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• How do you automate a SharePoint 2010 deployment?

  - by Enrique Lima

  In the last couple of months SharePoint traffic (consulting, training and speaking) has picked up.  And with that also the requests for deployments.  There are good, great, bad and really bad things around this. But that is for another topic.  However part of the good and great has been the fact of organizations wanting to do a proof of concept deployment (even when WSS or MOSS has been deployed). We can go through a session (Microsoft has the SDPS concept, SharePoint Deployment Planning Services) of discovering what the customer wants to achieve from their investment in the platform and then also proceed to model the solution that would fit their needs.  But it should not stop there.  The next step should be a POC (as many have requested) to test out. Now, on to the meat of this post.  How do I deploy?  While it is a good process to watch and see all of it take place, not many have the time to sit through that.  Even more so, when that has been part of the description of deploying the platform in the sessions mentioned above. I will, though, break it into a deployment for development purposes and a deployment of a farm. Two tools (or scripts) for those two different types of deployment. First, let me address the development environment.  Around the last week in October, Chris Johnson (SharePoint Product Team) announced a SharePoint Easy Setup for Developers.  The kit itself will assist you in installing SharePoint Server (in standalone mode), the tools that go around Visual Studio, Expression Studio and the Office 2010 tools. Here is the link to Chris’ post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cjohnson/archive/2010/10/28/announcing-sharepoint-easy-setup-for-developers.aspx The other scenario is the use of a script in assisting you through the deployment of a farm. Now, this is not to override planning.  It should highlight the need for planning even more.  How?  Having your service accounts planned, the structure of the sites and the scale of your deployment.  Enter AutoSPInstaller.  This is a CodePlex project, and the intent behind this is not only to automate the installation but to give some meaning and get some sense out of what goes on during a SharePoint deployment. How?  Take for example the creation of the databases, when we do the initial OOB deployment by using the wizard, more times than not, we leave the names as they are.  How is that a “bad thing”?  Let’s make it a better practice to rename those Databases, and have them take on a name that is not “GUID-ized”. Having a better naming convention will not hurt, on the other hand will allow for consistency. Here is the link to AutoSPInstaller’s site on CodePlex: http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com/

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• Posting over at LIV Interactive

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  First, no no no, I’m not leaving GWB! What I am going to be doing is contributing my business-focussed posts to a professional community that fellow Winnipegger Coree Francisco created called LIVInteractive! LIVInteractive publishes articles on business, design, development, content (marketing, copy, etc.), and community…and has some fantastic contributors providing new content regularly! Head on over and check the site out…lots of great info to be had! D

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• What Color is your Jetpack ?

  - by JoshReuben

  I’m a programmer, Im approaching 40, and I’m fairly decent at my job – I’ll keep doing what I’m doing for as long as they let me!   So what are your career options if you know how to code? A Programmer could be ..   An Algorithm developer Pros Interesting High barriers of entry, potential for startup competitive factor Cons Do you have the skill, qualifications? What are working conditions n this mystery niche ? micro-focus An Academic Pros Low pressure Job security – or is this an illusion ? Cons Low Pay Need a PhD A Software Architect Pros: strategic, rather than tactical Setting technology platform and high level vision You say how it should work, others have to figure out why its not working the way its supposed to ! broad view – you are paid to learn (how do you con people into paying for you to learn ??) Cons: Glorified developer – more often than not! competitive – everyone wants to do it ! loose touch with underlying tech in tough times, first guy to get the axe ! A Software Engineer Pros: interesting, always more to learn fun I can do it Fallback Cons: Nothing new under the sun – been there, done that Dealing with poor requirements, deadlines, other peoples code, overtime C#, XAML, Web - Low barriers of entry –> à race to the bottom A Team leader Pros: Setting code standards and proposing technology choices Cons: Glorified developer – more often than not! Inspecting other peoples code and debugging the problems they cannot fix Dealing with mugbies and prima donas Responsible for QA of others A Project Manager Pros No need for debugging other peoples code Cons Low barrier of entry High pressure Responsible for QA of others Loosing touch with technology A lot of bullshit meetings Have to be an asshole A Product Manager Pros No need for debugging other peoples code Learning new skillset of sales and marketing Cons Travel (I'm a family man) May need to know the bs details of an uninteresting product things I want to work with: AI, algorithms, Numerical Computing, Mathematica, C++ AMP – unfortunately, the work here is few & far between. VS & TFS Extensibility, DSLs (Workflow , Lightswitch), Code Generation – one day, code will write code ! Unity3D, WebGL – fun, fun, fun ! Modern Web – Knockout, SignalR, MVC, Node.Js ??? (tentative – I'll wait until things stabilize as this area is undergoing a pre-Cambrian explosion) Things I don’t want to work with: (but will if I'm asked to !) C# – same old, same old – not learning anything new here Old code – blech ! Environment with code & fix mentality , ad hoc requirements, excessive overtime Pc support, System administration – even after 20 years, people still ask you to do this sometimes ! debugging – my skills are just not there yet Oracle Old tech: VB 6, XSLT, WinForms, Net 3.51 or less Old style Web dev Information Systems: ASP.NET webforms, Reporting services / crystal reports, SQL Server CRUD with manual data layer, XAML MVVM – variations of the same concept, ad nauseaum. Low barriers of entry –> race to the bottom.  Metro – an elegant API coupled to a horrendous UX – I'll wait for market penetration viability before investing further in this.   Conclusion So if you are in a slump, take heart: Programming is a great career choice compared to every other job !

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• BizTalk: Using context for routing

  - by Leonid Ganeline

  [See Sample: Context routing and throttling with orchestration] Imagine the project where most of the routing happens between orchestrations. I.e. routing is mostly between the MessageBox and orchestration with direct endpoints. Imagine also the most of the messages are with the same Message type. Usually in this case messages got the special node only for the routing. For example, the field can be the “Originator” or “Recipient” or “From” or “To”. What wrong is with this approach, it creates the dependency between the message and the message processing. Message “knows” something about Originator or Recipient. So what we can do with it? How can we “colorize” the same message to route it to the different places without changing the message itself? One of the decisions is to use the message context. BizTalk uses the promoted properties for routing.  There are two kinds of the properties: the content properties and the context properties. The content property extracts its value from inside the message, it is a value of the element or attribute. [See MSDN] The context property gets its value from the message environment. It can be the port name that receive this message, it can be the message Id, created by the BizTalk. Context properties look like the headers in the SOAP message. Actually they are not the headers but behave like headers. The context properties are the good match for our case. First, we don’t have to change the message itself to set or change the routing property. The context is stored outside the message body. Second, we don’t have to create the property schema to use the context properties. [See MSDN: How to create Property schema] BizTalk has the predefined schema set for the context properties. [See MSDN: Message Context Properties] Use one of them and that's it. The main purpose of the context properties is working on behalf of the BizTalk internals. But we can read, create and change them. Just do not interfere with BizTalk internals on this way.

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• Converting .docx to pdf (or .doc to pdf, or .doc to odt, etc.) with libreoffice on a webserver on the fly using php

  - by robertphyatt

  Ok, so I needed to convert .docx files to .pdf files on the fly, but none of the free php libraries that were available let me do it on my server (a webservice was not good enough). Basically either I needed to pay for a library (and have it maybe suck) or just deal with the free ones that didn't convert the formatting well enough. Not good enough! I found that LibreOffice (OpenOffice's successor) allows command line conversion using the LibreOffice conversion engine (which DID preserve the formatting like I wanted and generally worked great). I loaded the latest version of Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download) onto my Virtual Box (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) on my computer and found that I was able to easily convert files using the commandline like this: libreoffice --headless -convert-to pdf fileToConvert.docx -outdir output/path/for/pdf I thought: sweet...but I don't have admin rights on my host's web server. I tried to use a "portable" version of LibreOffice that I obtained from http://portablelinuxapps.org/ but I was unable to get it to work on my host's webserver, because my host's webserver didn't have all the dependencies (Dependency Hell! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell) I was at a loss of how to make it work, until I ran across a cool project made by a Ph.D. student (Philip J. Guo) at Stanford called CDE: http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/cde.html I will let you look at his explanations of how it works (I followed what he did in http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6XdwHo1BWwY, starting at about 32:00 as well as the directions on his site), but in short, it allows one to avoid dependency hell by copying all the files used when you run certain commands, recreating the linux environment where the command worked. I was able to use this to run LibreOffice without having to resort to someone's portable version of it, and it worked just like it did when I did it on Ubuntu with the command above, with a tweak: I needed to run the wrapper of LibreOffice the CDE generated. So, below is my PHP code that calls it. In this code snippet, the filename to be copied is passed in as $_POST["filename"]. I copy the file to the same spot where I originally converted the file, convert it, copy it back and then delete all the files (so that it doesn't start growing exponentially). I did it this way because I wasn't able to make it work otherwise on the webserver. If there is a linux + webserver ninja out there that can figure out how to make it work without doing this, I would be interested to know what you did. Please post a comment or something if you did that. <?php //first copy the file to the magic place where we can convert it to a pdf on the fly copy($time.$_POST["filename"], "../LibreOffice/cde-package/cde-root/home/robert/Desktop/".$_POST["filename"]); //change to that directory chdir('../LibreOffice/cde-package/cde-root/home/robert'); //the magic command that does the conversion $myCommand = "./libreoffice.cde --headless -convert-to pdf Desktop/".$_POST["filename"]." -outdir Desktop/"; exec ($myCommand); //copy the file back copy("Desktop/".str_replace(".docx", ".pdf", $_POST["filename"]), "../../../../../documents/".str_replace(".docx", ".pdf", $_POST["filename"])); //delete all the files out of the magic place where we can convert it to a pdf on the fly $files1 = scandir('Desktop'); //my files that I generated all happened to start with a number. $pattern = '/^[0-9]/'; foreach ($files1 as $value) { preg_match($pattern, $value, $matches); if(count($matches) ?> 0) { unlink("Desktop/".$value); } } //changing the header to the location of the file makes it work well on androids header( 'Location: '.str_replace(".docx", ".pdf", $_POST["filename"]) ); ?> And here is the tar.gz file I generated I generated with CDE. To duplicate what I did exactly, put the tar.gz file in a folder somewhere. I will call that folder the "root". Make a new folder called "documents" in the "root" folder. Unpack the tar.gz and run the php script above from the "documents" folder. Success! I made a truly portable version of LibreOffice that can convert files on the fly on a webserver using 100% free, open source software!

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• TODO Formatting

  - by charlie.mott

  Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/charliemott TODO's should only be used for a short period of time to remind you that something needs to be done. They should then be addressed as soon as possible. In order to know who owns a TODO task and how long it’s been outstanding, my company uses the following standard for TODO formatting: Format:     // TODO : Owner Initials – Date Created – Description of task. Sample:     // TODO: CM – 2012/01/20 – Move this class to a new location so it can be reused. Using this pattern makes it easy to use the Resharper TODO explorer. The Carrot In order to make it easy for developers to apply this rule, a code snippet can be created in Visual Studio. Even better, I created a Resharper template. This gives the facility to use the current user name and current date macros. image This actually makes the formatting look like this. Sample:     // TODO: cmott – 2012/01/20 – Move this class to a new location so it can be reused. The Stick How to you enforce such a rule? I tried to create a custom Resharper Highlighting Pattern to perform custom code analysis inspection for deviations from this pattern. However, I did not have any success. The find dialog would not accept // text. If I work it out, I will update this blog post. StyleCop Instead I created a custom StyleCop rule. I followed the approach used with the StyleCop Contrib project. This provides a simple to use base class and easy to use unit testing framework. I will upload this todo format analyzer as a patch to that project. image

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• BizTalk 2009 - Messages: Last 100 Sent

  - by StuartBrierley

  Having previously talked about the lack of the traditional HAT in BizTalk 2009, the question then becomes how do you replicate some of the functionality that was previsouly relied on? I have already covered the Last 100 Messages Received query so what about sent messages? In BizTalk 2004 we had a query in HAT to return the messages sent in the last day.  While not a direct replacement the following query replicates some of the usefullness of this query in a BizTalk 2009 Hatless environment. Basically we are creating a query to search for the last one hundred tracked messages that were sent by BizTalk: Coming up Messages - last 50 suspended Service instances - last 100

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• Visual Studio Ultimate RoadMap

  - by TATWORTH

  At http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/archive/2012/03/27/visual-studio-ultimate-roadmap.aspx, Jason Zander has discussed the roadmap for Visual Studio 11 Ultimate. There are great advantages to Ultimate, if it is available to you, use it.At http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff636699.aspx, there is a list of feature packs for Visual Studio 10. Well worth a look if you have Visual Studio 10 Professional or Ultimate.

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• Gettings Terms asscoiated to a Specific list item

  - by Gino Abraham

  I had a fancy requirement where i had to get all tags associated to a document set in a document library. The normal tag could webpart was not working when i add it to the document set home page, so planned a custom webpart. Was checking in net to find a straight forward way to achieve this, but was not lucky enough to get something. Since i didnt get any samples in net, i looked into Microsoft.Sharerpoint.Portal.Webcontrols and found a solution.The socialdataframemanager control in 14Hive/Template/layouts/SocialDataFrame.aspx directed me to the solution. You can get the dll from ISAPI folder. Following Code snippet can get all Terms associated to the List Item given that you have list name and id for the list item. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.Office.Server.SocialData; namespace TagChecker { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { // Your site url string siteUrl = http://contoso; // List Name string listName = "DocumentLibrary1"; // List Item Id for which you want to get all terms int listItemId = 35; using (SPSite site = new SPSite(siteUrl)) { using(SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb()) { SPListItem listItem = web.Lists[listName].GetItemById(listItemId); string url = string.Empty; // Based on the list type the url would be formed. Code Sniffed from Micosoft dlls :) if (listItem.ParentList.BaseType == SPBaseType.DocumentLibrary) { url = listItem.Web.Url.TrimEnd(new char[] { '/' }) + "/" + listItem.Url.TrimStart(new char[] { '/' }); } else if (SPFileSystemObjectType.Folder == listItem.FileSystemObjectType) { url = listItem.Web.Url.TrimEnd(new char[] { '/' }) + "/" + listItem.Folder.Url.TrimStart(new char[] { '/' }); } else { url = listItem.Web.Url.TrimEnd(new char[] { '/' }) + "/" + listItem.ParentList.Forms[PAGETYPE.PAGE_DISPLAYFORM].Url.TrimStart(new char[] { '/' }) + "?ID=" + listItem.ID.ToString(); } SPServiceContext serviceContext = SPServiceContext.GetContext(site); Uri uri = new Uri(url); SocialTagManager mgr = new SocialTagManager(serviceContext); SocialTerm[] terms = mgr.GetTerms(uri); foreach (SocialTerm term in terms) { Console.WriteLine(term.Term.Labels[0].Value ); } } } Console.Read(); } } } Reference dlls added are Microsoft.Sharepoint , Microsoft.Sharepoint.Taxonomy, Microsoft.office.server, Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles from ISAPI folder. This logic can be used to make a custom tag cloud webpart by taking code from OOB tag cloud, so taht you can have you webpart anywhere in the site and still get Tags added to a specifc libdary/List. Hope this helps some one.

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• Gladinet Cloud Desktop tool to manage Windows Azure Blob Storage from Windows Explorer

  - by kaleidoscope

  Gladinet Cloud Desktop is designed to make it easier for Windows Azure users to manage Windows Azure Blob storage directly from Windows Explorer. The solution makes it possible for Windows Azure Blob storage to be mapped as a virtual network Drive. “You can map multiple Azure Blob Storage Accounts as side-by-side virtual folders in same network drive. You can do drag & drop between local drive and Azure drive. For more information -  http://www.ditii.com/2010/01/04/gladinet-cloud-desktop-tool-to-manage-windows-azure-blob-storage-from-windows-explorer/ For Downloading the tool – http://www.gladinet.com/p/download_starter_direct.htm   Ritesh, D

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• Feature Updates to the Windows Azure Portal

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Lots of activity over at the Windows Azure portal this weekend, including some exciting new features and major improvements to existing features. Here are the highlights: Support for Managing Co-administrators Set up account co-administrators to allow others to share service management duties for each Azure subscription Import/Export support for SQL Databases Export existing SQL Azure databases to blob storage using SQL Server 2012’s BACPAC format. Create a new SQL Azure database from an existing BACPAC stored in blob storage Storage Container Management and Access Control Create blob storage containers directly within the portal Edit their public/private access settings Drill into storage containers and see the blobs contained within them Improved Cloud Service Status Notifications Detailed health status information about cloud services and roles as they transition between states Virtual Machine Experience Enhancements Option to automatically delete corresponding VHD files from blob storage when deleting VM disks Service Bus Management and Monitoring Ability to create and manage service bus Namespaces, Queues, Topics, Relays and Subscriptions Rich monitoring of Topics, Queues, and Subscriptions with detailed and customizable dashboard metrics Entity status (Topic, Queue, or Subscription) can be changed interactively via dashboard Direct links to the Access Control Services (ACS) namespaces when working with service bus access keys Media Services Monitoring Support Monitor encoding jobs that are queued for processing as well as active, failed and queued tasks for encoding jobs The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today. Stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows Azure announcements, updates, and links: @clinted Reference ID: P7VVJCM38V8R

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• How-do-I Script Sample Videos

  - by Jialiang

  http://blogs.technet.com/b/onescript/archive/2012/10/14/how-do-i-script-sample-videos.aspx All-In-One Script Framework is featured by customer-driven script samples.  Each sample demonstrates how to automate one specific IT task that is frequently asked in TechNet forums, Microsoft support calls, and social media.   In order to give readers a better and quicker learning experience, the team starts to create short 5- to 10- minute videos to visually demonstrate some script samples.  These videos would show you how to accomplish the task by running the script sample, and illustrate some key script snippets in the sample project.  We sincerely hope that the IT Pro community will love our effort. The first how-do-I video has been published.  It demonstrates one of our recently released Windows 8 script sample: Get Network Adapter Properties in Windows 8 The video is embedded in the sample introduction page.

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• How to Generate a Create Table DDL Script Along With Its Related Tables

  - by Compudicted

  Have you ever wondered when creating table diagrams in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) how slickly you can add related tables to it by just right-clicking on the interesting table name? Have you also ever needed to script those related tables including the master one? And you discovered you have dozens of related tables? Or may be no SSMS at your disposal? That was me one day. Well, creativity to the rescue! I Binged and Googled around until I found more or less what I wanted, but it was all involving T-SQL, yeah, a long and convoluted CROSS APPLYs, then I saw a PowerShell solution that I quickly adopted to my needs (I am not referencing any particular author because it was a mashup): 1: ########################################################################################################### 2: # Created by: Arthur Zubarev on Oct 14, 2012 # 3: # Synopsys: Generate file containing the root table CREATE (DDL) script along with all its related tables # 4: ########################################################################################################### 5:   6: [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.SqlServer.SMO') | out-null 7:   8: $RootTableName = "TableName" # The table name, no schema name needed 9:   10: $srv = new-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server("TargetSQLServerName") 11: $conContext = $srv.ConnectionContext 12: $conContext.LoginSecure = $True 13: # In case the integrated security is not used uncomment below 14: #$conContext.Login = "sa" 15: #$conContext.Password = "sapassword" 16: $db = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Database 17: $db = $srv.Databases.Item("TargetDatabase") 18:   19: $scrp = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Scripter($srv) 20: $scrp.Options.NoFileGroup = $True 21: $scrp.Options.AppendToFile = $False 22: $scrp.Options.ClusteredIndexes = $False 23: $scrp.Options.DriAll = $False 24: $scrp.Options.ScriptDrops = $False 25: $scrp.Options.IncludeHeaders = $True 26: $scrp.Options.ToFileOnly = $True 27: $scrp.Options.Indexes = $False 28: $scrp.Options.WithDependencies = $True 29: $scrp.Options.FileName = 'C:\TEMP\TargetFileName.SQL' 30:   31: $smoObjects = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.UrnCollection 32: Foreach ($tb in $db.Tables) 33: { 34: Write-Host -foregroundcolor yellow "Table name being processed" $tb.Name 35: 36: If ($tb.IsSystemObject -eq $FALSE -and $tb.Name -eq $RootTableName) # feel free to customize the selection condition 37: { 38: Write-Host -foregroundcolor magenta $tb.Name "table and its related tables added to be scripted." 39: $smoObjects.Add($tb.Urn) 40: } 41: } 42:   43: # The actual act of scripting 44: $sc = $scrp.Script($smoObjects) 45:   46: Write-host -foregroundcolor green $RootTableName "and its related tables have been scripted to the target file." Enjoy!

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• Windows 8 App Downloads Increasing + Over 5,000 Apps Available

  - by David Paquette

  Windows 8 will be unleashed on the general public tomorrow and I thought it would be a good time to review some of the numbers I have been tracking over the last month. Downloads of Windows 8 Apps have been steadily increasing over the last month.  Below is screenshot from the App Summary page for my Windows 8 app.  The blue line is my app, while the orange line is average for the top 5 apps in that subcategory.  Considering the large gap between the 2, I think it is safe to assume that my app is NOT in the top 5 in the subcategory. The spike in the last couple of days is fairly dramatic and I am a little surprised by that.  I would have expected that kind of spike on the days following the official release as opposed to the days leading up to the release.   Finally, the all important App count.  There have been some stories floating around that the Window 8 Store is a ghost town and that there are no apps available.  I think these might be exaggerating the situation a little.  As of this morning, in the US store there are over 5000 apps available for download.  Obviously a far cry from the hundreds of thousands available in other app stores, but we are seeing solid growth in this number. Less than a month ago, that number was 2000. That means the store more than doubled in less than a month. If the growth continues, it won’t be long before the Widows 8 Store is filled with all the apps you need (and a whole lot you don’t need).

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• Podcast with AJI about iOS development coming from a .NET background

  - by Tim Hibbard

  I talked with Jeff and John from AJI Software the other day about developing for the iOS platform. We chatted about learning Xcode and Objective-C, provisioning devices and the app publishing process. We all have a .NET background and made lots of comparisons between the two platforms/ecosystems/fanbois. They even let me throw in a plug for Christian Radio Locator. Jeff was my first contact with the Kansas City .NET community. It was probably about 10 years ago. He pushed me to talk more (and rescued me from my first talk that bombed) and blog more. One time a group of us took a 16 hour car trip to South Carolina for a code camp and live podcasted the whole thing. Good times.Listen to the show Click here to subscribe to more AJI Reports in the future.

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• Paging problem in Data Form Webpart SP2010

  - by Patrick Olurotimi Ige

  I was working on some webpart in sharepoint designer 2010  and i decided to use the default custom paging.But i noticed the previous link page isn't working it basicalling just takes me back to the start page of the list and not the previous page after a good look i noticed micosoft is using "history.back()" which is suppose to work but it doesn't work well for paged data.Anyway before i started further investigation i found Hani Amr's solution at the right time and that did the trick.Hope that helps

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• WP7 Developers at Washington University

  - by Scott Spradlin

  This is Easter weekend, and the end of the school year is looming closer! Our developer sessions at WashU end today. Students will turn their spare time focus to finals and getting home for the summer. Over this short course of time, we’ve had a bit over 50 students show some level of interest in developing apps for Windows Phone. Currently the total apps submitted by students is approaching about 20. Several students have received new phones as part of their agreement to submit applications.

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• Backup and Recovery of Windows 8 - Tip-of-the-Day

  - by KeithMayer

  Have you recently downloaded Windows 8 RTM? In this article, we'll introduce you to the new options available for making Backup and Recovery in Windows 8 easier than ever, including Windows 8 File History, launching Windows System Backup and Windows 8 Refresh & Reset PC. Use these options to define your backup and recovery plan so that you'll be prepared to restore the system and your data when needed.

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• SQL Azure Security: DoS Part II

  - by Herve Roggero

  Ah!  When you shoot yourself in the foot... a few times... it hurts! That's what I did on Sunday, to learn more about the behavior of the SQL Azure Denial Of Service prevention feature. This article is a short follow up to my last post on this feature. In this post, I will outline some of the lessons learned that were the result of testing the behavior of SQL Azure from two machines. From the standpoint of SQL Azure, they look like one machine since they are behind a NAT. All logins affected The first thing to note is that all the logins are affected. If you lock yourself out to a specific database, none of the logins will work on that database. In fact the database size becomes "--" in the SQL Azure Portal.   Less than 100 sessions I was able to see 50+ sessions being made in SQL Azure (by looking at sys.dm_exec_sessions) before being locked out. The the DoS feature appears to be triggered in part by the number of open sessions. I could not determine if the lockout is triggered by the speed at which connection requests are made however.   Other Databases Unaffected This was interesting... the DoS feature works at the database level. Other databases were available for me to use.   Just Wait Initially I thought that going through SQL Azure and connecting from there would reset the database and allow me to connect again. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case. You will have to wait. And the more you lock yourself out, the more you will have to wait... The first time the database became available again within 30 seconds or so; the second time within 2-3 minutes and the third time... within 2-3 hours...   Successful Logins The DoS feature appears to engage only for valid logins. If you have a login failure, it doesn't seem to count. I ran a test with over 100 login failures without being locked.

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• Debugging Windows

  - by Bunch

  After installing VS 2008 on a new PC I noticed that the Autos and Locals windows did not show up when debugging. So I went to the logical place to find them View/Other Windows. No luck they were not there. I use VS every day but like a lot of folks I only need to install it every few years, usually with a new PC. So I forgot where they were. Finding them is easy, just start debugging a project and go to Debug/Windows. The Autos and Locals windows along with the others will be there. And I will probably be here reading this post a few years from now. Technorati Tags: Visual Studio

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• Running Powershell from within SharePoint

  - by Norgean

  Just because something is a daft idea, doesn't mean it can't be done. We sometimes need to do some housekeeping - like delete old files or list items or… yes, well, whatever you use Powershell for in a SharePoint world. Or it could be that your solution has "issues" for which you have Powershell solutions, but not the budget to transform into proper bug fixes. So you create a "how to" for the ITPro guys. Idea: What if we keep the scripts in a list, and have SharePoint execute the scripts on demand? An announcements list (because of the multiline body field). Warning! Let us be clear. This list needs to be locked down; if somebody creates a malicious script and you run it, I cannot help you. First; we need to figure out how to start Powershell scripts from C#. Hit teh interwebs and the Googlie, and you may find jpmik's post: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/18229/How-to-run-PowerShell-scripts-from-C. (Or MS' official answer at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee706563(v=vs.85).aspx) public string RunPowershell(string powershellText, SPWeb web, string param1, string param2) { // Powershell ~= RunspaceFactory - i.e. Create a powershell context var runspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace(); var resultString = new StringBuilder(); try { // load the SharePoint snapin - Note: you cannot do this in the script itself (i.e. add-pssnapin etc does not work) PSSnapInException snapInError; runspace.RunspaceConfiguration.AddPSSnapIn("Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell", out snapInError); runspace.Open(); // set a web variable. runspace.SessionStateProxy.SetVariable("webContext", web); // and some user defined parameters runspace.SessionStateProxy.SetVariable("param1", param1); runspace.SessionStateProxy.SetVariable("param2", param2); var pipeline = runspace.CreatePipeline(); pipeline.Commands.AddScript(powershellText); // add a "return" variable pipeline.Commands.Add("Out-String"); // execute! var results = pipeline.Invoke(); // convert the script result into a single string foreach (PSObject obj in results) { resultString.AppendLine(obj.ToString()); } } finally { // close the runspace runspace.Close(); } // consider logging the result. Or something. return resultString.ToString(); } Ok. We've written some code. Let us test it. var runner = new PowershellRunner(); runner.RunPowershellScript(@" $web = Get-SPWeb 'http://server/web' # or $webContext $web.Title = $param1 $web.Update() $web.Dispose() ", null, "New title", "not used"); Next step: Connect the code to the list, or more specifically, have the code execute on one (or several) list items. As there are more options than readers, I'll leave this as an exercise for the reader. Some alternatives: Create a ribbon button that calls RunPowershell with the body of the selected itemsAdd a layout pageSpecify list item from query string (possibly coupled with content editor webpart with html that links directly to this page with querystring)WebpartListing with an "execute" columnList with multiselect and an execute button Etc!Now that you have the code for executing powershell scripts, you can easily expand this into a timer job, which executes scripts at regular intervals. But if the previous solution was dangerous, this is even worse - the scripts will usually be run with one of the admin accounts, and can do pretty much anything...One more thing... Note that as this is running "consoleless" calls to Write-Host will fail. Two solutions; remove all output, or check if the script is run in a console-window or not.  if ($host.Name -eq "ConsoleHost") { Write-Host 'If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong' }

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• SharePoint 2013 Certifications - MCSE

  - by KunaalKapoor

  Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE): SharePoint.Yes you read it right :) SharePoint 2013 Certifications are here... The two certifications mentioned below are expected to be published on February 05, 2013. And will count as credit to the new MCSE certificate. Exams Details:70-331 (Core Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013)70-332 (Advanced Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013)Classroom Trainings:Course 40028A: First Look Clinic: What’s New for IT Professionals in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013Course 40027A: First Look Clinic: What’s New for Developers in Microsoft SharePoint 2013Time to prep... Next Stop MCSE...  :)

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• Strings in .NET are Enumerable

  - by Scott Dorman

  It seems like there is always some confusion concerning strings in .NET. This is both from developers who are new to the Framework and those that have been working with it for quite some time. Strings in the .NET Framework are represented by the System.String class, which encapsulates the data manipulation, sorting, and searching methods you most commonly perform on string data. In the .NET Framework, you can use System.String (which is the actual type name or the language alias (for C#, string). They are equivalent so use whichever naming convention you prefer but be consistent. Common usage (and my preference) is to use the language alias (string) when referring to the data type and String (the actual type name) when accessing the static members of the class. Many mainstream programming languages (like C and C++) treat strings as a null terminated array of characters. The .NET Framework, however, treats strings as an immutable sequence of Unicode characters which cannot be modified after it has been created. Because strings are immutable, all operations which modify the string contents are actually creating new string instances and returning those. They never modify the original string data. There is one important word in the preceding paragraph which many people tend to miss: sequence. In .NET, strings are treated as a sequence…in fact, they are treated as an enumerable sequence. This can be verified if you look at the class declaration for System.String, as seen below: // Summary:// Represents text as a series of Unicode characters.public sealed class String : IEnumerable, IComparable, IComparable<string>, IEquatable<string> The first interface that String implements is IEnumerable, which has the following definition: // Summary:// Exposes the enumerator, which supports a simple iteration over a non-generic// collection.public interface IEnumerable{ // Summary: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through a collection. // // Returns: // An System.Collections.IEnumerator object that can be used to iterate through // the collection. IEnumerator GetEnumerator();} As a side note, System.Array also implements IEnumerable. Why is that important to know? Simply put, it means that any operation you can perform on an array can also be performed on a string. This allows you to write code such as the following: string s = "The quick brown fox";foreach (var c in s){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(c);}for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(s[i]);} If you executed those lines of code in a running application, you would see the following output in the Visual Studio Output window: In the case of a string, these enumerable or array operations return a char (System.Char) rather than a string. That might lead you to believe that you can get around the string immutability restriction by simply treating strings as an array and assigning a new character to a specific index location inside the string, like this: string s = "The quick brown fox";s[2] = 'a';   However, if you were to write such code, the compiler will promptly tell you that you can’t do it: This preserves the notion that strings are immutable and cannot be changed once they are created. (Incidentally, there is no built in way to replace a single character like this. It can be done but it would require converting the string to a character array, changing the appropriate indexed location, and then creating a new string.)

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• Using Telerik MVC with your own custom jQuery and or other plug-ins

  - by Steve Clements

  If you are using MVC it might be worth checking out the telerik controls (http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-mvc), they are free if you are doing an internal or “not for profit” application. If however you do choose to use them, you could come up against a little problem I had.  Using the telerik controls with your own custom jQuery.  In my case I was using the jQuery UI dialog. It kept throwing an error where I was setting my div to a dialog. Code Snippet $("#textdialog").dialog({ The problem is when you use the telerik mvc stuff you need to call ScriptRegistrar Code Snippet @Html.Telerik().ScriptRegistrar() in order to setup the javascript for the controls. By default this adds a reference to jQuery and if you have already added a reference to jQuery because you are using it elsewhere, this causes a problem. I found the solution here And it was to change the above ScriptRegistrar call to this… Code Snippet @Html.Telerik().ScriptRegistrar().jQuery(false).DefaultGroup(g => g.Combined(true).Compress(true));   If you come across this one on stackoverflow it wont work – in my case the HtmlEditor would render no problem, but was unusable.  Which is the same as someone else found when using the tab control – they went to the bother of re-writing the ScriptRegistrar.  Not for me that one!!

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