4BC9-9A0D-ACD8CD232C24&displaylang=en

Doing a little digging in the CHM file, you can see (below) all the different Content categories with some special areas to note:

1. There appears to be a Visio Server – I guess like InfoPath + Excel Services as they currently stand in 2007.
2. AJAX + JSON seem to make an appearance at the foundational core – yay! less page reloads.
3. WCF Services used (*.SVC) as expected and simplified. Also it appears that BDC systems are accessible via a SharePoint custom WCF Binding, making it possible to work on BDC based data from various applications within SharePoint. SharePoint might become the hub ‘repository’ for this sort of information.

Bear in mind *alot* of this information is ‘subject’ to change.

Certainly going fwd it should be very exciting to see what actually ships and whether some of the immediate constraints are dealt with.

Looks like we’re up for another Ribbon experience in this Version of SharePoint from within the Browser.

Ok – during these more challenging times (who doesn’t love trying to get that Suduko puzzle of life out).

Breeze went into bat for you – my passion and first love (or should I second love – my wife could read this) – the Student!!

Microsoft and Breeze Partner to bring you…

Microsoft and Breeze are bringing you this special SharePoint Training offer during June & July only. This is part of a campaign to help businesses use their existing Microsoft technologies to gain business efficiencies during these economic times.

Being better connected internally as well as externally can save businesses’ time and money. I will show you how Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help you achieve just that as SharePoint 2007 has some features we think you shouldn’t live without!

I will focus on delivering a ‘real world’ experience as well as having a strong training component. The things I instruct on have to work for me in the field as well!

This four day, intense workshop is designed for IT Professionals and Developers needing effective skills transfer for the new products and technologies delivered with Microsoft Office 2007.

You will have the opportunity for 'hands-on' experience to Develop, Customise and Integrate solutions on the Office 2007 Platform as well as gain experience from the field.

This course has been heavily subsidised by Microsoft at a cost of $1300 ex GST (RRP $2480 ex GST) and is filling up quickly. For more information and registration go here:

https://www.microsoft.com.au/events/register/home.aspx?levent=344938&linvitation

-----end the blurb -----

Note – Microsoft Partners can use their Readiness training $$ towards this course.

Chances are you’ve got the technology, got the MOSS environment and now needed to extend and explore.

What a great deal…I’ve still kept my first born ;)

See you there…

Mick.

More Variation support, more standard document support, more bug fixes and an upgrade checker (to make sure you can apply SP2)

Should keep those sites happier for longer…

Details from http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2009/04/23/service-pack-2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system-available-today.aspx

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office system available today!

We're pleased to announce the release of all languages for Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, the 2007 Microsoft Office servers, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. As promised, this post contains a list of the products that are patched by SP2 with their corresponding knowledge base articles, information on how to obtain the packages, and links to additional SP2 resources. We hope you'll find this to be one of the best service packs produced by the Office team ever!

How to obtain SP2

Recommended Method: Microsoft Update

We recommend using Microsoft Update to apply SP2. Microsoft Update's detection will determine the products and languages you have installed and update your machine all at once.

Optional Method: The Download Center

If you choose not to use Microsoft Update, the SP2 packages are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. Please click here to find links to the downloads.

Yep - hot off the press thanks to Stephen a friend of mine (who brought this to my attention)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42

Don't leave home without it.

With all the developer extensions in recent time around SharePoint (Features, Solutions etc), I've found there seems to be a few little known and little used 'other' APIs within the SharePoint space.

We've got things like WebServices and the SharePoint Object Model (SPSite etc) that we use however, there's a couple of other APIs that could be useful also for the times when you're not running locally on the SharePoint machine - they generally center around HTTP and extending it.

Two (that come immediately to my mind) are:

1. WebDav - early versions of 'Web Folders' used this.

2. RPC (over HTTP) APIs - Front Page and SharePoint Designer still use these.
(InfoPath when submitting forms uses this to promote properties to a forms library)

A great example of this is SharePad for SharePoint on CodePlex

Merry Christmas,

Mick.

Thanks to all of you who joined me recently for Shannon & my seminar around Gaining Efficiencies in SharePoint.

We had a great turn out and I hope you found it useful - we had around 60 mins....the clock was ticking.

As promised - here's the PowerPoint slides I used in the presentation.
 

Take care and enjoy.

Mick.

James, a student of mine this week pointed me to a great tool that 'optimises' your SharePoint site (as well as websites in general).

Runtime Peformance Optimisation (RPO) is the place where it's all at. You basically plug your URL in and it sends you a report on how it can be optimised.

(I'm yet to check this out) James mentioned that it operates off a DLL that you include as part of your swag in the \bin folder (or GAC) and it requires the DLL for runtime operations.

Here's the process.....

1. click on the 'Try now button'

2. Plug the values in for your site..

3. Then peruse over the emailed results at your leisure.....

It does things like Image optimisation, file compressions and even gives you the results in cold and warm boot times!
Very very very nice!

Looks like I'll be talking to Santa this Christmas!!! :-)

  

Hi folks, (I've saved the last couple of places....for you)

With the economy being the topic on everyone’s lips at the moment, I have decided to turn my last MOSS bootcamp of the year in to a special week of training where I will show students how to help their business become more efficient during a time of streamlining processes. Whilst I will still cover the main course outline I will be focusing a little more on InfoPath forms and workflow and how students can utilize these tools within a SharePoint environment.

Students attending this bootcamp will have an added bonus of being able to attend my seminar on the Wed Evening covering more on this very topic……

Breeze MOSS Bootcamp Course is scheduled for November 25-29th.
Love to see you there :-)

Mick.

John Powell has a great article (with piccys) that will hopefully get you out of a pickle.

http://blogs.msdn.com/johnwpowell/archive/2008/08/14/error-configuring-biztalk-sharepoint-adapter-on-sharepoint-sp1.aspx

Thanks John!

After the more than normal pain in getting this done for my previous post, I decided to post the fruits of my labour (not labor that my wife tells me about watermellons and men wouldn't know the first thing about birth....I'm not about to do the pepsi challenge on that :))

- this is a stock standard Web.Config for a MOSS install NOT a plain WSS install (there's about 3 lines different from a plain WSS install to a MOSS install - mainly anything that references SharePoint.Publishing....)

Grab this and these are the changes that WORK!

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Mick.

"Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Silverlight, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies."

You're starting to Roll your sleeves up and get dirty with Silverlight 2 Beta 2, load up some of the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint Samples, run the installer (it's great that most of these examples have an installer) and Boom! you get the above error!!!

Here's a list I've compiled to get Silverlight working - I'm currently running this on Win2008 IIS7

(1) Install WSS SP1/MOSS SP1 on your SharePoint box if you haven't already. You need the SP1 to support .NET 3.5 calls through SharePoint - my guess is that these tell SharePoint not to intercept the calls and let them go to their rightful owners.

(2) Create a 'dummy' site collection on a test Web Application - e.g. http://localhost:81 - This is so you can see all the changes to the web.config that are made through the installation process, in isolation. By keeping this separate to your usual web.config, you'll be able to merge changes at a later date.

(3) Install the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 runtime and other developer bits - From http://Silverlight.net - VS2008 Developer Bits and just the runtime if you want from here

(4) Do one installation of a Silverlight for BluePrint Sample - the installer creates a 'virtual directory' under your Web Site called ClientBin where the various Silverlight 2 files go (*.js, *.XAP). This is a handy install so you can see what the directory execution settings are required to make this work through SharePoint. i.e. Execute permissions only. Take note of this directory.

(5) Add a IIS MIME type - With Silverlight 2 beta 2 - there is a new file type added which is a *.XAP file type. IIS by default doesn't know how to encode/translate or send these files down over the wire.
Add a mime type of: Extention: xap Mime Type: application/x-silverlight-app to your IIS Test Web Site

(6) Make Web.Config changes - there's a whole series of Web.Config changes to be made to your SharePoint Web Application to support AJAX/.NET 3.5 and now Silverlight.... fortunately other hard working folks have done this for you!!!! :) Bless their cotton socks! - grab the Feature that makes the modifications from here (** NB: you want the 3.5 config feature)

You're almost done........ :)

(7) EXCEPT for the error above!!! After much inspection of your system, you'll realise that you *don't* have that DLL (on a clean install). The Silverlight Ninja will know that this is from Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and not found in the Beta 2 kits!! Yay team!

The System.Web.Silverlight.dll is found in the Silverlight 2 beta 1 SDK - so download that puppy, extract out the DLL and either GAC it, or add it to your BIN directory on your SharePoint site. (I added it to my BIN directory - as I reckon when SL2 is released, this problem would have been resolved)
(**UPDATED: Due to how painful that was, I decided to package up the DLL for you - HERE**)

Here are the Compiled Files - FOR SL2 BETA 2 - they WORK!! :-)

(I grabbed the Blueprint Hello World Web Part and updated to work)

1. Silverlight Web Part DLL

2. Silverlight *.XAP updated for Beta 2, copy straight to the *sub-directory* under your client BIN

3. Sample SharePoint Web.Config with all the changes! :-)

There's a great line up this month that are too good to keep secret.

Some fellow CSD experts are lining up for some great topics to give all around Workflow and WCF!!!

Does it get better? Get on and register.

For more, check out the Live Calendar 

Live Webcasts

MSDN Webcast: Transactional Windows Communication Foundation Services with Juval Lowy (Level 200)

Monday, July 7, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:15 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Using Windows Workflow Foundation to Build Services with Jon Flanders (Level 300)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: WCF Extensibility Deep Dive with Jesus Rodriguez (Level 400)

Friday, July 11, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Bringing Enterprise Data to Life with SharePoint Server and Windows Communication Foundation (Level 300)

Friday, July 18, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

Back in V2.0 we had a Web Service that did this sort of stuff for us, now in V3.0 it's delivered straight from the Object Model.

Essentially:

1. We create a batch of XML which could have 'adds, updates + deletes' in there.
2. We call the web.ProcessBatchData(xml) method, handing to it our wishes.

This technique is fast, and CAML based :(

So if you need to add 100 items to the list - this would be a way to do it. (I've got to check whether this technique fires event handlers on the lists or whether it's a 'back door' thing)

Note: in the snippet below, the fields are referenced via their namespace#<name>
- you can get the field's details by saving your list 'As a template', downloading the *.stp file, renaming to *.stp.cab, opening it and looking into the *.xml file there.

- you could also call the lists.asmx webservice (..\_vti_bin\lists.asmx) and calling the GetListCollection(); method to see a chunk of describing XML.

             1: 
            "<ows:Batch
OnError=\"Return\">" +

             2: 
            "<Method
ID=\"A1\"><SetList>" + myGuid + "</SetList>" +

             3: 
            "<SetVar
Name=\"ID\">New</SetVar>" +

             4: 
            "<SetVar
Name=\"Cmd\">Save</SetVar>" +

             5: 
            "<SetVar
Name=" +

             6: 
            "\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Title\">" +

             7: 
            "New
Manager</SetVar>" +

             8: 
            "<SetVar
Name=" +

             9: 
            "\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Body\">" +

             10: 
            "Congratulations
to Mary for her promotion!</SetVar>" +

             11: 
            "<SetVar
Name=" +

             12: 
            "\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Expires\">" +

             13: 
            "2003-09-14T00:00:00Z</SetVar>" + 

             14: 
            "</Method>"
          

Here's a small MSDN article on it - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc404818.aspx

Cheers,

Mick.

(it even includes MOSS 2007 BI Dashboards)

This is one of the best BAM posters I have seen to date. As part of your Bat-Utility belt this is a must.

You could even print it out and stick it on the wall in the office....you never know....that raise should come sooner rather than later :)

Download the poster from HERE

Clayton sent through a great picture that explains what the main placeholders are on SharePoint Master Pages.

Well done CJ - thanks!

Went and caught a session by Chris Johnson around the Studio extensions for Sharepoint, an area that needs to catch up with the pace of the adoption of the product :-)

This Visual Studio Integrated toolset goes a long long way in bridging the gap and streamlining development in Sharepoint.
Features, manifest explorer etc etc.

One of the biggest features in this release is the ability to control the Sharepoint Solution Deployment process for e.g. Chris originally created a solution with 3 Features in it, where he drag' dropped the 3 Feature elements into 1 Feature.

http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2008/02/12/visual-studio-2005-extensions-for-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-version-1-1-rtm-user-guide-part-1.aspx

Enjoy!!!

Wow - a BizTalk adapter Pack announcement is looming (ready March 1 actually).

What is the BizTalk Adapter Pack?? I hear you ask.....I did too when I first heard of it.

Quick Bit of History
- 'Adapters' was a term typically used within a BizTalk space and to build adapters in BizTalk was a 'character' building experience where several COM interfaces needed to be implemented (with some of those interface's origins being in the year 2000!)
- for all that dev effort the 'adapters' only lived in BizTalk -land.

Wouldn't it be great to utilise your Adapter from other 'hosts' or environments such as Word/Sharepoint/Access/MS Project/BizTalk/Your Website etc etc....
(this is a very similar case to the initial *.OCX controls that came out. These controls were based on *.VBX which is something written in VB3 and used in the VB3 environment. Access/C/C++ developers had to duplicate the effort if they wanted similar functionality in their system)

WCF LOB Adapter SDK is the essence here.
- with BizTalk 2006 R2 on the scene, it comes with a 'new' adapter and new adapter 'style' known to trained BizTalk Ninjas as WCF Custom Adapter or BizTalk Adapter Framework V2.0
- so the LOB Adapter SDK is:

• Free
• .NET based
• A Framework and VSNET project template
• Allows you to build custom 'adapters'
• Does alot of the heavy lifting for you.
• Search/Browse/Consume WCF Service metadata
• Able to be hosted in .NET/.NET related Host environment (BizTalk could be one of these :-)

Enter the (Supported)BizTalk Adapter Pack - (Help files Here)

So the BizTalk team have been busy building on top of the WCF LOB SDK to provide 3 .NET Adapters (at this stage) which allow connections to:

• SAP
• Siebel
• Oracle - Database

So at this point you can grab these adapters and connect straight away - this bridges the gap between you and those systems.
For e.g. Sharepoint can connect straight away, the BDC can connect, your .NET app etc.

The fact it's supported and ready to roll makes it attractive :-)

Briefly the implementation details is that these 3 'adapters' are implemented as WCF Proxy Clients with a custom transport. Any application using these will essentially be calling a 'proxy' to a pretend WCF Service, where the 'Service' is the back end system with the WCF Transport implementing the appropriate features.

The word on the street about Pricing is that it will be under US$6000 and if you have BTS R2 with SA you get the adapter pack. For the rest of us, you need to weigh up the fact how long is it going to take you or your team to develop those adapters/connectors????. Licensing is per CPU.

Just to re-iterate, you do *not* need BizTalk in any version, any way shape or form to run this - you could run BTS Adapter pack from a console app.

Well firstly - I've got to say this comes off the back of a great Sharepoint MVP and collegue of mine Ishai Sagi. Big THANKS Ishai!!!

Typically my experience with the DataFormWebPart has been through the eyes of Sharepoint Designer - open pages with webparts on them and looking at the XML configuration of these parts. It look pretty ugly AND very site/web specific - IDs all over the place etc etc.

Ishai the wealth of knowledge came up with this solution - by overriding the SetDataSourceProperties method, you can effectively create a datasource from anywhere!!!! Forgetting the IDs etc that cause all the pain.

I've marked the 2 important lines with (**) in the code.

Big Thanks Ishai!!! Folks he's always one to watch - lock his blog in and learn!! :)

Ishai mentioned that his code below is purely for educational purposes

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;
using System.Data;
using System.Xml;

namespace AdvancedQueryWebPart
{
[Guid("46a8853d-415c-458e-990c-419c12fa04f5")]
publicclass AdvancedQueryWebPart : DataFormWebPart, IWebPart
{
public AdvancedQueryWebPart()
{
this.ExportMode = WebPartExportMode.All;
}

protectedoverridevoid SetDataSourceProperties()
{
   try
   {
      // Call a custom function that returns the data you want to show as a data table
      DataTable results = GetCustomData();
      if (results.Rows.Count > 0)
      {
         // generate xml for selected items
         XmlDocument doc =new XmlDocument();
         XmlNode root = doc.AppendChild(doc.CreateElement("Rows"));
         foreach (DataRow row in results.Rows)
         {
            XmlElement rowNode = doc.CreateElement("row");
            foreach (DataColumn col in row.Table.Columns)
            {
               string val = row[col].ToString();
               XmlAttribute att = doc.CreateAttribute(col.ColumnName);
               att.Value = val;
               rowNode.Attributes.Append(att);
            }
            root.AppendChild(rowNode);
         }
         // create an XmlDatasource with the new data, and set it to cache for one second
         XmlDataSource ds =new XmlDataSource();
         ds.CacheDuration = 1;
         ds.Data = doc.InnerXml;
         // bind the web part to the xml
(**)     this.DataSource = ds;
(**)     this.DataBind(true);
       }
       else
       {
         Label noResults =new Label();
         noResults.Text ="No results were found";
         this.Controls.Add(noResults);
       }
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
      Label lblError =new Label();
      lblError.Text = ex.ToString();
      this.Controls.Add(lblError);
   }
   base.SetDataSourceProperties();
}

private DataTable GetCustomData()
{
   try
   {
      SPWeb webSite = SPContext.Current.Web;
      SPSiteDataQuery query =new SPSiteDataQuery();
      //look only in document libraries
      query.Lists ="<Lists ServerTemplate=\"101\" />";
      //search for documents that have "Test" in the title
      query.Query =@"<Where><Contains><FieldRef Name=""Title"" /><Value Type="Text"">Test</Value></Contains></Where>";
      //bring back the title field of the documents
      query.ViewFields =@"<FieldRef Name=""Title"" Nullable=""TRUE"" /><FieldRef Name=""FileLeafRef"" Nullable=""FALSE"" />";
      DataTable items = webSite.GetSiteData(query);
      return items;
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
      thrownew Exception("There was a problem querying the site with the query", ex);
   }
}

}

}

Well looks like the team have made ready some great goodies in WSS 3.0 SP1, MOSS SP1 and SPD SP1.

These are Service Packs with enhancements also.

You need to install WSS 3.0 SP1 first then install MOSS SP1 (if you have a MOSS server)

Grab the details from the links below for both x86 AND x64 versions....

Enjoy,

Mick.

The problem about Sharepoint implementations is that typically when you create your Sharepoint Web Application from Central Admin, there is one ContentDB that you assign.

Then spare no more thought to it......

In update KB934525 MS added a new command to stsadm called MergeDBs.

This handles it all for you in a single command. You need to specify, WebApp1 address, contentDB1 and an excerpt of the stsadm -o enumsites command to specify the site(s) you want to 'migrate' to ContentDB2.

Here's a great step by step article by Todd

Well done!

Move over Thierry Henry(shame he's gone to Barca :), Kylie and U2..... make room for .NET 3.5 up on your wall.

The folks at MS have been super busy, while talking about what will be in .NET 4+ they release the posters.

Stay tuned for more!

Grab the .NET 3.5 Common Types and Classes

Hi folks - I came across a great list of the problem and then the KB article.

MOSS KB Articles + Hotfixes

Well done Sammy!

A friend of mine Sezai spent a great deal of time putting together a great list of WSS/MOSS articles. Thought I'd share them with you - thanks Sezai!!!

SharePoint Products and Technologies 2007 Customization Policy
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=92311&clcid=0x409

Deploying and Supporting Enterprise Search with MOSS 2007 at Microsoft - White Paper
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/5/3/253f0074-5c2c-4b45-a1c6-62c2c288c6eb/deployingandsupportingenterprisesearchtwp.doc

I came across this article some time ago and always needed a reference to it.

So I thought I'd pin it to my mental noteboard in the sky for all to share.....

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/6a13cd9f-4b44-40d6-85aa-c70a8e5c34fe1033.mspx?pf=true

Great article on how much MOSS/WSS can handle, from speed differences with site enumerations through to max elements in lists and doc libraries. Some very good numbers

Enjoy!

I had a little time this week and thought I'd write a quick stsadm extension to enumerate and set index ranking parameters, when querying MOSS indexes.

My main motivation was so you could change the ranking order of XLS files over PPT files etc.

There seems to be a ancient art in setting these values.

So what's included:

1. an XML file that needs to be copied to the \12\Config folder. Tells stsadm about the new commands and what class to run.




2. A .NET assembly that needs to be GAC-ed so the stsadm doesn't have to look too hard to try and find the class.

Creating an extension is a pretty easy thing - extend an interface as follows:

The next part was to interface with the indexing service as follows:

The keyValues collection are created by stsadm and passed into your method - how good is that.

To get access to the Ranking and SearchContext classes a few additional references are required. Such as:

- Microsoft.Office.Server
- Microsoft.Office.Server.Search
- Microsoft.Sharepoint.Search

These are all in the attached project.

Running the enumindexrankparams looks a little like this:
(these are some secret numbers to do with weightings of 'click depth', 'url depth', language etc. A value of 0 is ignored. I'm still working through what these exactly are - apart from the file type ones)

As I understand you can't add additional weightings here for file types like PDF etc.

the commands to run this are:

1. stsadm -o enumindexrankparams -site <url to ssp>

2. stsadm -o setindexrankparams -site <url to ssp> -<rank name> <rank value>
    stsadm -o setindexrankparams -site <url to ssp> -filetypepriorlistitems 1

Have fun - the project shows you how to extend the stsadm and also start to get a bit of a feel of the Search/Index APIs.

Grab the source here -

The ever vibrant Andrew Coates pinged me an email yesterday asking for my involvement in becoming a TechTalk Blogger........

I'm currently on this Island called 'Hamilton' at a 'Partner' Conference (yeah right!!! :)) so naturally I said 'yes!' (not too many people are saying 'no' around here)

I've got some great stories around RFID, BizTalk R2 and obvious integration into WSS/MOSS and what that means.

Hope you're going to join me on a great journey together! Gotta dash the scuba diving boat is waiting for me... (erm...the next 'partner activity')

Mick. 

I'm currently kicking back at the partner conf. here on Hamilton Island - I have to kick myself to remind me that I am on a conference. Beautiful scenery and temperature....I'm sure you get the classic sunset palm tree over a beach image in your mind........no more need to be said.

What I did want to share - I'm currently listening to Ian Polangio (MS Sharepoint TS) where he brought up a couple of great (beta) Search sites.

1. http://mrsdewey.com/ - here's a talking person who acts and 'shows' parts of your search results.
(She has a bit of attitude to boot as well)
 

2. http://www.tafiti.com/ - silverlight based search site. Builds trees and it's quite interactive.
I did a search on my name 'Mick Badran' and some interesting results came up :-)

Very interactive in Silverlight - lots of things spinning and moving and pinning

Wow what a session!! Being a Level 400 session my expectation (from those who make teched) was to go reasonably deep. I had a fantastic crowd with standing room only in the theatre room - my last session of the day (being my 3rd) I was knackered and ready to go out with a bang.

So I decided to jump into the Workflow Foundation and discuss *what is actually done behind the scenes* with Sharepoint's WF management. This was well received (and I'm sure a few people in the audience were saying 'So I just want to know how to approve something'....we got onto that later) and opened up a few concepts explaining why we do the things we do within our Sharepoint Workflows. e.g. Task Correlation Tokens and new Task IDs, why we need to generate new ones if we handle a task changed event.

I then got onto some of the Sharepoint Workflow Implementations and wanted to highlight the use of a State based workflow as opposed to the usual SequentialWorkflow.

*** DEMO CODE WILL BE POSTED SOON FOLKS *** (don't have my vpc with my to extract out my projects for you right now)
Slide Deck:OFC409_Mick_Badran_Workflow_Deep_Dive.v1.2.pdf (977.98 KB)

Hi folks, I'm busily preparing for TechEd2007 and one of my session is developer focused  about Workflow in Microsoft Sharepoint.

This will be where all my slides and sample code will be shortly :)

See you soon.....

We've got a decent PDF IFilter from found on the MS IFilter Blog.

The IFilter team have been busy and while this IFilter is by a third party, I believe it has under gone some internal MS testing.

One of the things I've had trouble with in the past has been Native Adobe Compression within PDFs. In the later versions of PDF writer/distiller etc. when outputting a PDF, one of the options is to select the amount of compression (a slider bar from memory).

I was onsite and noticed that out of the 400 PDFs in our 'test' folder, around 50 were not being properly indexed (only filename, filesize, location etc were 'extracted').

All of these 50 documents had PDF compression set to 'high' (there were 4 different compression settings)

You may or may not have to add the work around below - Foxit have updater their installer.

---- snip ------

Long awaited 64-bit PDF IFilter finally available.

Finally we have a 64 bit PDF IFilter - surprisingly the solution is not from Adobe or Microsoft, but from a company called Foxit Software.The IFilter is compatiable with the following Microsoft products: Windows Indexing Service, MSN Desktop Search, Internet Information Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Site Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server and all other products based on Microsoft Search technology.

 There's one simple workaround to get the filter running on 64 bit MOSS 2007. The steps are given below.

1. Install Foxit 64bit PDF Ifilter. http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/ifilter/

2. Add a pdf extension in MOSS search settings

3. Open regedit, locate [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]

4. Change the default value to {987f8d1a-26e6-4554-b007-6b20e2680632} .

5. Recycle the search service: net stop osearch
                                              net start osearch

6. Start a full crawl to index your pdf documents :)

MOSS and reporting services integration......

After installing SQL2005 SP2 and SharepointRS.msi (Sharepoint 'extensions') you're left to do a 'small' amount of configuration. Basically telling the MOSS environment where to find the Reporting Services Server.

Previously this has been a difficult step - almost a journey of discovery. Here's the answer.

From Central Admin->Web Application->Reporting Services Configuration Integration

From below the 1st box always gives grief - the label title and the description seem to indicate different things.

So just to put this to bed - the Web that you have ReportingServices installed - point off to the ReportService WebService - you're good to go!

Currently I'm setting up a system and found an interesting 'challenge'. After some sweat and tears I stumbled upon this Microsoft article.

In the article it appears that running IIS 6.0 on a 64-bit box is cool. (obviously or there'd be trouble)

It's also cool to run 32-bit ASP.NET apps in 1.1/2.0

It is notcool to run a mix of 32- and 64-bit in the same IIS.

Thought I'd save you my pain!

Hey guys, I've got a couple of seats left for some MOSS 2007 training at the end of this month.

If you're wondering what all this WSS/MOSS stuff is all about, I'll be running an equally focused MOSS developer and administration course very soon :)

What do I need to say about moss? (if you're using/developing/designing and implementing - come along and fine out what works and what doesnt. Save you a whole lot of head banging later - unless you're at AC/DC :)

Who should go:
- If you have a SPS V2 site you're thinking of upgrading, deployment, farms structures and capacity planning.

- developers - if you're currently building/designing Web based solutions, spend a couple of days looking at what WSS gives you for free! (it's just like another framework within the .NET System space - use what ever parts you want)

- you're curious about what is WSS V3/MOSS/FormsServices/Excel/Infopath web based solutions and must be fluent in 3 languages (that part I made up :) - reminded me of a job description I saw one day)

Check it out - I've managed to reserve a couple of seats.

Course details:
When: Jun 25th - Jun 28th
Where: Sydney

Further Details
http://www.breezetraining.com.au/site/Default.aspx?tabid=49

p.s. we run the course in conjunction with Dimension Data Learning Solutions to give you the best experience possible.

Is it snowing? Is it cyclonic rain in Sydney :)- Microsoft have planned a fantastic 4 day course.
Are you looking for developing in Sharepoint/WSS V3.0?
I'm sure you'll be spending around 60% of your efforts finding and optimal deployment path.....let's sort that one out.

Jump onto this offer and register while you can - coming up in a few weeks.

For those of you that are coming - save your questions and let's get cracking.

Microsoft Readiness for Partners!!!

MOSS 2007 Developer Intensive – including ECM & WCM

This 4 day intensive workshop gives hands-on solution development with the 2007 Microsoft® Office System including Customizing and Extending Enterprise Content Management Solutions.

This course will teach you:
- how to brand sites WSS sites,
- well as how to extend them with collaboration services, Web Parts, Content Types, and custom workflows.
- The course will also show you how use and extend other server side components, such as the Business Data Catalog, Forms Services, Excel Server, and Report Center.
-The goal is to give you an in-depth look and hands-on experience of WCM capabilities now integrated into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 from a developer perspective.

Course Level: 300/400
Location: Sydney - 16 Jul 2007 to 19 Jul 2007
Cost: $715 AUD inc GST (this has been subsidised by MS :-)
Register now: https://www.local.microsoft.com.au/australia/events/register/home.aspx?levent=783945&linvitation

stsadm -o setproperty -pn max-template-document-size -pv 3000000

where PV is the size in KB.

:-)

I was recently adding EPM 2007 (Project Server 2007) to an existing WSS/MOSS 2007 setup (farm).
The installation worked a treat...then it came to the business end of the installation......to see the Project bits in action.

One gotcha I want to share with you:

1. Project Server allows configuration through an additional element within the MOSS SSP (already created in my case).
Project Server (group) -> Project Web Access Sites

When I first clicked on this guy, I got an error "Project Application Service does not exist or is not started..."
- trouble I thought.
Quick scan of the services on the machine - couldnt find it!

Trick: From Central Admin -> Operations -> Services on Server
- there is an extra 'Server Role', Project Application.
- select it and start the service (this installs the service as well)
- now from the main server role screen, (in my case - Single Server or Web Server...) the Project Application Service is listed and now started :)

Gotta be happy with that!

As you know - MOSS is extensible in pretty much all directions. The product team has done a great job on this latest version!!!
There are two elements you need to create to get this to work:

1. an XML file - tells Sharepoint what characteristics/metadata about your new field.
2. a .NET class(es) to control the fields behaviour during rendering for view, edit and new modes. (so you can precisely control how the control appears)

My buddy Clayton is up all hours and has nutted out a simple example - check it out here