Process explorer

I wanted something more than what today’s Windows Task Manager had to offer. Looking over the internet found this free download which seems pretty much offering something extra. So I got this.

Hope you find this as useful.

Technorati Tags: Windows,Task,Manager,Free,Download

Visual Web Part in SharePoint 2010

There is a new web part template in Visual Studio 2010, that actually lets you develop and deploy user controls by packaging all in a single unit.  Lets take a look at what this single unit contains when you create the project:

- The “properties” and “Reference” are the similar standard folders created for all projects.

- The “Features” is a new folder that contains the configuration information for the feature.

- The “Package” is also a new folder that contains the configuration information for the WSP.

- The last folder (in my case “VisualWebPart1”, this is the name that you provide during the project creation) is the standard user control project template folder structure. It hosts a number of files: a .cs file, a .webpart file, an elements.xml file, and a .ascx file. 

So actually it creates an ASP.NET user control and the VS 2010 lets you open the designer for the user control already wrapped within the web part.

This is not very different than what we used to do earlier by creating to separate projects in a single solution – one for the web part and the other for the user control. Then the web part would actually embed the user control by issuing the command Page.LoadControl() method pointing at the user control. 

So VS 2010 has done a great job to hide a lot of tasks from the developers by bringing many pieces together at one place and packaging as a single unit for an easy deployment to SharePoint.

 

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,2010,Visual,Studio,Web,Part,VisualWebPart

SharePoint 2010 Foundation Vs Server

SharePoint Foundation (Server) 2010:

• SharePoint Hands on Labs Documentations (PDFs and XPS files)
• SharePoint Developer Platform Wall Poster
• SharePoint Developer Evaluation Guide (Beta)
• SharePoint Developer and IT Professional Learning Plan
• SharePoint Developer Documentation (blog post by Andrew May)

Here are some differences between SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server that you may want to take a look at.

Some additional requirements to Install SharePoint 2010 Beta:

• Hotfix required for SharePoint 2010 Services (WCF corrective measures)
• How to install SharePoint 2010 on a single server to SQL Standard or Enterprise without domain accounts
• Microsoft Geneva Framework
• SQL 2008 SP1 CU 5 (at least CU 2 is required)

 

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Server,Foundation,Install

Installing SharePoint 2010 on Win Server 2008 R2

I have started to put together a series of posts pertaining to the title “Installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2”.

Background:

I am running Hyper-V on my Windows Server 2008 R2 machine and have configure the virtual server with Windows Server 2008 R2. All the description of this install would be in association with this virtual machine. So, in all, I have pre-configured my virtual server with Win Server 2008 R2 and start with the SQL Server 2008 installation.

I will appreciate all your feedback, to improve-correct any mistakes related to this series of posts.

Installing SQL Server 2008

Capture the ISO file to start the setup.

Click Open.

Click Run Setup.exe

Click Run Program

Click OK. Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 install starts but fails immediately with the messages below:

Click OK.

I forgot, I needed to configure the Application Server Role on the Server before I could proceed.

Select Application Server.

Click “Add Required features”.

Now, Select Web Server (IIS).

Click Next.

Select “Web Server (IIS) Support”.

Click “Add Required Role Services”, click Next.

Click Next.

Click Next.

Review the info and Click Install.

Click Close.

                                        >> Step 2: Installing the SQl Server 2008

 

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,2010,MOSS,Install,SQL Server 2008,Role,Manager,IIS

Useful ASP.Net/C# questions and answers

And here are few  ASP.Net and C# question URLs, HTH.

Dot Net Questions

Interviews World

ASP.Net Qs and As

C# Questions

More ASP.Net Qs and As

Code Project - Asp.Net Interview Question Part 1 (This has a PDF download link)

Basic and Advanced .NET and ASP.NET interview questions

Another look at the ASP.Net Qs and As

ASP.NET questions and answers for cascading style sheets

http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/articles/252.aspx

C# General Questions 

.Net Framework/Namespaces related

GAC/ Assembly related

Most frequently asked ASP.NET Interview Questions

Looking at ASP.NET Questions

Answers to ASP.NET interview questions

Technorati Tags: ASP,.Net,Questions,Answers

Useful MOSS Question-Answer links

I found some of these blog sites with lot of very common MOSS related questions, most with answers too :)

Hopefully, you will find it useful.

Sharepoint Interview Questions

Basic Sharepoint Online Test

Some Developer Tests

More SharePoint Questions

Point SharePoint questions

Sharepoint Developer Interview Questions-Answers

 

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SharePoint,Microsoft,Interview,Question,Answers,Online,Tests

Deleting the trouble-maker Web Parts from your SharePoint Page

Sometimes, your custom coded web parts may crash your page and not even allow the page to get loaded. This could be very annoying when you have a production page working with several other web parts on it.

Due to this error, you are left with no option to get rid of that trouble-maker. You cannot go to the edit mode to delete the web part. But there is a workaround for this too.

Append this to the SharePoint site URL:
?contents=1

Ex: http://yoursiteurl/pages/default.aspx?contents=1

You may have to “Check Out” the page and then look for the trouble-maker Web Parts which crash landed your fully functional page. Go ahead and “Delete” them all.

Technorati Tags: Web Parts,Parts,Error,Add,SharePoint

Identifying the Worker process

While debugging my web part, it was very annoying to look for the specific w3wp.exe and get it attached to step through the code. Most of the times, I could see there were multiple w3wp.exe listed when I went to “Debug –> Attach to process…”.

Unnecessarily, I had to attach them to all.

Apparently, there is a way to look for your process and attach your Visual Studio environment only to that worker process. Microsoft has a vbscript command that does just that. To get the list of the worker process and figure the one which you need, follow the below steps:

1. Go to Command prompt.
2. Go back to the Root directory “C:”.
3. Type IISAPP.vbs and press enter.

This will give you the required list. Now you can easily identify the Process ID of the SharePoint site by looking at the AppPoolID.

Technorati Tags: Web Parts,Debug,Worker,Process,w3wp

Customizing "Created By" column in Survey lists

Well, I had'to modify the display of a column in a Survey, where it was required to get the email ID displayed instead of the User's name.
By default, you cannot edit the “Created by” in the question lists. But there's a workaround for you to edit this column as per the below steps:

1. Open your survey, click "Survey Settings" (You will need the Admin rights for this).
2. In the Questions section, click any question of your survey;
3. Change the URL parameter in the Browser:
set Field=Author,
Change the aspx page to FldEditEx.aspx
4. The URL should resemble something like this:
http://yourserver/_layouts/FldEditEx.aspx?List=yourlistGUID&Field=Author
(replace "yourserver" and "yourlistGUID" accordingly)

After this you can select the field you want to display in “Created by”, which can be anything from the dropdown list:
- email
- ID
- Firsname
- Lastname, etc.

Things to remember:
- Page to use: "FldEditEx.aspx"
- Use the respective Internal column names for the columns to modify:
[Created By] = “Author”
[Modified] = “Editor”
[View Response] = "DisplayResponseNoMenu"

Interesting !!! kind of hacking the SharePoint.

Microsoft Search "Bing" launched today

The most surprising news for today I came to know is that of Microsoft going live this morning with the new "Google Rivalry", ahead of its scheduled June 3rd launch date. Well, MS has already invested a lot to distinguish itself from the earlier efforts in search. Certainly there’s far more verb potential in Bing than “Microsoft Live Search,” the service it’s supposed to replace.

So if you visit www.live .com today you'll be redirected to the www.bing.com as here:

Cool !!! Head-to-head with Google.

This is a quest for survival. MS knows it got to take this on.

So few people believe that the term "Bing" could actually have been derived from "Bing Is Not Google".

Now that means business to Microsoft.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Search,Bing,Live,Launch