Armen Kirakosyan's blog

How dangerous can be “public const” while upgrading or fixing a component.

Armen Kirakosyan — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:09:55 GMT

During my investigation I have noticed a source of potential problem for product upgrade where dev team should fix a bug or upgrade a component and distribute it.

So what will happen when during fix/upgrade process (I will call it upgrade) a value which was declared as public const was changed. For clear understanding we should see how build process is done. Actually during build process all variables which consume const will be hardcoded. It is not a problem when it is references from the same project, component will be rebuilt anyway. But what if it is referenced from another dll? The value will remain hardcoded and will contain old value.

Tools.dll MyConstants.cs
public const int DEFAULT_PORT = 80;

Service.dll Host.cs
StartService(DEFAULT_PORT);

So after upgrade of Tools.dll and change of the DEFAULT_PORT to 8080, Service.dll still will try to start service on 80 port! That is easy to test, just build a solution, copy components to another folder, change const value, rebuild and copy only updated DLL, run an application. You will see that application will show the old value.

To avoid troubles with component upgrade and constants it is strongly recommended to mark all constants as internal, or use them inside private or internal classes, classes which are not visible from the outside.

Another solution if you still want to use the same style of constant definition const should be changed to static readonly, which will create reference and value will not be hardcoded.

public static readonly int DEFAULT_PORT = 80;

Which will work correctly after component upgrade.

Happy coding.

SharePoint 2013. How to force whole list or library to be re-crawled by search

Armen Kirakosyan — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:52:00 GMT

It is a new feature which was presented in SharePoint 2013 which allows to force search service to re-crawl whole list or library regardless if items where changed or not. Items will be picked up by full crawl any way but if will be marked for re-crawl they will be crawled also during incremental crawl.

This feature is very useful when new managed property is configured or site column is modified so as a result search schema needs to be updated and list owner who initially has not access to central admin to fire full crawl which will be very expensive step for large deployment and will affect a lot of content.

So this cool feature can be found in list (I will not mention library anymore) settings under Advanced Settings link.

Scroll a little Advanced Settings page and pay attention to Search block where you can enable the list to appear in search results. This option should be enabled otherwise Reindex Document feature will not have any sense.

Only then you can press Reindex Document Library or Reindex List button

In popup dialog just confirm that you are sure and want to re-index list.

Now your list will be picked up by next continuous or incremental crawl. Make a note that you do not need to scroll down on Advanced Settings page and press OK, list already marked as dirty.

I am not sure if someone will need to make the same using PowerShell or OM, but anyway drop a line in comment then we can discuss it.

Teched 2013 days are announced

Armen Kirakosyan — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:29:35 GMT

Great news! Teched Europe and North America are announced

and registration will start from Feb 12 2013

So TechEd North America will be in New Orleans, LA, June 3 - 6 and

TechEd Europe in Madrid Spain, June 25 - 28

For more info visit http://www.msteched.com/

Stay connected https://www.facebook.com/TechEdEurope and https://www.facebook.com/teched

Valid HTML markup automation, leads to better cross browser compatibility

Armen Kirakosyan — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:26:00 GMT

In short: Having bad HTML to look nice needs more efforts than creating valid HTML which will look nice and be compatible.

It took some time for me to investigate how to force development process to increase the

quality of HTML markup and minimize cross browser compatibility issues in web UI development.

HTML validation process always left by developer for the last point and has lowest priority.

It is almost not done during development process and only when page or probably in many cases

whole web site is ready for production.

Compatibility and accessibility testing is another duty of testers but looks like they are in general

more busy with other things and markup left as is with low priority and extremely high number of errors

and warnings in production code. So looks like it is rendered, then no one cares.

For manual testing there are some tools available for devs and tests but I think that

W3C's online validator is out of competition. Just open http://validator.w3.org/ online validator

and try to validate some popular resources.

I will be surprised if any one of them will have low number of validation errors.

I will not publish some numbers here and will try to avoid validating software/hardware and IT service providers.

Try some popular news portals like cnn.com and nytimes.com .

Number of errors is extremely high I think. To be true I do not see any reason to keep that so high

and the only reason it is so just web UI was not designed and developed with compatibility in mind.

Some will tell but it is rendered and looks nice. I will agree that it is working, but we should understand the price of it.

Making bad html to look good leads to extra coding and development pain.

That means more code we need, more testing we need and more UI bugs we have.

Just some words about automation testing. There is manual tests which is well known when tester

tests unit like feature or page manually executing or opening it to check functionality.

Automation test is done using some tools which checks functionality problematically like browser simulating,

clicking, creating resources, managing them and disposing. Automation test just a step after small development

milestone which should check if feature works as expected and none of dependencies are broken.

Spend some time using your favorite search engine to find more about "Automation testing"

like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_automation

Solution is not new and it is web ui automation test. Automation tests will force devs to keep HTML

clear and valid from the first steps of development. It will minimize tester's efforts and save a lot of time for big portal testing.

Code can be as simple as

[TestMethod]
..............
var result = Validator.Client.Check(new Uri("http://www.cnn.com", UriKind.Absolute));

if(!result.Validity)
{
.... Show errors.... result.Errors
}

W3C provides API (web service) for testing. More information can be found here http://validator.w3.org/docs/api.html

API will check for markup validity and will return a list of errors with HTML fragments and comments with suggestions.

So you can consume that API from your test code for HTML validation or use sample library which I am using for my projects,

it is published with sources under http://w3cvalidatorclient.codeplex.com/

So the only thing you need now is to create Test project and implement some lines of code.

JavaScript scoping confuses other language developers.

Armen Kirakosyan — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:41:00 GMT

Developers who is writing in C#,C ++ and some other languages probably will 
face some bugs and uncommon behavior when will develop in JavaScript.

For me it was very confusing the scoping strategy in JavaScript so 
I have decided to drop some lines here.

First small sample about scoping in C#, this sample even will 
not compile since MyValue local variable declaration is not allowed 
when there is a global 

variable with the same name.

namespace ConsoleApplication3
{
    using System;

    class Program
    {
        static int MyValue = 10;
        
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            if (true)
            {
                int MyValue = 20;
            }

            Console.WriteLine("Final value: {0}", MyValue);
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}
 
But equivalent in JavaScript surprisingly will work and you 
can see that locally defined variable will have influence on global one, and
surprisingly (I think so) the output will be 20.


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title>Scope test</title>
</head>
<body>
<input type="button" onclick="TestScope()" value="Test" />
<script type="text/javascript">
var MyValue = 10;
function TestScope()
{
	if(true)
	{
		var MyValue = 20;
	}
	
	alert('Final value: ' + MyValue);
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
 
So scopes in JavaScript sometime can be more confusing if 
developer does not clearly understand the usage of var keyword.
I saw previously that developers just skip declaration of the variable 
and use it. Sure may be that worked but what is the price of omitting var?  
So variable which was used without var keyword will become global variable! 
Example will show that variable defined in Scope3 method will not 
affect global MyValue

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title>Scope test</title>
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
function TestScope1()
{
	MyValue = 'Scope 1,';
}

function TestScope2()
{
	MyValue += 'Scope 2';
}

function TestScope3()
{
	var MyValue = 'Scope 3';
}
TestScope1();
TestScope2();
TestScope3();
alert(MyValue);
</script>
</body>
</html>

SharePoint Server 2013 seminar in Armenia

Armen Kirakosyan — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:29:00 GMT

Microsoft Armenia invites to seminar!

Microsoft SharePoint 2013.

The seminar will take place on November 30, 2012 at 17:30 in Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia
(105 Teryan str., State Engineering University of Armenia, Building #10, 6th Floor).

The presentations will be conducted by Michael Noel, Joel Oleson and Paul J. Swider.

The language of the event: English.

To register, please send a confirmation email to v-dakoch@microsoft.com with the subject: SharePoint 2013 Seminar.
Registration is on a first-come first-served basis.

Agenda

Time	Topic	Speaker
17:30 – 18:30	Overview of What’s New and Compelling in SharePoint 2013	Michael Noel
18:30 – 18:45	Coffee Break
18:45 – 19:45	Preparing for SharePoint 2013 Intranets – Real World	Joel Oleson
19:45 – 20:00	Coffee Break
20:00 – 21:00	Data Visualization with SharePoint and SQL Server 2012	Paul J. Swider
21:00 – 21:15	Q&A and Closing	Michael Noel, Joel Oleson, Paul J. Swider

Sessions

Overview of What’s New and Compelling in SharePoint 2013

The ‘latest and greatest’ version of SharePoint is released, and it is time once again for SharePoint
architects to examine the new features in the software and how they change the best practices around design and implementation.
During this session, we cover the major architectural changes, including the integration of FAST Search,
new service applications, and how SQL 2012 changes data tier architecture for SharePoint 2013.
Enhanced claims-based authentication options and new best practices around SharePoint extranet models are covered,
and the new Site Mailbox integration options with Exchange 2013 are discussed. SharePoint architects,
administrators, and developers will gain valuable insight into this new, powerful version of SharePoint and
will be able to immediately use the best practices presented within their own environments.

Preparing for SharePoint 2013 Intranets – Real World

I’ll show you some of the recent updates we’ve performed in preparing for SharePoint 2013 and mobile Intranets.
I’ll also share some of the top productivity enhancements we plan to take advantage including drag and drop, enhanced search, and SkyDrive Pro.

• Mobile Enhancements

• SkyDrive Pro with Document Sync

• Document Library Enhancements for cross browser and multi devices

Data Visualization with SharePoint and SQL Server 2012

Content Focus: Dashboards, Business Intelligence, Developer Tools

Session Angle: Customization and Development

One key factor driving the self-service BI market is the growing volume and complexity of data.
As a result, enterprises will adopt new interactive reporting tools designed to put more data analytics capabilities into the hands of business users.
In this session you will learn what self-service reporting tools are available in SharePoint 2010
and how they can be used to create business solutions to visualize and navigate data.
Learn how to meet your business needs and discover best practices implementing data visualizations.

Speakers

Michael Noel

Michael Noel is an internationally recognized technology expert, bestselling author, and well known public speaker on a broad range of IT topics. He has authored several major industry books that have been translated into over a dozen languages worldwide. Significant titles include SharePoint 2013 Unleashed, Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed, Windows Server 2012 Unleashed, SharePoint 2010 Unleashed, and many more. Currently a partner at Convergent Computing (www.cco.com) in the San Francisco Bay Area, Michael's writings and extensive public speaking experience across all seven continents leverage his real-world expertise helping organizations realize business value from Information Technology infrastructure.

Joel Oleson

Joel was the first dedicated SharePoint Administrator ever. He's been working with SharePoint nearly 12 years and worked at Microsoft in both IT and the product teams including Architecting the first rollout of Microsoft's own global search, upgrading the intranet, deploying enterprise deployments of team sites and my sites. On the Microsoft SharePoint Product Team was Sr. Product Manager and managed the IT Pro Audience in the SharePoint 2007 release. Joel has travelled over 100 countries in his quest to connect the global SharePoint community. He has spoken in hundreds of events flying nearly 1 million miles reaching all corners of the globe. He currently manages a large SharePoint team in Salt Lake City at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Paul J. Swider

Paul J. Swider is the CTO of RealActivity (www.theactivityproject.com) an organization focused on improving collaboration, compliance and fiscal responsibility in healthcare. He has two decades of proven software and healthcare experience and is involved in many community and philanthropic efforts including a founding member of Sharing the Point, an international effort which offers free training opportunities in emerging markets. Paul is an accomplished technology entrepreneur straight from a barrier Island near Charleston, SC where he occasionally gets to chase the tides and winds as an avid boater and sailor.

Consuming Web API using JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest method

Armen Kirakosyan — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:40:00 GMT

Using JavaScript with remote services by calling REST, JSON, WCF or other web service will decrease data round trips and will allow to create reach web interfaces.

For demo I will use Visual Studio 2012 and MVC4. Client call will be hosted in MVC4 page and service will be provided by WebAPI which is also based on MVC4.

Lets first see how it works in one server environment, more complex scenario will be in next posts.

Start Visual Studio 2012 and create a web site using ASP.NET MVC4 Web Application template.

Then choose Basic template without creating test project.

Create HomeController and corresponding View which will response to root address

I want to skip details about creating controllers and views, you can find a lot of samples and blog posts about it.

On next step I will create another controller which will response to JavaScript calls. To create WebAPI page right click on Controllers folder and click on Add / Web API Controller class.

In new window just edit ValuesController1 by removing trailing 1.

Controller with default methods will be created and that is enough for demo. To confirm and check what is created just build project and run it. Add /api/values which is Web API address by default and confirm response from the server.

The only thing we need is to create a script which will call this web service and show results.
Modify Index view and add to it script block, button and div which will contain the response.

 <div>
 <div id="response">
 
 </div>
 <input type="button" value="Call Web API" onclick="javascript:CallWebAPI();" />
 </div>
 <script type="text/javascript">
 function CallWebAPI()
 {
 var responseContainer = document.getElementById('response');
 var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
 request.open("get", "/api/values", false);
 request.send();
 
 response.innerHTML = request.responseText;
 }
 </script>

So as a result you will see injected JSON response. You can manipulate and request response to be in XMLor JSON format.

In the next post I will show how to make cross site requests and what kind of difficulties can occur.

Happy coding!

The Microsoft Bing Advertising Engineering Team will be hosting a recruiting event in Yerevan March 1-5!

Armen Kirakosyan — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 09:09:54 GMT

The Microsoft Bing Advertising Engineering Team will be hosting a recruiting event in Yerevan March 1-5! (travel & accommodations for qualified applicants included) If you or anyone you know is interested in a Software Development Engineering career with Bing Advertising at Microsoft in the U.S. please reach out to me directly via LinkedIn for email contact!

Crawl transparency in SharePoint Server 2013. How to find when a list was crawled.

Armen Kirakosyan — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 08:31:00 GMT

In this blog post, I will present a new feature in SharePoint 2013 – Crawl transparency. I will show you how it works with a step-by-step installation, from Site Collection deployment to crawl results check.

Goal: Information panel will show crawler status, so that you don’t have to access and filter data in Search Service Application log.

Before you start this procedure, make sure you have installed and configured SharePoint Server 2013. For more details how to install and configure SharePoint Server please , see Overview of SharePoint 2013 installation and configuration

Create a site collection by using the Product Catalog template.

The Product Catalog is a new site collection template in SharePoint 2013. To create a new site collection, open Central Administration site and click Create Site Collection.
Type site name and URL you want to give this site collection, and ensure you have selected Product Catalog from the Publishing tab. Type admin’s login in User Login text box.
When the site collection has been created, browse to the site and create a new List by clicking on on Add an app from the Site Settings menu
Click on Custom List template and create new list with the name My List.
Navigate to the newly created My List, and click on List Settings
From list settings, select Catalog Settings
On the Catalog Settings Page you can see information about crawler status and when the list was crawled last time. The page also contains other features, which I will describe in other posts. Since My List was just created, it is not crawled and that you can read in note.
The panel also contains information about incremental, full and continuous crawl schedules.
Go back to the list and, add some items
Now, let’s go back to the, Manage Service Applications page in Central Administration, and select Search Service Application
From Content Sources, click on Local SharePoint sites
Scroll to the bottom of the page and create incremental and full crawl schedules
Click OK to save changes, and then click on Local SharePoint sites and select Start Full Crawl
The crawling process will take some time. When it has finished, browse your list (My List), then go to My List settings, Catalog Settings. Now you can see that the Search Information panel shows full and incremental schedules have been setup, and last crawl time shows the time when the list was crawled. The information reflects time when last item from list was picked up by crawler.
The same information is accessible in Central Administration, from Search Service Application => Crawl Log
In the Crawl Log you can see information about all items that were crawled

That is all for this post, feel free to post questions and feedback is welcome.

In my next post, I will introduce the Enable Anonymous access feature, and also other options from the Catalog Settings.