Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010

October 20, 2009

Microsoft releases a document which describes common ways to build and scale farm topologies, including planning which servers to start services on.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=fd686cbb-8401-4f25-b65e-3ce7aa7dbeab

Sysinternals Suite Released!!

August 11, 2009

Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009

July 6, 2009

As most of you aware, Microsoft is conducting a contest to re-design their Conference Site. I wanted to participate on this contest and have designed the following Look&Feel Template. Please feel free to provide comments re.below. Would be appreciate your input.

SharePoint Conference Re-Design

Backup Exec – MOSS 2007

July 4, 2009

Last week, I have been working with fixing the search issue. Actually,  the crawler was failed to crawl the large team site which has heavy weight document libraries with lot of folder structures – Some other people were try to fix this issue by deleting the large document libary, but no luck. So these guys were planning to restore them back, but unfortunately they could not find that huge document library in both site collection & site Recycle Bin(sounds weird)- Please take a look at Chris Blog, he mentioned this same problem in his blog http://www.sharepointblogs.com/cwogle/archive/2009/06/18/large-items-in-sharepoint-recycle-bin-fixed-er-worked-around.aspx. It was very important libray though, so we were planning to restore it from Tape Backup using Symantec Backup Exec. As you may aware, Backup Exec is used to resore the specified file or document library. Using this tool, they were trying to restore the document library(which has 9720 items, and total size would 29GB) from Tape Backup to SharePoint site. But, they could not able to restore it(i.e., 29GB) back using backup exec for various reasons. So, the network administrators have decided to restore it to UNC path. Instead of restoring to C:\, they could restore it to the document library.

Symptom:

Not able to restore huge document libary(i.e., 29GB) to sharepoint site

Resolution:

Create a document library and select action->open with windows explorer(please make sure that webclient services have enabled, if not this option wont work). It will open a document library within the windows explorer. Use this UNC path to restore by using symantech back exec.

Power of CMIS – Interoperable Content Management

June 16, 2009

As you may aware, CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) uses web services to provide greater interoperability across multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories. Here is a small introduction about CMIS who doesn’t aware of it: CMIS  is a standards proposal consisting of a set of Web services for sharing information among disparate content repositories that seeks to ensure interoperability for people and applications using multiple content repositories. Alfresco, Day Software, Dennis Hamilton, EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Open Text, Oracle and SAP have joined forces to propose CMIS, the first Web services technical specification for exchanging content with and between Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. Here is the conceptual CMIS architecture

CMIS

and here is the Service Oriented Content Management architecture from Optaros

Service Oriented Content Management

When you think about Interoperable Content Management(CMIS), first thing you could have ask: Is (CMIS) the perfect solution? Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact that something has been developed that ECMs and other application developers can work with to provide an integrated view of an organization’s content is a step in the direction we need to go. We all know the days of a single, in-house ECM system are pretty much over. SharePoint has already taken care of that. We need something to give us hope that our content is manageable — regardless of where it’s located. CMIS does that. Kyle McNabb has answered the lehman question on his prespectives and here is the DRAFT specification which will be submitted to OASIS – and AIIM has shown an excellent CMIS Demo (i.e., “Federator”)

[Update]:

Attached: CMIS Federated Search Code from AIIM iECM Demo – You can download it from here https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-3771

    BDC as a Dataconnection for InfoPath Development

    June 16, 2009

    One of my customer wanted to create a BDC application definition file for Oracle 11g database Entity. Also, they wanted to use an InfoPath to leverage or pre-populate the dropdown list from Oracle database entity. Due to the budget cut, they are not willing to spend money/hours to create a seperate webservice wrapper for an oracle entity to pre-populate the dropdowns(in InfoPath) and they would like to use BDC application definition file as a datasource for an InfoPath(sounds crazy  here? [:)] ). They had raised a valid question to me that “Why don’t to use BDC as a Data Connection for Infopath? – BDC application definition file has connection string and method instance, blah, blah… so why we can not re-use this application definition file as a datasource for InfoPath Developement?”- Pretty good question, isit? [;)] – Conceptual Design diagram attaced. 

    Conceptual Design

    But unfortunately, InfoPath data connection wizard doesn’t support BDC application definition file as a Datas ource and it does supports the following options.

    InfoPath Options

    We can not use BDC application definition file as an XML form or anyother options. So, I suggested to them to create a simple webmethod(i.e, 4 hours effort) to pre-populate the lookup values from LOB Instances, and make use of this webservice as a datasource in infopath form. So that you can re-use the same application definition file for both BDC application & InfoPath form.

    Code

    They were really happy to use this technology to satisfy their technical issue as well as save cost [:)] – Using this approach we can able to use Business Data Catalog as a DataConnection for an InfoPath development.

    Hope this helps!

    New hotfix for Visual Studio 2008 is available

    February 19, 2008

    Recently, an announcement is published on WebDevTools blog @ msdn that there is a new hotfix available for Visual Studio 2008 (and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express) that fixes some performance and editor issues that have arisen in Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. Fixes are related to HTML Source view performance, Design view performance, HTML editing, JavaScript editing and Web Site build performance. The download is available on connect.microsoft.com and is related to KB article KB946581. It is approximately 2,5MB large and in order to download it one must login to connect using Live ID. Here is address on connect, and here is official announcement . Installation is easy, quick and straightforward and on my dev machine it doesn’t ask for install DVD.

    Best Practices in Javascript Library Design

    September 27, 2007

    Last night, I’d the chance to look at John Resig’s talk on the Best Practices in Javascript Library Design.

                    This talk explores all the techniques used to build a robust, reusable, cross-platform JavaScript Library. We’ll look at how to write a solid JavaScript API, show you how to use functional programming to create contained, concise, code, and delve deep into common cross browser issues that you’ll have to solve in order to have a successful library. John Resig is a JavaScript Evangelist, working for the Mozilla Corporation, and the author of the book ‘Pro Javascript Techniques.’ He’s also the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library and the co-designer of the FUEL JavaScript library (included in Firefox 3).

    1. jQuery - that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages.
    2. Fuel - Firefox User Extension Library – is a JavaScript Library designed to help developers build extensions using terminology and interfaces that are familiar to them. It will be usable in Firefox 1.5-3.0.

    Download jQuery

    .NET Framework 3.5 New Features

    June 13, 2007

    Thom has a table of .NET Framework 3.5 features, Daniel also has a good list of the new stuff in .NET Framework 3.51. System.Data.Linq.dll – The implementation for LINQ to SQL.
    2. System.Xml.Linq.dll – The implementation for LINQ to XML.
    3. System.AddIn.dll, System.AddIn.Contract.dll – New AddIn (plug-in) model.
    4. System.Net.dll – Peer to Peer APIs.
    5. System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.dll – Wrapper for Active Directory APIs.
    6. System.Management.Instrumentation.dll – WMI 2.0 managed provider (combined with System.Management namespace in System.Core.dll).
    7. System.WorkflowServices.dll and System.ServiceModel.Web.dll – WF and WCF enhancements (for more on WF + WCF in v3.5 follow links from here).
    8. System.Web.Extensions.dll – The implementation for ASP.NET AJAX (for more web enhancements, follow links from here) plus also the implementation of Client Application Services.
    9. System.Core.dll – In addition to the LINQ to Objects implementation, this assembly includes the following: HashSet, TimeZoneInfo, Pipes, ReaderWriteLockSlim, System.Security.*, System.Diagnostics.Eventing.* and System.Diagnostics.PerformanceData.

    Workflow Enabled Services – Process and Messaging together Web 2.0 Friendly and AJAX Enabled WCF Services Visual Studio Developer Tools for WF, WCF and in Visual Studio “Orcas”
    Using workflow to provide for durable and long-running services. New Tools, WF activities and new programming model classes have been added to simplify building workflow-enabled services using WF and WCF. This allows a .NET Framework developer to build business logic for a service using WF and expose messaging from that service using WCF. These improvements not only provide tools for this scenario but they reduce the amount of glue code that was previously required. Ajax is a web development technique for making asynchronous exchanges of small amounts of data between browser and web service calls from the browser client script to the web server. A programming model is provided for building Ajax style web applications using WCF services. An HTTP programming model is also provided allowing for REST style web services. Visual Studio”Orcas” has built in tools for web service authoring with WCF and for building workflow enabled software with WF. There are new project templates for WCF services, WF business logic, workflow enabled services, and AJAX services. The templates are conveniently set up to compile and run even before any custom code is added enabling .NET developers to get going quickly. There are also numerous other tools for developing with WF, WCF and WPF.
    More WS-* Standards Support RSS and ATOM Syndication API Partial Trust Support for WCF Hosting
    Implementation in WCF of the latest OASIS specifications Web Services Atomic Transaction (WS-AtomicTransaction) 1.1, WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1, WS-SecureCOnversation and Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination) 1.1. Applications built using WCF will be able to easily expose syndicated data which can be consumed by an RSS or ATOM reader. Partial trust on the vlient is provided for ASMX parity focussing mainly on partially trusted WCF applications deployed through click-once. Support is provided for basic HTTP binding provided that the application runs in the Internet zone permissions and have granted the apropriate WebPermission. Secure communication is possible through transport security only. All other features are not available to partially trusted applications including hosting services, duplex communications, non-HTTP transports, WS-* protocols and any WF use.
    Rules Data Improvements Built-in WPF tools for Visual Studio “Orcas” Additional WPF Features and Improved Performance
    The rules engine in WF is improved to add support for C# 3.0 extension metods, and for operator overloading . Also the ”new” operator is added to compete the base set of expression types. The Visual Studio designer for WPF was previously released as a CTP. It is not integrated into the development environment and is significantly improved. WPF has smoother animations, faster startup and better overall performance. There are also new data types available for data binding with LINQ. Better integration support is now provided for with codename “WPF/E”.
    Faster .NET Framework execution Base Class Library – New Class Additions Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
    1. Faster garbage collection2. Smarter, faster NGen requiring smaller working set RAM3. 64 bit client improvements4. ThreadPool performance improvements5. Security check caching during NGen 6. BigInteger, HashSet and DateTime2 types7. NSA Suite ”B” and FIPs compliant cryptography8. Lightweight Reader/Writer Lock Classes9. Anonymous and Named Pipes IO Classes10.   Integration with Event Tracing for Windows11.   New Addin hosting model for extensibility Deep integration of LINQ data-awareness into the programming languages and framework.

    “Astoria” – Data Services For ASP.Net Ajax and Silver light

    May 3, 2007
    A new framework to make it easy for use to build data services to make it easy for developers to get data for a rich web client using ASP.Net Ajax and Silverlight, Microsoft Codename “Astoria”.By using URL’s we can simply get data from our data source, for example let assume we want to get an Order entity, we can simply write:http://webserver/data.svc/OrdersIf we want to get an specific Order we can write:

    http://webserver/data.svc/Orders[Pizza]

    There are several things we can do, like sorting, using “property path” to get child entities, we can use paging etc.Currently Astoria can represent data in plain XML, JSON and in a subset of RDF and XML.For example if we get the data as XML it could look like:

    <DataService xml:base=”http://myserver/data.svc”> 

           <Orders> 

                      <Order uri=”Orders[Pizza]“>  

                                    <OrderID>1</OrderID>   

                                      <ShopName>Domino</ShopName>   

                                      <ContactName>Johnson</ContactName>   

                                       <ContactTitle>Sales Manager</ContactTitle>   

                                       <Address>#15, Kakkanji Street, Gandhi Nagar</Address>   

                                        <City>Chennai</City>   

                                        <Region>Tamil Nadu</Region>   

                                       <PostalCode>600072</PostalCode>   

                                       <Country>India</Country>   

                                         <Phone>91-044-220074321</Phone>   

                                        <Fax>91-044-220074321</Fax>   

                                        <OrderDetails href=”Order[Pizza]/OrderDetails” mce_href=”Order[Pizza]/OrderDetails” />  

                       </Order> 

            </Orders>

    </DataService> 

     Astoria uses the ADO.NET Entity Framework. With the Entity Framework we could use EDM schemas and map our entities against a relational data source.

    Update:

    Here’s the description from the Astoria Project Site (where you can get the CTP today): http://astoria.mslivelabs.com/.

    Description:

    “The goal of Microsoft Codename Astoria is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within a corporate network and across the Internet. The data service is reachable over HTTP, and URIs are used to identify the various pieces of information available through the service. Interactions with the data service happens in terms of HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE, and the data exchanged in those interactions is represented in simple formats such as XML and JSON. “

    Here’s a great video by Pablo Castora: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=306736#306736