MCPD: Web Developer

Last month I completed the final exam in the .NET Framework 2.0 Web Developer series to achieve the MCPD. Check my About page to see a list of my current certifications.

MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications

This week I completed the second of two exams to achieve the MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications certification. This is just one step toward the MCPD: EA certification. Check my About page to see a list of my current certifications.

SharePoint Guidance: Released

Microsoft patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance has been released to MSDN!

http://www.microsoft.com/spg

Here are a few of the topics you will find inside:

Architectural decisions about patterns, feature factoring, and packaging

Design tradeoffs for decisions many developers encounter, such as whether to use SharePoint lists or a database to store information

Implementation examples that are demonstrated in the Training Management application and in the QuickStarts

How to design a SharePoint application for testability, create unit tests, and run continuous integration

How to set up different environments including the development, build, test, staging, and production environments

How to manage the application life cycle through development, test, deployment, and upgrading

Team-based intranet application development

You might also see my name, along with the names of a couple of others from Avanade, in the Authors and Contributors section.

Service Level Dashboard for System Center Operations Manager 2007

Earlier this year I worked on a project with the Microsoft Solution Accelerator Team to develop what was released as the Service Level Dashboard for System Center Operations Manager 2007.

The dashboard is a report that is installed into Operations Manager 2007 and is used to display availability and performance metrics related to SLA thresholds set by the administrator.

Service Level Dashboard for System Center Operations Manager 2007

Download

I also recently noticed my name, along with the names of many others from Avanade, on the Acknowledgements page.

MCTS: WSS 3.0 – Application Development

Last Saturday I was able to pass the 70-541 exam to earn the MCTS: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Application Development certification. Not only will I be working on my MCPD certification this year, but also the WSS/MOSS certifications. Check my About page to see a list of my current certifications.

New Xbox Live Gamertag

I updated my Xbox Live gamertag tonight from “alex00110101″ to “NewGuid”, something a little more… globally… unique…

Appending binary to my name didn’t really gel with all of those non-technical folks out there. Hmmm… I guess they won’t be very familiar with the whole Guid concept either… oh well… at least it’s easier to tell people.

Dynamic Cascading Drop Down Lists

Recently, I have been doing a lot of ASP.NET development inside of SharePoint. Once area that I have found to be quite tricky, although not SharePoint-specific, is dynamic ASP.NET controls. In particular, managing postbacks when you have dynamic ASP.NET controls.

Here is a link to the source code for a Visual Studio 2008 solution, which demonstrates the use of dynamic cascading ASP.NET drop down lists that happen to query SharePoint.

Nichols.DynCascadingControls.SharePoint.zip

If you are not developing on a SharePoint box you can simply replace the SharePoint queries with some other data source such as a generic list.

Please provide comments if you have any feedback.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

SharePoint Guidance: Second Release

The second release of SharePoint Guidance from the Microsoft Patterns & Practices SharePoint Guidance team is now published on Codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/spg.

Updates included in this release:

• Refactor code to leverage MVP pattern where applicable.
• Refactor SPList-related SharePoint code with the Repository Pattern.
• Unit tests for manager and presenter classes using TypeMock.
• And much more…

Disclaimer: This will evolve (and change) significantly. At this stage the RI provides a basic set of WSS features with accompanying guidance. This is not a CTP or a BETA.

Stay tuned for new releases about every two weeks or so.

SharePoint Guidance: First Release

The first release of SharePoint Guidance from the Microsoft Patterns & Practices SharePoint Guidance team is now published on Codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/spg.

Disclaimer: This will evolve (and change) significantly. At this stage the RI provides a basic set of WSS features with accompanying guidance. This is not a CTP or a BETA.

Stay tuned for new releases about every two weeks or so.

Deployment issues using Visual Studio 2008 SharePoint Workflow project templates (Access is denied.)

The addition of SharePoint sequential and state machine workflow project templates to Visual Studio 2008 did wonders for SharePoint workflow developers. Specifying SharePoint Debug Settings that allow you to do a “right-click Deploy” that GACs the DLL, installs and activates a workflow on a SharePoint instance, and associates it with a SharePoint list on that instance eliminates a lot of manual steps.

 

There is one issue, however, that arises when the workflow project is under source control. This issue yields the following errors in Visual Studio:

 

“Access is denied.”

with

“Cannot copy workflow.xml to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\[Project Name]\workflow.xml.”

or

“Cannot copy feature.xml to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\[Project Name]\feature.xml.”

 

Unfortunately for the first few months I just dealt with this issue using this workaround:

 

1. Open the path to the workflow feature folder.

2. Delete feature.xml and workflow.xml.

3. Go back to Visual Studio and click Deploy.

 

I finally realized that when the Deploy command in Visual Studio for the workflow projects does a copy of the feature files to the 12 hive, it copies the read-only attribute as well if you do not have those files checked out in source control.

 

If you are having this issue, simply check out feature.xml and workflow.xml from source control and your deployments with SharePoint workflow project templates should no longer have this error.