May, 2008

Boris Scholl, Christophe Fiessinger and I will be attending TechEd Developers 2008 in Orlando next week.

We’ll be delivering the following sessions:

Customizing the Microsoft Office Project Web Access User Interface

Line-of-Business Integration Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007

Code Samples

• TechEd 2008 Preview – Part 1 – Project Server 2007 Line of Business Integration with the Business Data Catalog
• TechEd 2008 Preview – Part 2 – Project Server 2007 Line of Business Integration using CLR Triggers
• How to control Lookup Table updates?

Project Initiation Using Microsoft Office InfoPath and Windows Workflow Foundation

Code Samples

• http://www.codeplex.com/EPMIP
• http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ProjectUpdaterForm

We’ll be around all week attending the Blogger Connect (next to TechEd online / Fishbowl areas) as well as the Office Developer booths.

Don’t be shy, come and meet us we want to hear your Project Server feedback from a developer perspective!

There may soon be pictures of Christophe and I showing up on the blog list for Project at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/projectserver/cc511254.aspx –  you have been warned!

In yesterday’s posting the BDC was used to present data from both Project Server and the AdventureWorks database with the join being the Vendor ID from the Purchasing.Vendors table.  To allow this to happen we need a custom field and lookup table in Project Server that has the values for the vendors so that we can make the association.  One way to do this (and there are many) is to use a CLR trigger – and that is another part of Christophe and my presentation next Thursday at TechEd.

SQL Server 2005 introduced the capability to use Common Language Runtime procedures within database entities.  CLR integration means that you can now write stored procedures, triggers, user-defined types, user-defined functions (scalar and table-valued), and user-defined aggregate functions using any .NET Framework language, including Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual C#.  This example uses C# within a trigger to make PSI calls and insert values to a Project Server lookup table.  As with any programming task, just because you can do something a particular way does not necessarily mean you should, and you certainly wouldn’t want to use the code here to make very frequent updates between systems – but for occasional updates – such as adding a new vendor in a small application it may fit the bill.

There are a number of hoops to jump through to get CLR integration running with SQL Server – and as it does open up some security concerns you will need to fully understand the consequences of these changes before making them.  They are full described, and some alternative options presented, in the SQL Server Books Online starting with the Introduction linked above and specifically dealing with security considerations here.  Please read these articles – then the following steps will make more sense.

The first step is to set the database instance to CLR enabled – and this uses sp_configure:-

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;

GO

RECONFIGURE;

GO

sp_configure 'clr enabled', 1;

GO

RECONFIGURE;

GO

Next is to give the dbo UNSAFE ASSEMBLY permissions:-

use master

GRANT UNSAFE ASSEMBLY To "domain\user"

go

and then set the database property TRUSTWORTHY to true

ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks SET TRUSTWORTHY ON

an alternative approach here is to sign the assembly with an asymmetric key or cert that has a LOGIN with UNSAFE ASSEMBLY permission.

When using calls to Web Services, as we will be with the PSI, you also need to deploy the serialization assembly – so this involves setting the option to Generate serialization assembly and then configuring PostDeployScript.sql and PreDeployScript.sql to make the deployment.

PreDeployScript.sql

IF EXISTS (SELECT [name] FROM sys.assemblies WHERE [name] = N'AWTrigger.XmlSerializers') 
    DROP ASSEMBLY [AWTrigger.XmlSerializers]

PostDeployScript.sql

CREATE ASSEMBLY [AWTrigger.XmlSerializers] from
'C:\TechEd\LOB\Brian\AWTrigger\bin\Debug\AWTrigger.XmlSerializers.dll'
WITH PERMISSION_SET = SAFE

Finally piece of setup in this example is that I created a new table in AdventureWorks and then used just a normal SQL trigger to copy data from the Vendor table to my table.  This was a workaround for what I later found was a bug with VS 2008 in that it cannot deploy automatically to entities in schema other than dbo – so the Purchasing.Vendor table would take the trigger directly.  I could have manually deployed to work around this – but as I already had the workaround working I haven’t done this.  For completeness this is the SQL to create my extra table called AWTrigger, and is followed by the SQL to add the SQL trigger to the Purchasing.Vendor table.

USE [AdventureWorks]
GO
/****** Object:  Table [dbo].[AWTrigger]    Script Date: 05/20/2008 12:36:08 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
SET ANSI_PADDING ON
GO
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[AWTrigger](
    [VendorID] [int] NULL,
    [VendorName] [varchar](50) NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]

GO
SET ANSI_PADDING ON

USE [AdventureWorks]
GO
/****** Object:  Trigger [Purchasing].[copyToAWTrigger]    Script Date: 05/20/2008 12:36:54 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
-- =============================================
-- Author:        <Author,,Name>
-- Create date: <Create Date,,>
-- Description:    <Description,,>
-- =============================================
CREATE TRIGGER [Purchasing].[copyToAWTrigger]
   ON  [Purchasing].[Vendor]
   AFTER INSERT
AS
BEGIN
    -- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from
    -- interfering with SELECT statements.
    SET NOCOUNT ON;

    -- Insert statements for trigger here
    declare @vendorid int;
    declare @vendorname varchar(50);

    select @vendorid=i.VendorID from inserted i;
    select @vendorname=i.Name from inserted i;

    insert into AWTrigger (VendorID, VendorName) values(@vendorid, @vendorname)

END

Now to the real code!  In VS 2008 you can create a project of type SQL-CLR

and you will set up a database connection.  In this solution I also have web references added for the LoginWindows and LookupTable web services.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Net;
using System.Security.Principal;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;

public partial class Triggers
{
    // Enter existing table or view for the target and uncomment the attribute line
    // Using another table rather than messing with the Vendor table to work around known bug with triggers in other schema
    // Could have deployed trigger manually.
    [Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlTrigger(Name = "LUTTrigger", Target = "AWTrigger", Event = "FOR INSERT")]
    public static void LUTTrigger()
    {
        #region Setup

        const string PSI_URI = "http://W2K3/pwa/_vti_bin/psi/"; // <<--Change to match your project server and directory.
        const string LOBI_NAME = "AW - LUTTrigger";

        WindowsIdentity winID = SqlContext.WindowsIdentity;

        // Set up the services.
        AWTrigger.wsLoginWindows.LoginWindows loginWindows = new AWTrigger.wsLoginWindows.LoginWindows();
        AWTrigger.wsLookupTable.LookupTable lookupTable = new AWTrigger.wsLookupTable.LookupTable();
        loginWindows.Url = PSI_URI + "loginWindows.asmx";
        lookupTable.Url = PSI_URI + "lookuptable.asmx";
       
        loginWindows.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
        lookupTable.UseDefaultCredentials = true;

        CookieContainer cookies = new CookieContainer();
        loginWindows.CookieContainer = cookies;

        AWTrigger.wsLookupTable.LookupTableDataSet dsLookupTable;

        // Guid for AW-Vendor Lookup Table set and then put into array
        Guid lutGuid = new Guid("E6342609-6A5D-4D05-94D1-519D0901F566"); 

// You will need to change the UID used here – and good practice would be to get this from a .config file.
        
        Guid[] lutList = new Guid[] { lutGuid };
        bool autoCheckOut = false;
        string msg = string.Empty;

        #endregion

        try
        {
            // Attempt to log in using Windows Credentials
            if (!loginWindows.Login())
            {
                msg = string.Format("{0}: User {1} CANNOT login using Windows Credentials: {2}"
                    , LOBI_NAME, winID.Name, loginWindows.Url);
                WriteEvent(msg, EventLogEntryType.FailureAudit, 8989);
                return;
            }

            // Get the VendorID and Name from the inserted row
            int vendorID;
            string vendorName;
            SqlCommand command;
            SqlTriggerContext triggContext = SqlContext.TriggerContext;
            SqlPipe pipe = SqlContext.Pipe;
            SqlDataReader reader;

            using (SqlConnection connection
                = new SqlConnection(@"context connection=true"))
            {
                connection.Open();
                command = new SqlCommand(@"SELECT * FROM INSERTED;", connection);
                reader = command.ExecuteReader();
                reader.Read();
                vendorID = (int)reader[0];
                vendorName = (string)reader[1];
                reader.Close();
            }

            // Get a dataset for our vendor lookup table and add out row – then update
            dsLookupTable = lookupTable.ReadLookupTablesByUids(lutList, autoCheckOut, 1033);

            AWTrigger.wsLookupTable.LookupTableDataSet.LookupTableTreesRow rowLookupTableTree =
                dsLookupTable.LookupTableTrees.NewLookupTableTreesRow();

            Guid lt_struct_uid = Guid.NewGuid();
            rowLookupTableTree.LT_STRUCT_UID = lt_struct_uid;
            rowLookupTableTree.LT_UID = lutGuid;
            rowLookupTableTree.LT_VALUE_NUM = (decimal)vendorID;
            rowLookupTableTree.LT_VALUE_DESC = vendorName;
            dsLookupTable.LookupTableTrees.AddLookupTableTreesRow(rowLookupTableTree);

            lookupTable.CheckOutLookupTables(lutList);
            bool validateOnly = false;
            lookupTable.UpdateLookupTables(dsLookupTable, validateOnly, autoCheckOut, 1033);
            bool forceCheckIn = false;
            lookupTable.CheckInLookupTables(lutList, forceCheckIn);
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            msg = string.Format("{0}: EXCEPTION {1}", LOBI_NAME, ex.Message);
            WriteEvent(msg, EventLogEntryType.Error, 8989);
        }
    }

    #region Helper Methods

    private static void WriteEvent(string msg, EventLogEntryType logEntryType, int eventId)
    {
        EventLog myLog = new EventLog();
        myLog.Source = "Adventure Works LOBI";

        string message = msg;
        myLog.WriteEntry(msg, logEntryType, eventId);
    }

    #endregion

}

The code isn’t totally robust, and will fail if the lookup table is checked out – and the code that Christophe posted earlier this week on controlling lookup table updates helps with that.  It controls who can check out that particular lookup table.  In triggers it is also really important to handle exceptions as you always want the trigger to “work” even when it fails.  Try/Catch and writing errors out to the event log in this case ensures the trigger works and doesn’t undo any of the changes to the original vendor table.

The test.sql script is used for debug – by actually making an insert that will fire the trigger – thanks Christophe for adding this piece and also the better exception and error handling. 

DECLARE @AcctNumber nvarchar(10)
SET @AcctNumber=ROUND(RAND()*1000,0)

INSERT INTO Purchasing.Vendor (AccountNumber, Name, CreditRating, PreferredVendorStatus, ActiveFlag, ModifiedDate)
       VALUES (@AcctNumber, 'Vendor '+@AcctNumber, 1, 1, 1, GETDATE())

As I was working on this I made good use of Live Search – so thanks to Vineet on the SQL Server team for the very helpful blog posting as well as excellent content from the following KB and TechNet articles.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913668

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms131093.aspx

Building Database Objects with Common Language Runtime (CLR) Integration

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms131046.aspx

Getting Started with CLR Integration

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms131052.aspx

Enabling CLR Integration

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms131048.aspx

Part 3 will probably be posted early next week – and will include a server side event handler that uses the OnPublished event to query a project custom field for the type of Project Workspace you would like created for that project.  This will be part of my chalk talk session with Boris Scholl on Wednesday morning on customizing the UI in Project Server 2007.

This is the first of my pre-TechEd 2008 postings – and you may already have seen one that Christophe posted a few days ago.  This one is part of the same session I am doing with Christophe next Thursday afternoon (not Tuesday as I said earlier) in Orlando and the scenario here is accessing both AdventureWorks data (from the sample database) and Project Server 2007 data using the Business Data Catalog (BDC). 

To connect the two sets of data I am using a Project level custom field to hold the Vendor ID, which is the same code used in AdventureWorks to identify vendors.  More on this link in my next post where I have a database CLR Trigger in C# that updates Project Server with new vendors – and Christophe’s code mentioned above stops “unauthorized” users making changes to the specific lookup table.

A picture is certainly worth a thousand or more words – so here is a sample of the kind of this this scenario delivers.  This is a web part page with a Business Data List and a Business Data Item part added.  Selecting from the list allows display of more details of the specific project and associated vendor – as well as a few actions.

We can see details of the actual work and cost (from Project Server) and the vendor name, city and location (from AdventureWorks).  The actions on the top web part allow us to search for the Project Owner on Live Search, Drill Down to Project on PWA, and finally to Map the Vendor Location using Live Maps – and here is what you get using that last option…

As you can see from the URL it is using data from the BDC as parameters in the search – the other actions use a similar process.  In this example as the AdventureWorks street addresses are fictitious I just use the zip code and city.

I have attached the XML of the definition file, and you will need to make a few edits to fit your server names and you will also need to have a Project level Number custom field to hold the VendorID.  I am pulling data from the reporting database views and cross joined to the AdventureWorks database as you will see from the XML.

When I started working with the BDC I found it easiest to look at the XML files from the AdventureWorks sample first, then also took a look at Christophe’s search example for project data and once I understood how it all worked it made it easier to work with the Catalog Definition Editor.  The cool thong about the definition editor is that it allows you to execute the “finders” to ensure everything is working as planned.

and even the actions…

In the next week or two I aim to post a video walking through creation of some of this – but I am sure with the XML and looking at the other samples already out there you should soon be able to get this kind of thing working.  As a final couple of ideas for you I also show a couple of list to which I have added a new column containing “Business Data” and then defined which elements I want to display.  This then adds data from Project and AdventureWorks to list data!

First is a calendar list item

where my project meeting item has the actions available

including profile information

The same kind of thing can be surfaced in more regular custom lists…

and again all the actions are available for each project.

One thing to remember is that in this example I am just pulling data based on the account running the web application so you will want to consider security in more depth than I have.  Using a web service instead of SQL as the datasource for the BDC may give you more control in this respect – although the standard PSI web services cannot be consumed directly.  Finally the BDC is just surfacing the data – it isn’t replicated in any way and is not stored in the content database.

I was working on a case today where a bug in one place makes something break elsewhere. And the added challenge here is the original problem probably goes un-noticed so isn’t obviously a problem.

If you have ever tried to import a timesheet on the My Tasks page, and the screen flashed but nothing happened – and the only way out was to press Cancel then you may have this problem.  The timesheet does not restrict the tasks that you can add in the same way they show in My Tasks.  Either through Add Lines, or using the automatic method from Server Settings, Timesheet Settings and Defaults page (By default, timesheets will be created by using:  Current task assignment) you could end up with lines on your timesheet where you are not the assignment owner.  It is this that breaks the import.  You will also notice that these tasks do not appear on your My Tasks page.

In many cases I’m guessing that you do expect to be the assignment owner, and some earlier (now fixed) bugs may have led to projects and templates having the incorrect assignment owner for your assignments.  The workaround is therefore to either correct the assignment owner and republish – or remove the tasks from the timesheet if the assignment owner is valid (and not you).

For those searching the following are the errors at various levels that you would find in the ULS logs as a result of this problem.  Not great reading – but the search engines appreciate it.

Exception Level Log
Exception occurred in method Statusing.ImportTimesheet System.ArgumentException: Statusing - Cannot create new Saved Task for resource's task modifications.  Parameter name: taskData     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.Statusing.CreateSavedTask(PlatformContext context, DalDataAccess dataaccess, ISvrDocEdit doc, ITaskData taskData)     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.Statusing.ImportTimesheet(Guid periodUID)     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.WebService.Statusing.ImportTimesheet(Guid periodUID)

Verbose Level Log
Error is: GeneralUnhandledException. Details: Attributes:  System.ArgumentException: Statusing - Cannot create new Saved Task for resource's task modifications.  Parameter name: taskData     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.Statusing.CreateSavedTask(PlatformContext context, DalDataAccess dataaccess, ISvrDocEdit doc, ITaskData taskData)     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.Statusing.ImportTimesheet(Guid periodUID)     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.WebService.Statusing.ImportTimesheet(Guid periodUID)  . Standard Information: PSI Entry Point: Statusing.ImportTimesheet  Project User: REDMOND\pkmuser2  Correlation Id: f5af0b6e-a9be-4b88-88fa-3529021a1696  PWA Site URL: http://servername/pwa  SSP Name: SharedServices1  PSError: GeneralUnhandledException (42)

Medium Level Log
PWA:http://servername/pwa, SSP:SharedServices1, User:DOMAIN\User, PSI: Statusing.ImportTimesheet  Undefined Attributes: PSError: GeneralUnhandledException  Undefined attributes list: System.ArgumentException: Statusing - Cannot create new Saved Task for resource's task modifications.  Parameter name: taskData     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.Statusing.CreateSavedTask(PlatformContext context, DalDataAccess dataaccess, ISvrDocEdit doc, ITaskData taskData)     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.Statusing.ImportTimesheet(Guid periodUID)     at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.WebService.Statusing.ImportTimesheet(Guid periodUID)

Verbose Level Log
PWA:http://servername/pwa, SSP:SharedServices1, User:DOMAIN\User, PSI: Statusing.ImportTimesheet  PSI Entry Point: Statusing.ImportTimesheet  Project User: DOMAIN\User Correlation Id: f5af0b6e-a9be-4b88-88fa-3529021a1696  PWA Site URL: http://servername/pwa  SSP Name: SharedServices1  PSError: Success (0) XML: <errinfo><general><class name="An unhandled exception occurred in Statusing.ImportTimesheet."><error id="42" name="GeneralUnhandledException" uid="862074be-9315-4c83-9a1f-66053d785061" /></class></general></errinfo>

Quite a few customers have run into an issue since loading MS08-18 and the restriction on “legacy” file formats introduced in both this fix and SP3 for Project 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941466. If you are not familiar with the issue then the following file formats are blocked, but can be “unblocked” by going to Options on the Tools menu in Project 2003, click the Security tab, and check the required option under Legacy Formats. 

By default, the following file formats are blocked in Project 2003 SP3:

•.mpp
Note By default, Microsoft Project 98 versions of .mpp files are blocked. However, Microsoft Project 2000 .mpp files, Microsoft Project 2002 .mpp files, and Microsoft Office Project 2003 .mpp files are not blocked.

•.mpx

•.xls

•.txt

•.csv

Also blocked is HTML – but this was omitted from the KB (sorry).

The problem we gave our customers is that if you loaded MS08-18 and not SP3 then the UI is not in place in Project to make these changes.  You can however still follow the details in the KB article to change the settings in the registry – noting the warning in the KB about editing the registry!

Our recommendation is that if you cannot deploy SP3 to enable this interface for your users, that you deploy the registry key setting to enable these needed file types.  There are several methods for deploying a registry key including:

1. Use the Custom Maintenance Wizard to modify the installation to include this key.

2. Use SMS to deploy this key to the appropriate machines.

3. Use a logon script to deploy this key.

4. Use the Office Policy Templates to deploy this via a GPO.

We apologize for any confusion that was created by this not being documented in the KB Article that discusses this Security Patch.  We will be getting this changed to include HTML in this list so other customers do not run into this in the future.