NinethSense

This article describes software boundaries and limits of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. These include the following:

• Boundaries: Static limits that cannot be exceeded by design
• Thresholds: Configurable limits that can be exceeded to accommodate specific requirements
• Supported limits: Configurable limits that have been set by default to a tested value

Read it here – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx

• New Design/UI (Eg: Ribbon control)
• Silverlight WebPart
• Improvement in browser compatibility
• Improved Central Administration UI
• Edit your pages directly
• Rich Theming
• Visio support
• New SharePoint designer (2010)
• Faster Search

SharePoint 2010 will be available ONLY for 64 bit hardware

Hardware requirements for SharePoint 2010 are:

• 64 bit Hardware
• 64 bit OS (Windows Server 2008)
• 64 bit SQL Server

The Productivity Hub is a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 site collection that offers training materials for end-users. Microsoft has developed the Productivity Hub to help support your ongoing end user training efforts.

Microsoft has developed the Productivity Hub to help support your ongoing end user training efforts.
The Hub is a SharePoint Server 2007 site collection that serves as a learning community and is fully customizable. It provides a central place for your training efforts, and includes training content from Microsoft’s core products. Microsoft also provides ongoing and updated content packs.
The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking capabilities, such as blogs and discussion groups. In addition, it offers the Coach program, a change management feature to help you train end users to self-help, reducing the burden on your training and IT staff. The Coach program impacts productivity in a collaborative and positive way.
What the Productivity Hub is:

• Format: Pre-loaded SharePoint site collection, optimized for Web 2.0 functionality and easily deployed within SharePoint Server 2007 environment.
• Content: Convenient end user productivity training in a variety of formats (documents, videos, podcasts, etc.). Receive free quarterly updates of content that you will learn about through the Productivity blog.
• Blog: The Productivity blog offers tips and tricks for end user productivity. Use it as is, or your training staff can use the posts as their own to help them get started in running an internal blog.
• Train the trainer: Includes IT/Manager section to aid with deployment of the site collection, and guidance to develop the Coach program.
• Products: Office 2007 System applications including SharePoint Server 2007. Windows 7 and others will be added in the future.

Check this to know more.

Guidance for building collaborative applications that extend your LOB systems

This guidance helps architects and developers design, build, and test intranet and enterprise-scale SharePoint applications. Two reference implementations demonstrate solutions to common issues, and a library provides reusable components that can help you with your own development projects.

Developing SharePoint Applications guidance helps customers accelerate constructing advanced applications through examples and documentation. The guidance compliments product documentation and helps architects and developers in the following areas:

· Use SharePoint capabilities to make more powerful applications

• Integrate information from Line of Business Systems
• Take advantage of publishing and content oriented capabilities
• Create collaborative interactions around business processes
• Design multi-site topologies with complex security and isolation needs, such as  a partner extranet

· Build applications that are easier to scale, maintain, and grow

• Improve maintainability, testability, and layering through patterns
• Use techniques to improve flexibility, diagnostics, operations and performance
• Show how to use SharePoint’s feature and solution framework

· Improve application quality through testing

• Demonstrates unit testing and integration testing SharePoint applications
• Describe experiences with acceptance testing SharePoint applications including stress and scale testing

· Improve and accelerate team productivity

• Accelerate adoption of recommended practices with library components
• Show how to build an effective team development environment
• Understand fundamental design and implementation decisions

Check this link for more details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203468.aspx

Quick Links:

• http://www.microsoft.com/spg
• http://www.codeplex.com/spg
• Download Link

Read some articles about new Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Here are some major points I liked well while reading.

1. Support for Windows Azure platform – The new trend “Cloud Computing”
2. Parallel application support – Let your application a powerful one. (Framework 4.0 have P-Linq etc.)
3. New WPF based IDE – some good features are:
• Inline call hierarchy
• Highlight References etc.
4. Improved TDD (Test Driven Development) features
5. MVC!!!
6. JQuery!!!
7. Silverlight!!!
8. SharePoint Development – a relief
• WebParts, Application Pages, User Controls, List definitions, List instances, site definitions, workflows, event receivers, Business Data Catalog models, Content Types
• Debugging, Intellisense, Statement Completion
• Application Page Designer
• Feature Designer
• Server Explorer
9. Windows 7 Development
10. Office Business Development
11. Architecture Explorer!!!

www.codegain.com is new for me. I thought I must post my next article there as I liked the name ‘CodeGain’

Click here to read this article article

My intention for this article was to provide a kick start for the SharePoint developers to write a Custom Provider for their database. You should be able to:

• Use your existing user database with your SharePoint
• Upgrade your existing ASP.NET application to SharePoint
• Authenticate against a webservice etc.

If you search on internet, you will find much results for configuring forms authentication in SharePoint. As a beginner you will be still confused and the question still pending will be "how to use my own user database with SharePoint?".

Read more

A draft of the article I posted at Kidoos.net also – http://kidoos.net/content/SharePointCustomMemershipProvider.aspx

There are many ways to deploy your webpart to your SharePoint website. Here is one. Please use some search engine to find more methods

For this demonstration, I used these tools:

• Visual Studio 2008
• WSS 3.0

I used Visual Studio 2008 SharePoint extensions 1.2 also but you do not need to bother about this.

Consider the following WebPart:

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;
 
namespace WebPart1
{
    [Guid("52555716-6f2d-407d-bf3b-f7fb02de052a")]
    public class testxyz : Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart 
    {
        private string _strHello = "blah";
        public testxyz()
        {
        }
 
        [WebBrowsable(true), Personalizable(true)]
        public string strHello
        {
            get
            {
                return _strHello;
            } 
            set
            {
                _strHello = value;
            }
        }
 
        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            base.CreateChildControls();
 
             Label label = new Label();
             label.Text = _strHello;
             this.Controls.Add(label);
        }
    }
}

Build the project and say, you now have WebPart1.dll in your bin folder.

This is the first file you need. Now you can create a .webpart file. Here is it looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<webParts>
  <webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3">
    <metaData>
      <!--
      The following Guid is used as a reference to the web part class, 
      and it will be automatically replaced with actual type name at deployment time.
      -->
      <type name="TestWebPart.MyTestWebPart, TestWebPart, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=9f4da00116c38ec5" />
      <importErrorMessage>Cannot import MyTestWebPart Web Part.</importErrorMessage>
    </metaData>
    <data>
      <properties>
        <property name="Title" type="string">MyTestWebPart Web Part</property>
        <property name="Description" type="string">MyTestWebPart Description</property>
      </properties>
    </data>
  </webPart>
</webParts>

Now the files are ready. Now the procedure of installation.

Now you must be having:

• A dll file (WebPart1.dll in my case) and
• a .webpart (WebPart1.webpart in my case) file

Add your dll to GAC

There are many ways to do this. You can use gacutil.exe which comes with Visual Studio SDK to do this. From command prompt do:

C:\blah\>gacutil /i WebPart1.dll

Make your .dll file ‘safe’

Add below code in your web.config files to let your SharePoint know the dll is safe to use.

      <SafeControl 
Assembly="WebPart1, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=9f4da00116c38ec5" 
Namespace="WebPart1" 
TypeName="*" 
Safe="True" />

Import .webpart file  in SharePoint

Now, from your SharePoint,

• Go to Site Settings –> Galleries section –> Web Parts
• Click Upload
• Upload file – WebPart1.webpart

Now you should be able to see the webpart in the list.

Everything is finished now!

Click on the webpart name so that you can see the preview

Webpart in action

The WebPart1.testxyz class does not derive from the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart class and therefore cannot be imported or used in a WebPartZone control.

A quick fix for this error will be to change System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart to Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart

Eg:

public class testxyz : Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart 
        //instead of System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
 
{
}

It is very simple. Just put [WebBrowsable(true), Personalizable(true)] above your property in code. (There are much more attributes – FYI).

Here is the sample source code:

public class testxyz : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
    {
        private string _strHello = "blah";
        public testxyz()
        {
        }
 
        [WebBrowsable(true), Personalizable(true)]
        public string strHello
        {
            get
            {
                return _strHello;
            } 
            set
            {
                _strHello = value;
            }
        }
 
        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            base.CreateChildControls();
 
             Label label = new Label();
             label.Text = _strHello;
             this.Controls.Add(label);
        }
    }

Resolution:

1. Take project properties (right click – Solution Explorer –> Project Name)
2. Take Debug tab
3. Verify Start Action section. Most probably you may be having wrong URL for your SharePoint in Start browser with URL