March 2006 Entries
Heather Solomon has been accepted for public voting on a Birds Of A Feather session for this coming TechEd 2006 (USA) in Boston. This session will be well worth it. Heather is a phenomonal Web Designer who has a developer's perspective (she has to put up with us, or is it the other way around?). Make sure to not miss this one SO GO VOTE!
[via Heather]
My Birds of a Feather session proposal has been accepted for public voting, so please go vote for my session (mine is about midway down the list). Even if you aren't attending, do a gal...
Andrew Connell is needing your vote to have a Birds Of A Feather Session at TechEd 2006 this year.
Vote Now
For...
Migrating your Content Management Server 2002 sites to Web Content Management in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Web Content Management (WCM) in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a significant upgrade from Content Management Server 2002 (CMS). The most significant change is the change to using Windows SharePoint Services as the underlying platform for WCM. The tradeoff: no backward compatibility with the CMS Publishing API (PAPI)! No fear, in this BoF session we'll discuss best practices for current CMS site development,...
In a previous posting I gave my farewell to AC from our company. I also predicted that there would be good things in store for his future. Well, here's step one for the former colleague known as “AC”. Andrew was included in Wally McClure's ASP.Net roundtable Podcast. With so much coming up with Office Sharepoint Server 2007 and Web Content Management (WCM), the fields are ripe for harvest. In a side-note, I believe I heard Bayer White's name during the round table also. Anyways, Go Andrew Go! It's good to hear your laugh in the background :o)
Dax Pandhi gives his take on how not-so-easy it is to spruce up a DotNetNuke site. Don't get me wrong, I use DNN3.x for some sites I maintain, so I'm not slamming DNN - it's a good CMS platform. At the same time, my DNN sites are no graphic eye-candy either. I remember the DNR show that Carl Franklin disclosed Dan Pandhi's opinion of DNN - when Carl asked him to consider using it for DNR's site (quite comical IMHO). Well, Dax has posted his opinion on DNN 4 as well on his blog...
NukeBoy gives DotNetNuke another shot
Carl Franklin has always been a communication programming kinda guy. He helped me out with his serial and socket examples back in the day. Now, he's announced an exciting product for the world of podcasting - Pwopcatcher Alpha.
Features (in a nutshell):
Subscribe to RSS feeds that contain enclosures (of any kind).
Each feed’s enclosures can be downloaded to a unique folder, or a common folder.
Each feed can have a different interval (minutes between reloading the feed).
You can specify (for each feed) a maximum life in days of enclosures. Only podcasts X days old or newer will be downloaded.
Files are pruned locally: they are deleted after...
[via Heather Solomon]
I feel that custom lists can be effectively utilized within any organization and can really answer the call for several custom content requests that you may get from your users. I think they are a bit underutilized and a great asset in SharePoint.
» The Beauty of Custom Lists article
If you are known to answer (like moi), “Oh, I've read some code in MSDN magazine” or “I remember a presentation a few months ago” when asked if you know XML - this bit of advice is for you. Don't even attempt to convince others you know if you haven't “been there, done that” with a bonafide project. And let me tell ya, InfoPath is a great development platform to get experience. Somewhere in that experience you'll have a light-bulb moment like Andy Stitzer (from The 40 Year Old Virgin) when he had his chest hair pulled out and yells, “Yooooooooow,...
[via Philo]
It took me a while to figure out how to do the InfoPath/webservice thing starting with an InfoPath form. Maybe this is blindingly obvious to everyone but me, but here it is anyway
Check out the entire post ...Creating a web service for an InfoPath form in 25 easy steps
I received the 2nd collectible SourceFource character in the mail today - Visual Studio Guy. Already, the two are discussing the arrival of SQL Server Gal. But, guess what? Yours truly needs to schedule two live webcasts before that happens. With my busy workload lately I haven't gotten to sit in on any.
So, if you haven't gotten onto the SourceFource bandwagon, jump on board and start sharpening your skill sets. There are some pretty good teachers, er, webcast guys teaching some cutting-edge coding techniques out there.
See Visual Studio guy cheering you on? Isn't he the poster-boy of...
If you have been following my posts (here, here and here) on the MSDN SourceFource Collectible's you'll agree that the previous two haven't been all THAT great. But just when you let your guard down you're bound to get blindsided - hence the third addition to the Limited-Edition Developer Action Figures...
SQL SERVER GAL
She's an Oprah fan and her favorite band is the Beach Boys (Little Server Girl)?
Why do I look forward to these things each month (sigh)?
Check out the full sphill here...
Meet the Fource
I came across an excellent article by Paul Ballard on Retrieving information from the Sharepoint 2003 Lists.asmx GetListItems method. What's cool is he gives three approaches of how to deal with the XML you receive.
While a relatively simple format, it’s not conducive to working with the data in .NET. So then, here are the three examples of working with this data...
Convert it to a Dataset (Easiest)
Access Data Using XPath Queries (Easy)
XMLSerialization (Not-So Easy)
Paul even gives his recommendations on which to choose and some things to consider. I'm very impressed by Paul's article. Not only is it valuable information...
[via MSDN]
I wish I would have stumbled upon this sooner. Over at MSDN there is a Book Excerpt named Advanced Form Design that goes in-depth on how to manipulate File Attachments with managed code. It has some excellent examples. One particullary nice example that I plan on using is the ExecuteAction method:
The following Visual Basic code-behind function adds a new item in a repeating table or section and then opens the File Attachment dialog box for an attachment in that section. If the user cancels the File Attachment dialog box, the code removes the inserted row.
You can find this excerpt at the...
Recently I posted about an experience I had with deploying an InfoPath Managed Code solution to a testing environment. It was called...
InfoPath: Handling Data Connections Pointing To Web Services Dynamically For Development Production
... and I expressed my displeasure of finding out that the WSDLURL property was Read Only and me having so many references to web services that seemed unchangeable. I referred to a solution back then BUT I found an even better solution and a whole lot more information about using web services inside InfoPath.
This will save you a lot of time. Start here before you do any coding...
Developing Solutions with...
[via msdn]
Here's an excellent article in how to set up a custom least-privileged service account for an ASP.NET 2.0 Application...
How To: Create a Service Account for an ASP.NET 2.0 Application
[via Andrew Connell]
AC has an article every Virtual PC user should check out. Some good schtuff...
HOWTO: Squeeze Every Last Drop of Performance Out of Your Virtual PCs
[via MSDN]
Have you given up looking for an official place that defines the SharePoint Lists Service Methods for working with lists and list data? Need some example code on how to use them? Well, here's a place worth making a favorite (one of mine)...
SharePoint Lists Service Public Methods
[via DaveRamsey.com]
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Financial...
Since I've been working with InfoPath 2003 SP2 and VS 2005 Managed Code I've been working with XML data quite a bit. Scott Hanselman has a thought and suggestion on a useful method / performance philosophy (I agree)...
[via Scott Hanselman]
Random thought: I like the whole XmlReader philosophy. I use it much more often than XmlDocument. I haven't made an XmlDocument in a while. Every once in a while an XmlDocument shows up when you need an XmlNode for some SOAP stuff, but for the most part, I like XmlReaders.
Read the entire post at...
XmlTextReader more and more
[via MSDN TechNet]
...Here's the big news: you can get the new Windows SDK, WinFX runtime components, and (for MSDN subscribers) the latest version of Windows Vista. You can also get the Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" CTP WinFX development tools, all at Get the Beta.
[via MSDN]
This article discusses:
The architecture of a report collaboration solution
Creating a SharePoint Web service to save reports
Building a report delivery extension
Deploying the solution to a SharePoint site
Check out the entire article over at MSDN...
Reporting Services: Deliver SQL Server Reports To SharePoint To Enhance Team Collaboration
It would appear that InfoPath wasn't cut out for an Enterprise Deployment Strategy. When I started looking to place my solution out on our testing environment I realized there were a lot of web services pointing to my local development box. And the WSDLURL property is Read Only - aargh! But there is hope. At least that's what I see over at InfoPathDev's Forum thread called Updating Data Connections During Deployment.
David Crabbe states that you can access a property inside the IXMLDOMDocument via IXMLDOMDocument3 interface to change the serviceUrl attribute. If you place this value somewhere on your main schema you...