November 21, 2008

A tale of three guids

A tale of three guids:

Sharepoint

Features require a guid of the form “this-is-a-guid”

For a content type you need a guid of the form “0x100thisisaguid”

For a field definition you need a guid of the form “{this-is-a-guid}”

 

One team, three distinct guid formats WTF

Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:20:12 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Debugging Feature Receivers

A great technique when developing a sharepoint feature receiver:

Create yourself an announcements list and have the feature log the install (or failure to do so) to this location.

 This is much less messy than debugging on a production box.

 This announcement list can be locked down so only developers and admin’s can read it.

 I have found that you can create and populate a custom list and a view in 20 lines of code (genericly).

 This contrasts to 4000 lines of xml per list/view.

Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:19:05 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Unix Philosophy

This is the Unix Philosophy.

Those who don't know unix are doomed to reinvent it badly...
Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:16:57 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

TFS fails as version control software

TFS is inadequate as a VCS.

The developers think that all development occurs in VS.NET.

This does not work if you use code generation

Example

I have a spreadsheet that I was to control in VCS.

If I lock the file and then replace it I get a (false) claim that the file has not changed – which automatically unlocks the file.

In order to get the file checked in I need to edit another text file in Visual studio.  By changing this it notices that both have changed.


Example

Why can't it perform keyword expansion like every other modern vcs!
Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:15:31 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Safecontrols and Sharepoint

This is an article on using safecontrols with sharepoint.
Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:13:10 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Splitting config files

This is an article on splitting config files.

Theoretically this could allow the development of a set of mutually exclusive sharepoint features that could be used to switch a server between test, uat and production modes.
Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:11:32 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Interacting web parts

This is an article on interacting web parts.
Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:09:15 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Enterprise Search and the BDC

This is an article on configuring the BDC to work with Enterprise Search.

The BDC is a database/web service abstraction layer that provides a unified api.
It claims to be of general use in Sharepoint.

I can see little benefit to it if you don't want google like searches of your application.
The big problem is that you need to be very careful or the search mechanism will invalidate any access controls that you have.

The BDC is excessively complex for what it provides.  The price in it's complexity (as is generally the problem with sharepoint) exceeds the effort required to roll it yourself...
Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:06:21 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Fun with Virtual PC's

Lately I have been working on a Sharepoint project.

Sharepoint developers have two main choices:

(i) Develop natively on a server OS (which my IT Helpdesk does not support)
(ii) Develop on a virtual pc (which can be slow).

Sharepoint developer's tend to be at least familiar with the vpc.
This is a solution to a common problem with vpc's.

Typically one developer sets up the vpc then gives a copy to the next person to join the team.
You need to play games about leaving/rejoining domains and renaming machines.
One thing that you also need to do is to delete the ethernet_card_address entry in the vmc file (it is just xml).

You may also need to see this. That fixes the names that sql server stores in the registry.
Posted by chriseyre2000 at 20:01:18 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Ubuntu on the eeePC

This is a site that provides a cut down ubuntu install that claims to work on the eeePC.
Posted by chriseyre2000 at 19:54:56 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |