Microsoft Tech Blogs

PowerShell command to get Resource Count for SP 2010

One of my colleagues @ Microsoft happen to ask this quesiton for Sharepoint 2010 on Resource allocation for Sandboxed Solution

INTRO: Sandboxed Solutions in SP2010 [Sharepoint 2010]

Now all of us (MOSS 2007) folks know we have solutions (often referred as WSP). With Sharepoint 2010 we get 2 types of Solutions: 1. Sandboxed Solutions and 2. Full-trust Solution. So now for IT-Pros a goodie is provided and that is Sandboxed solution. Why? As with Sandboxed solutions ITPros will not be bothered for deploying the solutions to the FARM, hey don’t party yet as Sandboxed solutions are not the same FULL-BLOWN solutions that we think. So not everything can be done as Sandboxed Solutions only few can be done and following are some of them that can be created:

v  Content Types

v  Site Columns

v  Custom Actions

v  Declarative Workflows

v  Event Receivers

v  Feature Receivers

v  InfoPath Forms Services (not admin-approved i.e. withour code behind)

v  JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, Silverlight

v  List Definitions

v  Site Pages (but no application pages with code behind)

v  Web parts (but not visual web parts)

What is Sandboxed: It is a separate process where solutions run and not all features of Microsoft. SharePoint namespace are available i.e. only a subset of features are available. So with sandboxed solution we can’t leverage everything inside the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace but we can consume bulk of the stuff. Basically a CAS [Code Access Policy] keeps us within the limits. Any solution that is created for Sandbox can be deployed into a special Solutions Gallery in the site-collection called SOLUTIONS GALLERY. And all these solutions that are deployed here can be activated from a menu (ECB menu) on that solutions gallery itself, hover around the item and you will get a ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE menu. For all this to work properly we have to make sure that the “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation User Code Service” is starting on one or more of the servers in the Farm. You can confirm whether the service is running or not by checking the sandbox resource quota that is available on the top of the same page (Solutions Gallery Page). All of the resource assignment and monitoring for the Sandboxed solution can be controlled from Central Admin app.

Sandboxed Solutions to work need these 3 thing:

User Code Service (SPUCHostService.exe): this service will decide whether the box on which this service is running will participate in the Sandboxed solutions are not. This should run either on one box or more for sandbox solutions to take advantage of the server and run it on that server.

Sandbox Worker Process (SPUCWorkerProcess.exe): This is the actual process in which the Sandboxed Solutions run.

Sandbox Worker Process Proxy (SPUCWorkerProcessProxy.exe): If you have already studied and are aware of the new Service Application architecture then you get this one, this is the proxy which the web-app will use form the proxy group to use the sandbox.

So with Sandboxed solutions you can only do limited things i.e. to use limited API from the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace to name some of them:

Microsoft.SharePoint.Navigation , Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities (with few exception), Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow , Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages (with few exception).

So if there are so many things that I can’t use, what is the advantage of Sandboxed solution?

Well if you have been an IT-Pro or for that matter even and end-user or to say a business user/Author, you know the pain. You have to wait till the admins approve your solution, go thru the code review, deploy it to test environment, then deploy it to staging and finally make it to Production. Also as most of the time the environments are shared, you have to follow the schedule and the deployments are not adhoc. So with Sandboxed solution you can give some control in the hands of end-users/business user (authors) whom the developers would hand over the sandboxed solution which they will upload to the solutions gallery just as you would upload a document to a document-library. And then activate there and there itself.

Ohh hold on, you mean to say the developers would give the WSP (sandboxed solution) to the end-user and no one would do a performance testing on that, how the artifact consumes the resources? Well in a shared environment it is  BAD. Well for this problem we have the solution and i.e. RESOURCE QUOTAS. Basically the Farm admins would decide and allocate some kind of number, wowo this number is basically the amount of resource that your guy (the artifact/solution) can use from the shared resources and this is tracked. So in case if the execution of your artifact/solution happens to cross this limit/number boy your solution will not be allowed to execute anymore and it will be locked. So this way even if you have the mercy to run your own solutions (wsp) you are limited by your resource quota, don’t cross the number somebody’s watching you (I hope you know the MJ song “I always feel like somebodies watching me” J).

Hey I have one more Question:

NEW FEATURES: Sharepoint 2010 a.k.a. Sharepoint 14

I am sure I might not be the first one to blog about this (although I didn’t check online if somebody has already blogged about this topic, so excuse me for a *repeat*).

Following are only the few great and basic features that are now part of SharePoint 2010 (and let me tell you SP 2010 ROCKS!!!):

1.       Service Applications: The SharePoint 2010 architecture for Shared Service Provider (SSP in MOSS 2007) is now changed and now we have something known as Service Applications. Service Applications. So now we are moving more towards Service Model in 2010. In MOSS 2007 the limitation of having only one SSP associated web-application, forced us to use ALL or NOTHING of all the services (Search, BDC, Profile, Excel) from the SSP. So we can’t consume more than one service from 2 or more different SSPs. This limitation is now gone with SP 2010, now we have SERVICE APPLICATIONS, with this a WEB-APPLICATION can choose from all the available SERVICE APPLICATIONS and choose it A-LA-CARTE. [I will try to blog in details about this topic in future] One thing to note here is all these Services in Service Application are WCF Services. So the Advantages are:

a.       Each Service (Search, BDC, PROFILE, etc) is independent and can be independently scaled & configured to run on different Application Servers

b.       Web applications can be associated with any service application, not like MOSS 2007 where we were limited to use only those Service provided by the SSP.

c.       We can have an independent Farm that is hosting only Services and then we share these services across farms.

2.       SP 2010 *DEVELOPMENT* now on Windows-7 & VISTA+SP1 (64-bit OS): At least in Beta 2 both SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 [WSS 4.0] will be able to install on Windows 7 or Windows Vista+SP1 for doing the development in addition to Server operating systems. This is huge as dev teams now can leverage the non-Server OS as they do it for SQL Server, BizTalk, etc. This definitely deserves a 5 STAR rating isn’t it J, so let me highlight this in different color.

3.       Sandbox Solutions: As we had a WSP (Solutions) in MOSS 2007 we still have the same in SP 2010 but now there is a Step brother to it too J. That is when the developer compiles the custom code then can choose between 2 options 1. Sandboxed Solutions or 2. Full blown Solutions [I call it that]. Sandboxed solutions are compiled with a subset object model and can be uploaded to a Special gallery [SOLUTIONS] under the _catalogs. And these solutions can be given to the business admins to upload and use it instead of waiting for IT/Operations team to deploy the solution. Again a very HUGE feature but this blog won’t be enough at all to explain the details.

4.       LINQ Support: The Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq namespace will contain the LINQ to SharePoint provider. It will translate LINQ queries into Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) queries, which means that developers do not need to know how to write CAML queries nor learn a different query language for each type of data source.

5.       Client Object Model: WSS 4.0 [a.k.a. WSS FOUNDATION] Introduces three new object models for interacting with SharePoint sites: from script that executes in the browser, from code (Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0 or later) that executes in a .NET managed application, or from code that executes in a Silverlight 2.0 application. The new ECMAScript, .NET managed, and Silverlight object models each provide a subset of the object model that is defined in Microsoft.SharePoint.dll, including objects that correspond to the major objects in the server-side object model at the site-collection level or lower in the Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 hierarchy. Just to give some little details here, following table should help:

6.       Master Pages for Application Pages: In WSS 3.0, application pages and content pages use different master pages with different content placeholders. The master pages for the application pages could not be changed. There was no out of the box way [but only thru code] to change the master page for application pages created an inconsistent look and feel. In WSS 4.0, application pages use the same master page as content pages so we get consistent look and feel [no more blue pages]. We most likely will have a SIMPLE or BASIC master page with only the placeholder controls necessary/required. Another thing I thought of mentioning here was about the PAGES library and yes now we can have FOLDERS in PAGES library also and this is supported now in SP 2010.

7.       Ribbon Menu:   as we have Ribbon menu in Office 2007, we have a similar Ribbon Menu in SP 2010 and best thing is you can extend it and choose to use or not. Basically it is a SharePoint control that looks like this:

<SharePoint:SPRibbon  runat="server"  PlaceholderElementId="RibbonContainer" FixedPositioningEnabled="true" PermissionsString="EditListItems, AddAndCustomizePages" PermissionMode="Any"

Visible="false" ApplyPermissionsToRibbonOnly="false">

8.       Themes: Yes themes were available in MOSS 2007 but then you had to create themes and get it deployed thru the IT/Operations team and needed some knowledge of CSS too. But now in SP 2010 the business users can define the themes in the browser and use it. You can modify colors and fonts by applying a .thmx file to your site and can apply a "theme" by using a simple, Web-based UI that requires no knowledge of CSS. The "themes" feature provides broad, clear control of colors and fonts on a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010  site. It also supports the re-coloring of site images. 

9.       New Event Handler: In SP 2010 we have some much needed event handlers like Web-Adding: this event fires when a new Web site is created. If cancelled, then no Web site is created and the provisioning process does not begin. WebProvisioned : This event fires after the Web site is fully provisioned and the provisioning process has stopped. It can be either synchronous or asynchronous.

10.   POWERSHELL Command-let: Windows PowerShell introduces the concept of a cmdlet: a single function command-line tool built into the command shell. PowerShell is the big thing in SP 2010 and its better we all learn it now, its really not difficult. We have close to 652 command lets in SP2010 that we can use to manage SP 2010 with scripting model. Advantages: Great Performance compared to STSADM, Remoting interface that helps to run the command from one machine in a farm kind of scenario instead of running it on individual servers. There are 2 types of PowerShell Commands: 1. LOCAL ["BOX"]: This command must run on each box and 2. Global: This command only runs *once* per farm.

11.   Developer Dashboard: This one great thing I have seen for the developers who get a lot of beating from the performance labs. This feature displays us (the developers) the diagnostic and performance related statistics. Something like how long did the request take to run, what event handlers were fired, in what sequence did these event handlers fire.

12.   Improvements to SPD Workflows: This is HUGE as in MOSS 2007 the problem was the SPD workflows couldn’t be moved easily between lists/Sites, etc. But now in SP 2010 this issue has been resolved and now we can create Workflows that are reusable. The workflows can be easily moved around different lists/sites once they are defined in SPD. Also another thing to note is you can modify some of the out of the box workflows also.

13.   Visual Studio 2010 Improvements for WSS: VS 2010 we have a very good integration support with SP2010 and we can easily build Sharepoint Artifacts and debug artifacts like web-parts just by hitting (CTRL-F5) that is so cool, you dont have to go thru the hasle and steps as we used in VS 2008. For building custom web-parts, list definitions, etc out of the box i.e. no need to install a separate set of templates as we used to do it in MOSS 2007. The UI is cool which also gives us an option to preview the web-parts yes DESIGNER view for web-parts this was not there in VS 2008. Also thing to note here is you *can’t* use VS 2010 and SPD 2010 with MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0, no backward compatibility. Just an exception to this fact is workflow projects of MOSS 2007, you can use it with VS 2010.

Shared SSP and Web-application creation in Sharepoint 2007 (Alternate URL Synchronizer)

At one of my customers we have a situation where we are Sharing the SSP from one Farm (i.e. Parent Farm) to another Farm (Child Farm). We also need to create a web-application with the same host header name (e.g. http://secure.msft.com) in both the Farms.

Following is the main crux of the issue:

1.       We have a Parent Farm (This farm provides the  SSP to child Farms), lets call this Farm ASIAFARM.

2.       We create a web-app with url “secure.msft.com“ in the ASIAFARM, and the web-app is created.

3.       Now we create the AAM entries for this web-app in the Parent farm (3 entries).

4.       We now go to the Child Farm (This farm consumes the  SSP provided by the Parent Farm), lets call this Farm USFARM.

5.       We try creating a web-app with the same url i.e. “secure.msft.com“ in the USFARM and the web-app creation fails with the error: http://secure.msft.com is already routed to the Default zone of another application. Remove that mapping or use a different URL. 

6.       This is because of the reason that “Alternate URL Synchronizer” timer job syncs all the entries from the Parent Farm to the Child Farm and hence can’t create the web-app.

7.       Then we disabled this (“Alternate URL Synchronizer” ) timer job in the Child Farm and deleted all the AAM entries from the Child Farm.

8.       Then we tried creating a web-app with the same url i.e. “secure.msft.com“ in the USFARM and it succeeded. And we were able to create the additional AAM entries.

So bottom line is the (“Alternate URL Synchronizer” ) timer job Synchs the information (AAM) from Parent Farm into the Child Farms. If you want to take a look at the EXECUTE method of this timer job (using Reflector), just open the Assembly name: Microsoft.Office.Sharepoint.Administration

"This week in Pictures" web part in Sharepoint 2007 and Time Interval

In case if you are looking for how to set the time interval between image slideshow, you will find this blog helpful.

The “This week in Pictures” [TWIP] web part uses a java script for the slideshow (STARTSlideShow() method).

 Basically in the OnPreRender() method (TWIP) web part from Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.ThisWeekInPicturesWebPart registers the client script

This refers to the JAVA script file (IMGLIB.js) in the layouts/1033 (or lang specific folder), that has a StartSlideShow()method that uses the timerId=setTimeout("AutoRun()", slideshowInterval); and slideshowInterval is set to 5000 (milli seconds), I changed this value to 2000 and it works for me (But I am sure we don’t want to do it this way J).

But we can override the StartSlideShow() method then we can change it the way we want J.

<UPDATE 13th Aug 2009> 

Mak Rowshan (my buddy) just updated me that he was able to add the following script to SlideShow.aspx, and it modified the time interval for slideshow.

<script language="Javascript">if (IsImgLibJssLoaded())  slideshowInterval = 2000;

</script>

Exploring the Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.Licensing information

Have you ever had a need to explore whats the expiration date of the trial version of MOSS you are using, if yes then the solution for that is the INTERNAL STATIC CLASS: Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.Licensing This will help you in finding out what is the expiration date and other details about licensing, check the Fiddler screen shot below for some details.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43203883@N00/3815256542/sizes/o/

Site Collection Administrator on a FBA getting Access Denied errors

One of my customers was facing an issue with one of the Forms based authentication sharepoint web application where the site collection administrators were getting ACCESS DENIED errors. We spend a whole lot of time in figuring out what was the issue and for no reason were were getting a SQL Exception as below:

[SqlException (0x80131904): A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified)]
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnErro r(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection) +4846887
System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndW arning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj) +194
System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Connect(ServerInfo serverInfo, SqlInternalConnectionTds connHandler, Boolean ignoreSniOpenTimeout, Int64 timerExpire, Boolean encrypt, Boolean trustServerCert, Boolean integratedSecurity, SqlConnection owningObject) +4860189
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.Att emptOneLogin(ServerInfo serverInfo, String newPassword, Boolean ignoreSniOpenTimeout, Int64 timerExpire, SqlConnection owningObject) +90
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.Log inNoFailover(String host, String newPassword, Boolean redirectedUserInstance, SqlConnection owningObject, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, Int64 timerStart) +376
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.Ope nLoginEnlist(SqlConnection owningObject, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, String newPassword, Boolean redirectedUserInstance) +221
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds..ct or(DbConnectionPoolIdentity identity, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, Object providerInfo, String newPassword, SqlConnection owningObject, Boolean redirectedUserInstance) +189
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnectionFactory.CreateC onnection(DbConnectionOptions options, Object poolGroupProviderInfo, DbConnectionPool pool, DbConnection owningConnection) +4861315
System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.Creat eNonPooledConnection(DbConnection owningConnection, DbConnectionPoolGroup poolGroup) +29
System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetCo nnection(DbConnection owningConnection) +4863644
System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenCo nnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory) +117
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open() +122
System.Web.Management.SqlServices.GetSqlConnection (String server, String user, String password, Boolean trusted, String connectionString) +82

[HttpException (0x80004005): Unable to connect to SQL Server database.]
System.Web.Management.SqlServices.GetSqlConnection (String server, String user, String password, Boolean trusted, String connectionString) +137
System.Web.Management.SqlServices.SetupApplication Services(String server, String user, String password, Boolean trusted, String connectionString, String database, String dbFileName, SqlFeatures features, Boolean install) +94
System.Web.Management.SqlServices.Install(String database, String dbFileName, String connectionString) +25
System.Web.DataAccess.SqlConnectionHelper.CreateMd fFile(String fullFileName, String dataDir, String connectionString) +395

In no way that we were using the out of the box ASP Net Membership provider we had built our own custom Membership Provider that doesn’t leverage SQL Server. After all that debugging finally we decide to take a look at the web.config file and VIOLA we found the issue J.

Basically the problem was the customer’s IT/Operations team had placed the Membership/Roleprovider entry in a incorrect system.web section of the web.config file because of which it was picking up the membership provider from the *Machine.config* (the default ASPnetMembership Provider) file.  

Machine.Config default membership provider:

  <system.web>

    <processModel autoConfig="true"/>

    <httpHandlers/>

    <membership>

      <providers>

        <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true" applicationName="/" requiresUniqueEmail="false" passwordFormat="Hashed" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="7" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="1" passwordAttemptWindow="10" passwordStrengthRegularExpression=""/>

      </providers>

    </membership>

    <profile>

      <providers>

        <add name="AspNetSqlProfileProvider" connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" applicationName="/" type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/>

      </providers>

    </profile>

    <roleManager>

      <providers>

        <add name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" applicationName="/" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/>

        <add name="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider" applicationName="/" type="System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/>

      </providers>

    </roleManager>

  </system.web>

Wrong Section of the web.config :

<location path="_layouts/images">

    <system.web>

    <membership defaultProvider="MerckMembershipProvider">

      <providers>

        <add name="MerckMembershipProvider" type="Merck.Web.Security.MerckMembershipProvider,Merck.Web.Security.AuthenticationProvider, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=daf6fd1bbe0cfc20" />

      </providers>

    </membership>

    <!-- role provider -->

    <roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="MerckRoleProvider">

      <providers>

        <add name="MerckRoleProvider" type="Merck.Web.Security.MerckRoleProvider,Merck.Web.Security.MerckRoleProvider,Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=daf6fd1bbe0cfc20" />

      </providers>

    </roleManager>

      <authorization>

        <allow users="*" />

      </authorization>

    </system.web>

  </location>

So after placing the Membership provider and Role provider entry in the correct location it started working. So Please check the web.config file properly and make sure the entries are placed in the appropriate sections.

How to determine (find) who created a site on a MOSS 2007

One of my colleague had asked query regarding how to find out the user who created the site in sharepoint 2007, obviously nothing in the UI to find out that. So we will have to do it programmatically and the way to get it is to use the SPWeb.Authors property. More details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spweb.author.aspx

In case if someone wants to find out who created the site and not the owner of the site then a small console application can be written that uses the SPWeb.Authors property and running this console applicaiton on one of the sharepoint WFEs in the farm.

Modifying SPThemes.xml Programmatically to deploy new Themes MOSS 2007 (WSS 3.0)

Modifying SPThemes.xml Programmatically to deploy new Themes MOSS 2007 (WSS 3.0)

One of my colleague was looking for modifying the SPThemes.xml file programmatically instead of editing it manually on each and every server. So that the deployment of new themes could be very easy thru the Solution Deployment/Packaging way. All we need is a Feature Receiver for that. In case if you have not already seen the VSEwss 1.3 here check it out, there is a ready made codebehind available that be reused to deploy your custom Themes in sharepoint 2007 (wss 3.0) using the feature / Solution deployment packaging approach. Following is the source code from the Feature receiver from the VSeWSS project (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0A87658F-20B8-4DCC-AD7A-09AD22641F3A&displaylang=en)

NOTE: These 10 Theme Features are FARM LEVEL Features and you can find these Features in the Central Admin box under the Operation tab under Farm level Features:

 //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// This file is a "Sample" as part of the MICROSOFT SDK SAMPLES FOR SHAREPOINT
// PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGIES
//
// (c) 2008 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved. 
//
// This source code is intended only as a supplement to Microsoft
// Development Tools and/or on-line documentation.  See these other
// materials for detailed information regarding Microsoft code samples.
//
// THIS CODE AND INFORMATION ARE PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
// KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
// IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A
// PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
//--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace TeamSiteTheme
{
    public class TeamSiteThemeFeatureReceiver : SPFeatureReceiver
    {
        private const string _themeName = "TEAM";
        private const string _themeNiceName = "Team";

        private enum ModificationType
        {
            Add,
            Remove
        }
       
        public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
        {
            ModifySPTheme(ModificationType.Add);

            using (SPWeb web = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent)
            {
                web.ApplyTheme(_themeName);
            }
        }

        public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
        {
            ModifySPTheme(ModificationType.Remove);

            using (SPWeb web = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent)
            {
                web.ApplyTheme("none");
            }

        }

        public override void FeatureInstalled(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
        {
            ModifySPTheme(ModificationType.Add);
        }

        public override void FeatureUninstalling(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
        {
            ModifySPTheme(ModificationType.Remove);
        }

        private void ModifySPTheme(ModificationType type)
        {
            XDocument doc = null;
            XNamespace ns = "http://tempuri.org/SPThemes.xsd";

            // path to the SPTHEMES.XML file
            string spthemePath = Path.Combine(SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath(@"TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033"), "SPTHEMES.XML");
            string contents = string.Empty;

            // read the contents of the SPTHEMES.XML file
            using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(spthemePath))
            {
                contents = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
                streamReader.Close();
            }

            using (StringReader stringReader = new StringReader(contents.Trim()))
            {
                // create a new XDocument from the contents of the file
                doc = XDocument.Load(stringReader);

                // retrieve all elements with a TemplateID of our theme.  At most, there should only be one
                var element = from b in doc.Element(ns + "SPThemes").Elements(ns + "Templates")
                              where b.Element(ns + "TemplateID").Value == _themeName
                              select b;

                bool exists = (element != null && element.Count() > 0);

                if (type == ModificationType.Add)
                {
                    if (!exists)
                    {
                        // create an XElement that defines our custom theme
                        XElement xml =
                            new XElement(ns + "Templates",
                                new XElement(ns + "TemplateID", _themeName),
                                new XElement(ns + "DisplayName", string.Format("{0} Site Theme", _themeNiceName)),
                                new XElement(ns + "Description", string.Format("A {0}-like Site Theme", _themeNiceName)),
                                new XElement(ns + "Thumbnail", string.Format("1033/IMAGES/{0}/preview.jpg", _themeName)),
                                new XElement(ns + "Preview", string.Format("1033/IMAGES/{0}/preview.jpg", _themeName)));

                        // add the element to the file and save
                        doc.Element(ns + "SPThemes").Add(xml);
                        doc.Save(spthemePath);
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    if (exists)
                    {
                        // if the element exists, remove it and save
                        element.Remove();
                        doc.Save(spthemePath);
                    }
                }

                stringReader.Close();
            }
        }

    }
}

Sharepoint 2007 WSS 3.0 Feature list with GUID

Following is the list of sharepoint features (out of the box) that are available, I wish I could have compiled it but this great job is done by Robert Bogue (MVP) on his blog here:  http://www.thorprojects.com/blog/archive/2007/05/16/list-of-features-with-guids.aspx. I am keeping the same entries on my blog for my reference. Great job Robert, Thank you!!!.

Audiences in Inter Farm SSP (Sharepoint 2007 / MOSS)

We were doing some brain storming on Sharing the SSP (Shared Service Provider) between multiple farms i.e. the Parent Farm will be the provider/source of the SSP and the Child farm will consume the SSP. (Needless to say this is MOSS or sharepoint 2007).

It is very easy to set up the sharing of the SSP between farms basically going to the Central Administration àApplication ManagementàUnder office Shared Service provider (Grant or configure shared services between farms ) and here you can configure whether the current farm on which CA is hosted for that farm will be a consumer or provider of the SSP.

Ok so now we wanted to keep the Audiences in one place i.e. in the Parent farm and share these Audiences between the Parent and the Child farm. The question came in what would happen if the Parent farm is down for maintenance i.e. Service Pack upgrades, etc. What would happen to Audience targeting that is done on some of the content pages on the Child farm sites? Will it work or will it not? Will the Audiences resolve or not. So we did a quick small POC and following were our findings on that:

Case 1: All WFE’s and CA box from the Parent farm is down but not the SQL box from the parent farm: Audience still works (as Parent SQL box is still up and running).

Case 2:  The entire farm is down (all WFEs, CA box) along with the Parent farm SQL Box: The audiences don’t work as expected.

So bottom line is the Child farm talks directly to the SQL box of the parent farm (i.e. the SSP db of the parent farm) and it is independent of any services on the WFE/CA box of the Parent farm.

Thank you to Ben Risher our in-house MOSS Infra Guru for guiding and helping me thru this. We worked together on this and got this to a conclusion.

Programmatically provision hostheader site collection (MOSS/Sharepoint 2007)

I was looking for a sample on creating a Host header based site collection (programmatically) i.e. using WSS/Sharepoint 2007 API and came across the msdn article, but there is no sample: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms479602.aspx

We can easily do it thru STSADM:

stsadm -o createsite -url http://THE-HOST-HEADER-FOR-THE-SITE-COLLECTION -ownerlogin DOMAIN\username -owneremail username@domain.com -hhurl http://THE-URL-OF-THE-WEBAPPLICATION-THE-SITE-COLLECTION-IS-GOING-INTO

 But then I got the sample, thanks again to TROY STARR he is a great help, thought of sharing this with a larger community in case if someone wants to do it:

SPWebApplication webApp = SPWebApplication.Lookup(new Uri("http://the-url-of-the-webapplication-the-site-collection-is-going-into"));

webApp.Sites.Add(

                "http://the-host-header-for-the-site-collection", // site URL

                "The Site Title", // site title

                "The Site Description", // site description

                1033, // site LCID that represents the language, e.g. 1033 = en-US

                "STS#0", // site template, e.g. STS#0 = Team Site

                @"DOMAIN\username", // site owner login

                "Firstname Lastname", // site owner name

                "username@domain.com", // site owner e-mail address

                NULL, // secondary owner login

                NULL, // secondary owner name

                NULL, // secondary owner e-mail address

                true); // is this a host-named site collection

Host header (actually Host Named) site collection in MOSS (some details)

If you search on the web on how to create a host header (HH) site-collection you will get a lot of results as lot of community folks have blogged about it. Thanks to all of them for the great work. So following is the command used to create a HH site-collection is:

stsadm -o createsite -url http://THE-HOST-HEADER-FOR-THE-SITE-COLLECTION -ownerlogin DOMAIN\username -owneremail username@domain.com -hhurl http://THE-URL-OF-THE-WEBAPPLICATION-THE-SITE-COLLECTION-IS-GOING-INTO (take from: http://callahansspace.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!A125D1CFA42E21F7!860.entry)

And in case if you want to create it in a new content database then following is something you can use, inspired and referred from http://sharepointhawaii.com/wenhe/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=dbcd4f5c%2D63e1%2D416c%2Db34a%2Ddd391d48beab&ID=9:

stsadm -o CreateSiteInNewDB -URL http://The URL for HH site collection    -owneremail myemail@myserver.com 

-ownerlogin domain\username -HHURL http://The webapp in which sitecollection needs to be provisioned  -databaseserver DBServerName 

-databasename NameOfTheNewDBForSiteCollection

I had some simple queries on some basics of the hostheader (host named) site collection and Troy Starr (from MOSS Product team) was a *BIG* help (as always) in answering my queries:

Queries:

Q: how does Sharepoint handle the HH site urls (as there is no entry anywhere on the IIS)  how does sharepoint know about the url to the HH site (when the url itself is different). basically I have a web-app with url: http://usctapMOSS  now i create a HH site-collection with a url: http://msfturltest.abc.com  and then I create a required DNS entry for that url  now how does sharepoint know to redirect the "http://msfturltest.abc.com" to the correct site-collection in the http://usctapMOSS web-app.

A: When the IIS web site receives the request for _http://msfturltest.abc.com, it will pass it off to SharePoint.  SharePoint will then look at the properties of the request, including its protocol scheme, host name, and port number, to determine the request URL.  It will then look up that request URL in its internal table of AAM URLs and host-named site collection URLs to find a match.  Once it has a match, it opens the site collection associated with that URL and goes from there. The internal table referred here is logical and by looking at the Path column in the configuration database's SiteMap table we can see the host headers assigned to individual site collections. Also note that this lookup information for the site will be cached on the WFE after the first browse.

Q: Can we restore a backup taken from a non-HH site-collection to a HH-kind of site-collection. (Both the source and target site-collection are in the same web-app and have their own Content database each).

A: In general, yes, you can back up a non-HH site collection and restore it as an HH site collection.  Also, in case if this restore of a host-named site collection causes a content database corruption, we can try to fix that corruption by immediately running the stsadm -o renamesite operation after the restore and renaming the HH site URL to itself.

Thought of sharing this information in case if someone else had similar doubts.

Sharepoint Content Deployment results in "Value cannot be null"

We were working on a publishing site and had couple of custom field types and controls also as part of our custom development. We were doing Content Deployment to publish our Sharepoint 2007 (MOSS) authoring site to the Publishing site. While doing so typically we were getting following errors:

1.       VALUE CANNOT BE NULL

OR

2.       Object reference not set to an instance of an object

After carefully looking at the custom developed features we found that some of the custom code was using SPCONTEXT and that code was getting executed during Content Deployment (How did we find this: We attached the owstimer.exe service on the server and ran our custom code in the debug mode).

The problem was with the code of the custom field type was relying on the usage of SPContext object and this object can only be used inside a http request to a sharepoint site. Hence it will always fail during the content deployment (as OWSTIMER.EXE will always have SPContext null) and where no SPContext object exists. We resolved this issue by checking for value of SPContext i.e. we introduced SPContext != null before executing the code and we got over that issue.

Make sure to restart the OWSTIMER service after you re-deploy the changed code. Always remember that HTTPContext will not exists while doing the Content deployment and if you have any custom code that directly relies on SPContext will tend to fail and hence the content deployment also.

Hope this helps someone.

How to force a wordbreaker to be used in Sharepoint Search

I had a requirement to crawl Japanese content and we had an English Install of Sharepoint 2007 (MOSS). Now for some reason the locale was not being identified by the crawler for the HTML (i.e. all the Publishing pages) as 1041 (i.e. the Japanese locale), and the default English (US) word breaker was used. I wanted to force the Japanese wordbreaker and finally found that I need to make a registry change (*** PLEASE NOTE REGISTRY CHANGE IS NOT A GOOD IDEA, BEFORE DOING ANY REGISTRY CHANGE PLEASE TAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR REGISTRY***).

To force the crawler to use the JAPANESE WORD BREAKER, I changed the following registry key to use the Japanese WBreakerClass (This change is required on your Index Server):

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************

 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\LanguageResources\Default\English (United States)]                                            

"WBreakerClass"="{E1E8F15E-8BEC-45df-83BF-50FF84D0CAB5}"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Now the crawler uses Japanese WBreakerClass instead of English WBreakerClass and all my content is crawled properly as well as the Search results are working great with proper hithighlighting  (which was not working earlier).

Please note that by only forcing Japanese wordbreaker even for English content has a side effect such as breaking definition extraction.