Prabath's Blog

Export and Import a SharePoint List

2012-02-03T20:36:00.001+05:30

This was a requirement one of my clients faced few days back. So I thought of writing blog post on it so anybody can refer to it when needed .

Exporting a SharePoint List can be done with the OOB feature given in SharePoint Central Administration.

Central Administration >> Backup and Restore >> Export a site or list

In the above image you can see…
1. You can backup a site
2. You can backup a list
3. It supports of exporting with full security
4. Exporting with the item versioning (Major / Minor / Both / Current)

OK fine exporting can be done through the UI. How about Importing? Time to move on to PowerShell. Prior to that let’s see how to achieve the Exporting through PowerShell.

Export-SPWeb “http://spdev:4422/netassist/” –ItemUrl “Lists/Students” –Path “C":\SharePoint Backup\StudentsList.cmp”

Now the Importing.. (I’ve used a SubSite “network” for the clarity)

PS C:\Users\SPAdmin> Import-SPWeb “http://spdev4422/netassist/network/” -Path "
C:\SharePoint Backup\StudentsList.cmp"

For more info read the TechNet Articles.
Export
Import

Looking back at SharePoint Sri Lanka User Group

2012-01-30T15:09:00.001+05:30

2011 was a successful year for the SharePoint community in Sri Lanka. Few of us with the help of Microsoft, started the SharePoint Sri Lanka User Group. I will never forget the great help and encouragement received from Dinesh Priyankara and Gogula in making this dream come true. Oh! special thanks goes to Wellington Perera. Thanks all who contributed by conducting sessions and to all who attended and making each session a success.

I gave a promise of giving T-Shirts to the first 10 users. Let’s see, what if someone sponsors to give T-shirts to the first 100 users .

Keep on counting… it’s 2012, we have a lot planned for you.

1st Session

2nd Session

3rd Session

4th Session

5th Session

6th Session

7th Session

8th Session

9th Session

Let’s continue…

2012-01-30T14:04:00.001+05:30

Yep, It’s more than 6 months since my last blog post. It wasn’t a break!! and on excuse accepted too!! But I was doing a lot of offline contribution to the SharePoint community in Sri Lanka by hosting sessions, doing trainings and providing consultancy. And not to forget the contribution made towards the success of SharePoint Sri Lanka User Group.

I’m back on my blog… Want to continue sharing my knowledge, my experience from projects with the Online Community. Lets continue…

www.iusesharepoint.com

2011-06-22T09:59:00.001+05:30

Ah, driving adoption. We know it can be tough to get a team to change its ways. But you don't have to resort to wearing disguises like our SharePoint champion. Use this handy kit to send the message: life is easier with SharePoint 2010.

Want to get your team using SharePoint?

Here are two ways to download and deploy:

Download the Lunch & Learn SharePoint Adoption Kit.
The Lunch & Learn kit contains all the materials you need to promote SharePoint within your organization. The kit includes instructions, templates, videos, quick reference cards and more to help you deploy an internal SharePoint resource site - a place to access SharePoint information and tools, and connect around the best part of the day: lunch. Download this kit to show your team how SharePoint makes life, and lunch, a little better.
Download this handy Adoption Kit.

Build an Adoption Kit that's right for you.
If your organization already has an established learning center, you can download individual pieces to post to and promote the destination that works best for you. These standalone pieces can be used to add interesting and helpful training content to your organization's site and to drive SharePoint learning and adoption. Choose to download one or more of these resources, like webisodes, Show Me How videos, quick reference cards, poster templates, table tents and more.

Download Tips & Tricks

Download Quick Reference Cards

Launch of www.SharePointSriLanka.org

2011-01-18T23:52:00.001+05:30

This was a dream came true. Finally on 12th of January 2011 we were so happy to announce the launch of the Sri Lankan SharePoint Forum. The online forum which can be reached at www.SharePointSriLanka.org or www.SharePointSriLanka.com or www.SharePointSriLanka.net. The offline forum which will take place on second Wednesday of every month.

These forums are the official Microsoft Approved forums dedicated to SharePoint and related products. What you see above is the logo of SharePoint Sri Lanka Forum. This logo has the meaning of collaboration which is the idea behind the product SharePoint. Its represented by the 4 colored people.

For the launch there were over 130 attendees. And there were two technical sessions held. The first sessions which was a the 1st of a series, on SharePoint branding hosted by Abul Azad a SharePoint UX Expert. The second session was on Claim-based Authentication hosted by me.

I’m so happy to be one of the founders of SharePointSriLanka forum. Also my special thanks goes to Gogula (One of the founders of SQLServer Universe and MVP SQL Server) who came up with the idea and was behind me nagging all times till we launch it. How can I forget, Dinesh Priyankara (One of the founders of SQLServer Universe and MVP SQL Server) the BI Guru for being there for me always (even paid for the soft drinks ) and helping in all matters to make the SharePoint Forum a success.

Also many thanks to Dinusha Kumarasiri and Abul Azad for the sleepless nights spent to bring the www.SharePointSriLanka.org up and running. And not to forget the one and only Wela, Wellington Perera, without your support this wont be a success, you know it well buddy.

Okay, this offline forum is not only for SharePoint Experts. We have planned to have two sessions each day, giving a chance for a newcomer to do a session on any SharePoint related technology or product. And the second session will be hosted by a person with more experience on the product.

Now you know, you have a place to publish your articles, blogs, ask questions on related technologies. So guys get registered soon and help make SharePointSriLanka a better place for you.

PDF in SharePoint 2010

2011-01-08T13:01:00.001+05:30

This is a step-by-step guide to setup and configure Adobe PDF file search in SharePoint 2010.

Step 1
Download the Adode iFilter from the following url.
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025

Step 2
Download the pdf icon file. Download a 16*16 gif or a png file. Or else you can download it from the below url. http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html

Step 3
Extract the zip file and install the PDFFilter64installer file which you downloaded in Step 1.

Step 4
Open the “Run” window and open Registry Editor running the regedit command.

In Registry editor browse to location \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension

Step 5
Right Click on “Extension” and add a new Key.

Name it as .pdf.

Step 6
Now add the following GUID as the default key.
{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}

Step 7
Now is the time to set the icon for pdf files.
Copy/Move the pdf icon you downloaded in in Step 2 to the following folder.
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES
Next open “Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and Stop the service.

This step is required as you are going to amend a file which is currently in use.

Step 8
Browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML and open the DOCICON.XML file. (use Notepad). And do a search for the <ByExtension> tag.

Add the line <Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon_small.gif" />
(replace pdficon_small.gif with your icon name)

Save the file.
Start IIS Service

Step 9
Open SharePoint Central Administration. Under Application Management select Manage Service Applications. Open Search Service Application.

Step 10
Select File Types on the left menu. Click New File Type. Enter pdf and click OK.

Step 11
Click on Content Sources and do a Full Crawl (not an Incremental Crawl). After completing job, you know what to do. Do a search.

SharePoint Rocks!!

Microsoft MVP in SharePoint

2011-01-08T10:26:00.001+05:30

1st of January 2011 was a day I could never forget. I stared the day with a pleasant surprise from Microsoft. I got awarded as a MVP (Most Valuable Professional). MVP in SharePoint.

Thank you God. Thanks Microsoft. Thank you Dinesh Priyankara, Gogula, Wela, Lilian, Susantha, Jinath and all who helped and guided me to come an MVP.

I have done few thing for the community and I have a lot to do.

SharePoint User Permissions

2010-12-28T13:16:00.001+05:30

When SharePoint is installed, by default it will create a set of Permissions, which can be viewed by “Central Administration” => “Application Management” => “Manage WebApplications” => Highlight the WebApplication => Click on “User Permission”.

To secure the contents at various levels within SharePoint sites, it is these permissions that has to be enabled by the administrators. Each permission has a level of it’s own which can be; List, Site or Personal.

These Permissions are grouped/combined to create the Permission Levels.

List level Permissions…

Permission	Description	Type	Permission Level
Manage Lists	Create and delete lists, add or remove columns in a list, and add or remove public views of a list.	List	Full Control, Design, Manage Hierarchy
Override Check Out	Discard or check in a document that is checked out to another user.	List	Full Control, Design, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Add Items	Add items to lists, and add documents to document libraries.	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Edit Items	Edit items in lists, edit documents in document libraries, and customize Web Part pages in document libraries.	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Delete Items	Delete items from a list, and documents from a document library.	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
View Items	View items in lists, and documents in document libraries.	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Approve, Manage Hierarchy, Restricted Read
Approve Items	Approve a minor version of a list item or document.	List	Full Control, Design, Approve
Open Items	View the source of documents with server-side file handlers.	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Approve, Manage Hierarchy, Restricted Read
View Versions	View past versions of a list item or document	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Delete Versions	Delete past versions of a list item or document.	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Create Alerts	Create alerts	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
View Application Pages	View forms, views, and application pages; enumerate lists.	List	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Approve, Manage Hierarchy

Site level Permissions…

Permission	Description	Type	Permission Level
Manage Permissions	Create and change permission levels on the website and assign permissions to users and groups.	Site	Full Control, Manage Hierarchy
View Web Analytics Data	View reports on website usage.	Site	Full Control, Manage Hierarchy
Create Subsites	Create subsites such as Team sites, Meeting Workspace sites, and Document Workspace sites.	Site	Full Control, Manage Hierarchy
Manage Web Site	Grant the ability to perform all administrative tasks for the website, as well as manage content.	Site	Full Control, Manage Hierarchy
Add and Customize Pages	Add, change, or delete HTML pages or Web Part pages, and edit the website using a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation compatible editor.	Site	Full Control, Design, Manage Hierarchy
Apply Themes and Borders	Apply a theme or borders to the entire website	Site	Full Control, Design
Apply Style Sheets	Apply a style sheet (.CSS file) to the website.	Site	Full Control, Design
Create Groups	Create a group of users that can be used anywhere within the site collection.	Site	Full Control
Browse Directories	Enumerate files and folders in a website using SharePoint Designer and WebDAV interfaces.	Site	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Use Self- Service Site Creation	Create a website using Self- Service Site Creation	Site	Read, Contribute, Design, Full Control
View Pages	View pages in a website.	Site	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Approve, Manage Hierarchy, Restricted Read
Enumerate Permissions	Enumerate permissions on the website, list, folder, document, or list item.	Site	Full Control, Manage Hierarchy
Browse User Information	View information about users of the website.	Site	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Limited Access, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Manage Alerts	Manage alerts for all users of the website.	Site	Full Control, Manage Hierarchy
Use Remote Interfaces	Use SOAP, Web DAV, the Client Object Model, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the website.	Site	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Approve, Manage Hierarch
Use Client Integration Features	Use features that launch client applications. Without this permission, users must work on documents locally and upload their changes.	Site	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Limited Access, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Open	Allow users to open a website, list, or folder in order to access items inside that container.	Site	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Read, Limited Access, Approve, Manage Hierarchy, Restricted Read
Edit Personal User Information	Allow a user to change his own user information, such as adding a picture.	Site	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy

Personal level Permissions…

Permission	Description	Type	Permission Level
Manage Personal Views	Manage Personal Views	Personal	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Add/Remove Personal Views	Add or remove personal Web Parts on a Web Part page.	Personal	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy
Update Personal Web Parts	Update Web Parts to display personalized information	Personal	Full Control, Design, Contribute, Approve, Manage Hierarchy

A blog post on Permission levels soon to be released.

Manage SharePoint Farm Administrators

2010-12-28T09:48:00.001+05:30

To Manage SharePoint 2010 Farm Administrators, follow the steps given below.

Go to “Central Administration”, select “Security” and go to “Manage the Farm Administrators Group”. Within this screen we can manage the Farm Administrators.

To remove a user, select the user by clicking on the checkbox on the leftmost column, go to “Actions” and click on “Remove Users from Group”.

(The reason why I wrote this simple blog post is, in one of the popular SharePoint 2010 Administration books I read recently, they have guided the reader in a wrong path)

Corporate portal with classic authentication or with claims-based authentication

2010-12-13T14:35:00.001+05:30

These design samples illustrate a typical corporate deployment, with the most common types of SharePoint sites represented. The two samples differ only in the mode of authentication that is implemented -- one uses classic authentication and one uses claims-based authentication.

You can download it in PDF, Visio or in XPS formats from here.

Fortune 500 Companies Using SharePoint

2010-12-09T11:16:00.001+05:30

Below text is extracted from an article written by Julian Corlaci about Fortune 500 companies using Microsoft SharePoint.

“Microsoft is still claiming SharePoint Server as the fastest growing product in company history, which is very impressive coming from such a diversified software maker powerhouse.”

“According to Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) one in two corporations are now using SharePoint Server and in 22% of the companies, every employee uses this popular Microsoft collaboration tool. SharePoint usage is widely spread due to its complex collaboration structure and its flexibility. From enterprise search, enterprise content management (ECM), Business Process Management, business intelligence, records management, archiving, Intranet/Extranet, file sharing to public-facing websites, which will be covered in this article.”

Nothing But SharePoint ( www.nothingbut sharepoint.com)

2010-12-07T23:00:00.001+05:30

www.nothingbutsharepoint.com, a wonderful community site, totally dedicated to SharePoint. Public launch happened today.

Give it a try.

Free Sessions - Claims Based Authentication and Visio Services in SharePoint 2010

2010-12-02T13:49:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka .NET Forum

.NET User Group Meeting – December 2010

Session1: Claims based authentication

SharePoint Server 2010 utilizes a new authentication model called claims-based authentication(CBA). CBA is based on the concept of identity and utilizes open source standards and protocols so that it works with any corporate identity system, not just Active Directory and not just Windows-based systems. Lean how SharePoint 2010 has expanded its authentication mechanism beyond Windows Authentication and Forms Authentication.

Session 2: Visio Services in SharePoint 2010

A picture is worth a thousand words, and Visio provides the canvas and the tools to create drawings that represent ideas and concepts ranging from network topologies to landscape design, and process diagrams to UML. Using Visio you can connect the information stored across disparate repositories to shapes, and now the drawing is dynamic instead of static.

Speaker: Prabath Fonseka

Software Architect - IronOne Technologies

MSc. in Advanced Software Engineering

MCPD, MCTS, MCP

Date: 3^rd December 2010 (Thursday)

Time: 6.00 PM Onwards

Venue: Training Room (Sithuvili) , 11^th, DHPL Building, Colombo 02

Entrance: Free

Deploy Project Server 2010 on SharePoint 2010

2010-11-11T12:14:00.001+05:30

By any chance if you come across the requirement of installing and configuring Microsoft Project Server 2010, technet has provided a nice and easy guide of deploying Project Server 2010.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197280.aspx

In this section:

Deploy Project Server 2010 to a server farm environment
This series of articles describes the steps necessary to install Microsoft Project Server 2010 in a server farm environment. This includes installing and configuring Project Server, creating a Microsoft Project Web App site, and configuring reporting.
Deploy Project Server 2010 to a test environment
This series of articles describes deploying a test installation of Microsoft Project Server 2010 in a virtual environment. The purpose of this series is as follows:
Install Project Server 2010 to a stand-alone computer
Microsoft Project Server 2010 can be installed in a stand-alone configuration that uses Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express. This configuration is useful for demonstration, but should not be used for a production environment.
TechNet Webcast: Project Server 2010 upgrade and migration
This Microsoft TechNet Webcast discusses Microsoft Project Server 2010 features, requirements, and deployment considerations that IT professionals need to know about.
TechNet Webcast: Project Server 2010 - Backwards Compatibility Mode
This Microsoft TechNet Webcast discusses the Microsoft Project Server 2010 Backwards Compatibility Mode (BCM) feature, which helps you to accelerate deployment of Microsoft Project 2010.
In-place upgrade to Project Server 2010
This article describes the process of doing an in-place upgrade from Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 to Project Server 2010.
Database-attach full upgrade to Project Server 2010
This article describes how to do a database-attach full upgrade to Project Server 2010, in which you back up the required databases in the old farm and then restore them in the new farm.
Database-attach core upgrade to Project Server 2010
This article describes how to do a database-attach core upgrade to Project Server 2010, in which you are basically using backup copies of your Office Project Server 2007 databases that contain your project data.
Virtual migration environment (VME) guide for Project Server 2010
The Project Server VME is a virtualized Office Project Server 2007 environment that contains all the necessary applications and utilities required to migrate Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 data to Office Project Server 2007. To migrate from Project Server 2003 to Project Server 2010, first you must migrate your data to Office Project Server 2007 format.
Upgrade to Project Server 2010 from Project Server 2003
This series of articles provides information and procedures about how to migrate from Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 to Project Server 2010.
Deploy language packs (Project Server 2010)
Microsoft Project Server 2010 language packs enable Project Server 2010 users to view Microsoft Project Web App and project sites in multiple languages without requiring separate installations of Project Server 2010.
Deploy Project Server 2010 with Exchange Server
These articles describe how to configure integration with Exchange Server, enabling Microsoft Project Server 2010 users to view Project Server tasks in Microsoft Outlook.

SharePoint 2010 Farm Topologies

2010-11-07T12:30:00.001+05:30

Normally a SharePoint Farm topology vary on number of factors.

1) Number of users.
2) Redundancy requirements.
3) Service applications being used.

Looking back at SharePoint 2007, it was SSP (aka Shared Service Provider) we had. But with the new service applications model in SP 2010 the users have greater flexibility in deployments.

Given below are the different Farm Topologies used in SP 2010 Deployments.

Single Server Farm
This is ideal for a user base of less than 100. This farm consists of a single server catering the requirement of the Web Front End (WFE), Database Server and the Application Server.

Two Server Farm
This farm is equipped with one Database Server and one Webserver that performs all the application services. For high availability a clustered or mirrored database server is recommended. This farm can cater the requirement of 100 to 10,000 user base.

Two-Tier Small Farm
This environment is adequate for a user base of 10,000 to 20,000 with low service usage. Two Web Servers, one Web Server performing the tasks of the Application Server and the Database Server (clustered or mirrored).

Three-Tier Small Farm
Three-Tier small farm is much more similar to a Two-Tier Small Farm. A dedicated Application Server is added to cater the requirements of the Services. To improve the performance of the Search Service a the Search Database can be moved to a dedicated Database server. This Farm Topology is ideal for a solution with a Search Database containing nearly 10 million items which can be considered as a large Search Database. Though its optional, it’s a good practice to have a Database Cluster or a mirror.

Medium Farm
This is a Three-Tier Farm. The general rule in planning is to have 10,000 users for a WFE Server. In the First Tier we can utilize two or more Web Servers. In the Second Tier there are two servers dedicated to crawling contents and serving search queries and one or more servers for all other application services. In the Third Tier there are dedicated servers for Search Databases and one or more servers can be used for all other SharePoint Databases.

The middle tier can be expanded to to handle the growth by adding more servers to cater the requirement of application services.
*optional servers are in gray color.

Large Farm
A Large Farm is built on the Server Group concept as it used in the Medium Farm. Additionally a Large Farm could consist of dedicated servers for Sandboxed code.

It's always recommended to use the concept of “server groups” to group services with similar performance characteristics together onto a single server and then add servers based on the needs of those particular services.

Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Launch at SLIIT

2010-11-05T22:32:00.001+05:30

SLIIT is one of the most popular Universities in Sri Lanka. I was invited to host two technical sessions in the month of August for the launch of VS 2010 and SP 2010.

The first session was on Visual Studio 2010. Covered most of the new and cool features of VS 2010 IDE.

My second session was all about my love SharePoint 2010. Actually this was a totally new experience for most of the participants as it was the first time they heard about SharePoint. But feedback I received made me amazed, session was a kick start for many students.

Read Uditha’s Blog for more pics.

ASP.NET Workshop at Wayamba University

2010-11-05T21:20:00.001+05:30

This was a two day session. I was invited as a guest speaker to host a session on ASP.NET. The attendees were very enthusiastic about the session. As it was a Workshop they were managed to work on Visual Studio and to create ASP.NET applications.

Visual Studio is a product which can be used to develop applications without having a clue about basic concepts or core of it. But as a techie, that’s something I strongly refuse to do nor guide anybody. So with the chance I got, I hosted the session giving an introduction on how ASP.NET handles a client requests.

Thanks to Mr. Wellington, Microsoft Student Champs and to Wayamba Uni Team.

I was at Tech.Ed 2010 Sri Lanka

2010-11-05T20:40:00.001+05:30

Yep I’m way too late to publish this post. But today I found few community sessions I did, which I couldn’t publish in my blog, so its always better to be late than never.

It was in February 2010, Microsoft Sri Lanka organized Tech-Ed 2010 Sri Lanka. The second day, 9th February 2010 was a remarkable day for me. I was invited to host a 1 hour Session on Microsoft Wrokflow Foundation 4.0 by the organizing committee. Though 1 hour is not enough, I gave an introduction to WF and to the new features of WF 4.0.

Bruce Schneier, the security guru was one of the guest speakers. I was lucky to sit for a pic with him

SharePoint 2010 SDK

2010-09-13T09:39:00.001+05:30

An updated version of SharePoint 2010 is available for download which is around 334Mb. The Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Software Development Kit (SDK) contains conceptual overviews, programming tasks, code samples, and references to guide you in developing solutions based on SharePoint 2010 products and technologies.

What’s New in this SDK Update

This free update replaces previous 2010 versions of the SDK and includes the following:

    * New code samples: Silverlight List Viewer, plus new samples in Business Connectivity Services (BCS), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), and User Profiles and Social Data
    * Updated documentation, including: new and updated How To, reference , and conceptual content
    * Updated IntelliSense XML files for tooltips and auto-complete in Visual Studio

Here are two MSDN topics listing new and updated content and code samples in the AUG2010 version of the SDK (14.0.4763.1031):

* What’s New in the SDK for SharePoint Foundation 2010
* What’s New in the SDK for SharePoint Server 2010

A complete listing and description of the 44 code samples currently available in the SDK can be found here on MSDN Code Gallery: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/sp2010sdk.

Have fun with SharePoint :)

SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Commands

2010-05-25T16:03:00.002+05:30

I was playing with some PowerShell Commends. Suddenly came to my mind, how to get the whole SharePoint 2010 related PowerShell Commands. Simple as given below.

Open the PowerShell Window (aka SharePoint 2010 Management Shell), type the command…

Get-Command –PSSnapin “Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell” | select name, definition | format-list > C:\SP2010_PowerShell_Commands.txt

Have fun with PowerShell.

SharePoint 2010 for Developers

2010-05-13T22:31:00.003+05:30

Today the 13th May, I did another successful presentations with demos on “SharePoint 2010 for Developers” at dotNetForum monthly session. Actually it’s a very special day to all the techies as 12th was the Global Launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.

Though it was bit warm without the air condition, there were over 100 attendees. In the two hour session I covered 3 main topics.
. What’s new in SharePoint 2010 (for Developers)
. Visual Studio 2010 tools for SharePoint
. Deploying SharePoint 2010 Web Parts.
With the time constraints, I was unable to cover the 4th topic, “Deploying SharePoint 2010 Workflows”.

My sincerer thanks to all the participants and special thanks to Jinath and Wela.

Business Process Automation with SharePoint and Workflow Foundation

2010-05-13T22:12:00.002+05:30

Yeah, I know I’m late on this too. On Friday the 7th May 2010 at ANC auditorium I hosted a workshop on “Business Process Automation with SharePoint and Workflow Foundation. Actually it was my 1st workshop (Free of charge) at NetAssist, a nice crowd of over 90 participants were attended.

This workshop targeted both the Business users as well as the technical users. Started with an introduction to SharePoint 2007, followed by InfoPath 2007 forms and Workflow on SharePoint Designer and OOB Workflows. I’m happy as the Q&A session too went very well, many questions came from the business users. Photos after the brake. Thanks everybody who attended.

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Global Launch

2010-05-12T12:20:00.000+05:30

Are you ready for the BIG DAY? SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Global Launch. Watch the keynote done by Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, join the virtual launch conversation, and participate in on-demand sessions where you’ll learn more about how Microsoft products can solve the unique productivity challenges you’re facing as you look to the future.

Keynote is focused on...

Deliver maximum productivity across PC, phone, and browser
Enhance IT choice and flexibility
Leverage a platform for developers to build innovative solutions

Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development – Fun with Lists

2010-05-11T15:48:00.003+05:30

List Management

List is more like a Table in a Database. Of all the tasks a SharePoint programmer can do in SharePoint, working with Lists is the mostly common task.
Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint
Classes: SPList, SPListItem, SPListItemCollection

With MOSS 2007 and WSS, we get different kinds of lists. To name them…
. Announcements list
. Contacts list
. Discussion Board list
. Links list
. Calendar list
. Tasks list
. Project Tasks list
. Issue Tracking list
. Survey list
. Custom list
. Custom list in Datasheet view
. KPI list (SharePoint Server 2007 only)
. Languages and translators (SharePoint Server 2007 only)
. Import spreadsheet

This article doesn’t cover what SharePoint is or its usage. Targeted audience is the programmers who are already familiar with SharePoint who’s looking for a programming introduction to Lists in SharePoint and leverage the features of SPList and SPListCollection classes in SharePoint Object Model.

Enumerating Lists

Yes you see it right, its Lists. Before getting to the list items, let’s try to get a collection of lists implemented in a site. So basically in other words we are trying to enumerate through any SPListCollection instance.

First we need to create a SPSite object and get all webs in to a SPWeb object by calling the AllWebs() method of the SPSite object. Then it’s just a matter of iterating through the SPLists objects available in the SPWeb object.

Create a new C# console application and paste the code below changing the SPSite class’s input parameter url.

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

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace AllLists
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
SPSite site = new SPSite("http://dc:8844");
SPWeb web = site.AllWebs[0];
foreach (SPList list in web.Lists)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0}{1} - {2} items.",
list.Hidden ? "*" : "",
list.Title, list.ItemCount);
Console.WriteLine("Created by {0}", list.Author.Name);
Console.WriteLine("{0}", list.Description);
Console.WriteLine("................................");
}
Console.WriteLine("\n{0} lists found.", web.Lists.Count);
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}

Enumerating list items in Lists
It is the SPList you have to iterate through to find the SPListItem. But you might run in to some errors if you do the list iteration against a top level site collection instead of a team site.

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

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace AllLists
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
SPSite site = new SPSite("http://dc:8844/sales/");
SPWeb web = site.AllWebs[0];
foreach (SPList list in web.Lists)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0}{1} - {2} items.",
list.Hidden ? "*" : "",
list.Title, list.ItemCount);
Console.WriteLine("Created by {0}", list.Author.Name);
Console.WriteLine("{0}", list.Description);
Console.WriteLine("------------------------");
foreach (SPListItem item in list.Items)
{
Console.WriteLine("\t * {0}", item.Title);
}
Console.WriteLine("\n");
Console.WriteLine("................................");
}
Console.WriteLine("\n{0} lists found.", web.Lists.Count);
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}

Make sure you add reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.dll assembly prior writing the code above.

Managing Lists
When working with Lists, the source container is always an object created from SPListCollection. Given code give below, I create two Task Lists, selecting the “Task” template.

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

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace ManagingLists
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
SPSite rootSite = new SPSite("http://dc:8844");
SPWeb rootWeb = rootSite.AllWebs[0];

SPListTemplate sourceTemplate = rootWeb.ListTemplates["Tasks"];
Guid newListGuid = rootWeb.Lists.Add("My First Task List",
"My First Task List", sourceTemplate);
Guid secondNewListGuid = rootWeb.Lists.Add("My Second Task List",
"My Second Task List", sourceTemplate);
SPList newList = rootWeb.Lists[newListGuid];
SPList secondNewList = rootWeb.Lists[secondNewListGuid];
secondNewList.Delete();
newList.Description = "My Custom Task List - From Code";
newList.Update();
Console.WriteLine("List creation completed.");
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}

Browse your SharePoint site, where you could see both the Task Lists you created using code above.

Managing List Items
Managing List Items is same as managing Lists. Okay, let’s add a task item in to task list in code.

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

using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;

namespace ManagingListItems
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
SPSite rootSite = new SPSite("http://dc:8844");
SPWeb web = rootSite.AllWebs[0];
SPList taskList = web.Lists["My Task List"];
SPListItem newTask = taskList.Items.Add();
newTask["Title"] = "My Task List Title";
newTask["DueDate"] = SPUtility.CreateISO8601DateTimeFromSystemDateTime(DateTime.Now.AddDays(30));
newTask["PercentComplete"] = 0.1;
newTask.Update();

newTask = taskList.Items.Add();
newTask["Title"] = "This Task will be deleted.";
newTask.Delete();
taskList.Update();

Console.WriteLine("Work completed.");
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}

Summary
The SharePoint object model is so powerful that you have the full control over each and every component SharePoint provides. This article provides you an entry point to accessing and managing SharePoint Lists in code.

Site Collections or Sub-Sites

2010-04-12T22:28:00.002+05:30

Currently I’m working on Sri Lanka’s largest SharePoint implementation. According to the structure and the requirements of the project, my plan was to go for Site Collections. Specially the capacity and security. But I always like ideas from my team members which is helpful and knowledgeable in many different ways.
One of my team members Dinusha, came up with this article by Steve Goodyear.

Determining Between SharePoint Site Collections and Sub-Sites.

SPoint.me

2010-04-11T23:00:00.001+05:30

For people who have not heard of SPoint.me, it’s the premier social networking site for people in SharePoint industry. Yes, I know that info is not enough, right?

[Click the image below for a detailed description]

Visual Studio 2010 Launch

2010-04-11T22:35:00.001+05:30

It’s less than 2 hours for me to step in to 12th of April, but according to the time zone difference there's few more hours for the big day, launch of Visual Studio 2010 at DevConnections.

Counting…

Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development – Sites and Webs

2010-04-11T22:13:00.005+05:30

Previous Articles Related:
Article 1 - SharePoint Object Model
Article 2 - Features and Solutions

This article doesn’t cover what SharePoint is or its usage. Targeted audience is the programmers who are already familiar with SharePoint who’s looking for a programming introduction to sites and webs in SharePoint and learn how to interact with sites and site collections with the classes SPSite and SPWeb in SharePoint Object Model.

Simplifying Sites and Webs
At a glance, yes, it’s complicating. Though the Webs and Sites sound similar, in SharePoint these are two different concepts. The site, as far as SharePoint is concerned, is actually a site collection. Each site collection consists of one or more root websites. If you use the object model to create a site collection and you indicate that the template for that site collection should be a Team site, what you have actually done is created a site collection and a root website (SPWeb instance) that was provisioned from the Team Site template. So simply that means you cannot have a site collection that doesn’t have a root website. Two things you should never forget.

•SPSite class is the model for a collection of SPWeb objects.
•To get at the list of site collections on a given web application, you simply reference the Sites property of an instance of the SPWebApplication class.

Working with SPSite Class
SPSite class can be used to create, delete and updating of site collections. For the complete listing of all properties and methods, glance through the online SharePoint Software Development Kit (SDK) found on MSDN (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa905858.aspx).
Enough training in the shallow end, let’s get to the deep end. Hit VS 2008 and create a new windows application. Add reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.dll. Add few textboxes, labels and button to the windows form as given below.

Switch to the coding window.

Then write the below coding in the click event of the button. (TextBoxes have been used as in given in the order).
Let’s have a look at the coding. First I have created a SPSite object called site passing the absolute URL as a parameter. The text on txtSPSite textbox represents the absolute URL.

Next step is to create a SPWebapplication object. Site creation is done by calling the Add() on the SPSiteCollection class instance.
There are multiple overloads that allow you to supply progressively more information to create the new site collection. Okay, let’s see the parameters I have used in the Add() method. First it’s the siteUrl, next the Title of the site and the Site Description. LCID is the Local Identifier. Default is 1033 for U.S. English. Next comes the Template ID, followed by the owner login, owners name and finally the owners email address.

Given above is the windows form filled with sample data according to my SharePoint server.

If you can see the above message in your screen, Congratulations! You have successfully created a SharePoint site programmatically using SharePoint Object Model. Open your web browser http://sharepointsvr:4488/sites/TestNewSite/default.aspx [http://sharepointsvr:4488 is my test server] and you can see a screen similar the one given below. For your convenience I’ve provided the default web templates in the table below.

Template ID	Description
STS#0	Team site
STS#1	Blank site
STS#2	Document workspace
MPS#0	Basic meeting workspace
MPS#1	Blank meeting workspace
MPS#2	Decision meeting workspace
MPS#3	Social meeting workspace
MPS#4	Multipage meeting workspace
WIKI#0	Wiki
BLOG#0	Blog

Updating a site is not easy as creating one. You need to get an instance of the SPWeb class for the root web of the site collection (which was created by default when you created a new site collection).

Working with SPWeb Class
SPWeb class provides most of the functionality of single websites, whereas the SPSite class is designed to deal with site collections.
Let’s add a subweb, a blog as a subweb to the parent site collection we created earlier. To add a new web to the root web of a site collection, you obtain a reference to that site and then call the Add() method on the AllWebs property.

Type the code above in your windows application, make sure to add reference to the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll. Pay attention to the overloads of the Add() method. Hit F5 to test the code. If you see the message box with the message “Web created successfully”, yes you have successfully created a blog web.

You can obtain a reference to a SPWeb instance either by obtaining it through an indexer property on a SPWebCollection instance.

There are some properties on a website that cannot be changed after the site has been created. Changes made to a SPWeb instance are only saved after calling the Update() method. One last code block to change the title of the blog site we just created.

Summary
The SharePoint object model is so powerful that you have the full control over each and every component SharePoint provides. But honestly the hard task is to remember the methods and the properties of the classes.
All comments welcome. :)

Calculated Field Formulas in SharePoint

2010-04-05T10:57:00.001+05:30

I’ve been looking for calculated field formulas for a SharePoint POC I was working on. With the help of a good friend Dinusha, I was lucky to get my hands on this valuable resource.

Calculated Field Formulas

SharePoint Designer Workflows does not start automatically in SharePoint

2010-03-29T23:23:00.002+05:30

I’ve been playing with SharePoint Designer Workflows heavily for the past few days. Suddenly I came across the problem of these workflows does not start automatically though I select the option to start the workflow when an item is created or modified in a list or library.
Browse the web and found the reason of installing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 which caused the problem. This behavior occurs because a security fix in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 prevents declarative workflows from starting automatically under the system account.

You could fall in to 1 of the 3 scenarios given below while you faced this problem…
1) The Windows SharePoint Services Web application runs under a user's domain account.
2) The user logs in by using this domain account.
3) The site displays the user name as System Account.

Answer / Solution
Set the application pool to use a different user account than System Account.

Step by Step Guide.
1) Open SharePoint Central Administration.
2) Go to Operations Tab.
3) Under Security Configurations click on Service Accounts.
4) Select “Web application pool” option button.
5) In the web service drop down box select “Windows SharePoint Services Web Application”.
6) And in the Application pool drop down, select the application pool you want.
7) Next select the “Configurable” option button and then type the user name and password of a user having rights to assign to an application pool.

8) Go to command prompt and type iisreset /noforce
9) Make sure to test the workflow log-in in to SharePoint other than System Account.

Happy SharePoint day with Workflow..

Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development – Features and Solutions

2010-03-15T09:46:00.002+05:30

I thought of publishing all the Technical Articles I write for Magazines in my blog as in someway it’ll help the readers. Article below was written in the month of November for online magazine Digit. It’s the second article of the series Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development.

You can find the 1st Article here.
Please click on the images for the larger preview.

Another cold, dark and cloudy day with thundering showers in the month of November. What else can come to my mind rather going to bed? Oh! the second article of the series, SharePoint 2007 Development. Hope you had a chance to go through the first article “SharePoint Object Model” which is an introduction to SharePoint Object Model.

This article doesn’t cover what SharePoint is or its usage. Targeted audience is the programmers who are already familiar with SharePoint who’s looking for an introduction to “Features” and learn how to access “Features” with SharePoint Object Model.

What is a Feature?

What exactly is a feature and why is it called a feature? Isn’t it bit awkward to talk about the “Feature” feature? :)

The Feature is a container of various defined extensions for SharePoint. It’s a set of XML files which are deployed to Web Front Ends (WFE) servers in a farm that can be bundled in site definitions or individually turned on in SharePoint sites. The ability for sites to use the functionality in other sites easily is provided by features. Features has eliminated copying and pasting of huge chunks of XML from one template to another. Features have a scope, and can be associated with various scopes in SharePoint: web, site, web application, or farm. Depending on the scope, different types of individual elements can be defined in XML.

What is a Solution?

Solutions allow to package features in a cabinet file (.cab) and store important metadata about the features. After a Solution is installed on a server in the farm, you can then use SharePoint’s Solution management features to automate the deployment of that Solution to other sites within the farm.

Great, now you have a basic understanding of what a feature is and what a solution is in SharePoint. As the next step I’m going to deploy a feature in to a MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) server.

Creating a Simple Feature

This example steps you through the process of creating a custom action Feature that adds a button to the toolbar of the form for editing announcements items within the scope of a SharePoint site. Example below is taken from Windows SharePoint Services SDK.

Create a subfolder called SimpleFormToolbarButton folder under Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES in your MOSS Server.

Best way to do this without worrying about the permission issues is to create the folder in command prompt. Type cmd in Run, hit the Enter key. Browse to the Features folder and type md SimpleFormToolbarButton which will create a subfolder with the given name.

Next step is to create the feature.xml with in the newly created folder. So create a new file with the name feature.xml and type/paste the content below.

Open the file within Visual Studio, but one thing you will notice is there is no IntelliSence. Click on Schemas in file properties. You will see a window to select a XML schema file. Browse to the XML folder under Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE, select the wss.xsd file to enable IntelliSence for the feature.xml.

To replace the GUID placeholder in the previous Id attribute, generate a GUID by Tools > Create GUID > Registry Format and click on copy button.

Your code should look like above (with a different GUID). Next Create an Elements.xml file in the SimpleFormToolbarButton folder that points to an .aspx file, such as the following, which uses the CustomAction element to define the custom action.

To test the sample feature, create a SampleUrl.aspx page such as the following that displays "Hello, world!" and place it in the TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS directory.

Okay, let’s install the feature in the deployment server and activate it on a specified subsite. Go to the command prompt and type the below command for installation. Make sure to be within the Features folder.

stsadm -o installfeature -filename SimpleFormToolbarButton\Feature.xml

Activation can be done through the UI or through the command prompt. We’ll use the second method.

stsadm -o activatefeature -filename SimpleFormToolbarButton\Feature.xml -url http://Server/Site/Subsite

To try out the new button, navigate to the form for editing an existing announcements item. Great, if you followed me, you have successfully created, deployed and activated a simple feature. Image below show the customized toolbar with the link “Simple”.

Now is the time to play with the Object Model. SharePoint includes a robust object model for working with Features that allows developers to enumerate installed and activated Features, to turn Features on and off, and to control the installation or removal of Features.

Object Model for Features

Given below are the key classes.

§ SPFeatureCollection/SPFeature—Refers to a Feature state at a given site hierarchy level. The presence of a SPFeature instance within a property of type SPFeatureCollection indicates that the Feature is active at that level.

§ SPFeaturePropertyCollection/SPFeatureProperty—Represents a single property on a Feature or a collection of those properties.

§ SPFeatureScope—Represents an enumeration of the possible scopes in which Features can be activated. Possible values are: Farm, WebApplication, Site, and Web.

§ SPFeatureDefinition—Represents the basic definition of a Feature, including its name, scope, ID, and version. You can also store and retrieve properties of a Feature. Note that Feature properties apply globally to a single Feature definition, not to instances of Features activated throughout the farm.

§ SPFeatureDependency—Represents a Feature upon which another Feature depends.

§ SPElementDefinition—Represents a single element that will be provisioned when the Feature is activated.

Accessing Features

We are going to write a windows application to list the Features installed in a site. Create a new Windows Project and add reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.dll.

Now let me explain few important lines in the code above. First you need to add 4 windows controls to the form.

Control Type	Control Name
TextBox	siteUrl
Button	Button1
Label	statusLabel
ListView	faetureList

The dbConn contains the connection string to the SharePoint configuration database with credentials. _rootCollection will contains the SharePoint site url which will iterate through the features installed to check whether each feature is enabled or not in the GetFeatureEnabled method. Creating a new instance of the SPFarm class we are connecting to the Database with the given connection string. Then we iterate through the feature definitions which will be added in to the ListView as ListViewItems. Let’s see how it works, hit F5 to run the application.

Features and Feature Definitions

These two are not the same, and it is very important to know the difference. A Feature definition, as far as the object model is concerned, is an abstraction around the Feature manifest contained in a Feature directory in the Features directory. Feature definitions are installed at the farm (or server, if there is no farm) level.

A Feature is an instance of a Feature definition. And it’s features that can be activated or deactivated. Features have various levels of scope such as the site or web level.

To enumerate the list of Feature definitions that are currently installed within a farm, you need to use an instance of the SPFarm class and access the FeatureDefinitions property. To enumerate the list of active Features on a given site, you need to enumerate the Features property on the appropriate SPWeb or SPSite class instance.

As you can see what features are activated and which are not, you can do the activation and deactivation with the code. But it is the GUID that has to be provided.

SharePoint Object Model for Solutions

Other than the command line tool stsadm.exe you still can programmatically manipulate the list of solutions available with in a farm. All you need to do is open a connection to the farm by creating a SPFarm object and fire the Open method passing the database connation string as we did in the earlier example.

Adding a solution you have two options. You can pass the Solution filename as a parameter, or you can pass the Solution filename and a locale identifier (a UInt32, such as 1033):

When removing a solution you can pass the solution name or the GUID for the remove method as a parameter. Iterating through the installed solutions in a farm can be done as given below.

Solution Deployment

Deploying solution with object model’s SPSolution class has two interesting methods which are the Deploy and the Retract methods. The Deploy method deploys a Solution to the given location, whereas the Retract method removes the Solution from the given location while still remaining installed within the farm.

Summary

This article included details on how to manipulate Features and Solutions programmatically using the SharePoint object model. If you followed me through the article, you should not only be able to create your own Features and Solutions, but you should also be able to install, manipulate, and deploy them programmatically.

You are welcome to put comments :)

VS 2010 RC IntelliSence Crash Issue Patch

2010-02-16T20:51:00.001+05:30

I downloaded VC 2010 RC on 11th Feb and was so happy with the performance compared to VS 2010 Beta 2 till I came across the VS 2010 crash due to IntelliSence issue.

My good old friend Ludmal was kind enough to direct me to the “VS 2010 RC IntelliSence crash issue Patch” published in ScuttGu’s blog.

Happy Coding!!

Code Snippets in Visual Studio 2010

2010-02-13T14:33:00.005+05:30

One of the cool features I love in Visual Studio is the Code Snippets which makes development easier in many ways. :) Let’s see how to create a code snippet and add to the snippets gallery in Visual Studio 2010. Just looking back at VS 2008, though it supports creation of code snippets it’s not an easy process without the use of 3rd party applications.

There are two snippet types…
Expansion – This type of snippet is inserted at the curser.
SurroundsWith – This type wraps around the selected code block.

Lets create a code file header snippet.
Add a XML file to your project and name it as verHeader.snippet. (.snippet is the extension of snippet files)

Right click on the code editor window and select the menu item Insert Snippet or Press Ctrl + K + X and click the item Snippet.

Remove the tag below, as we are creating a Expansion snippet.

<SnippetType>SurroundsWith</SnippetType>

Modify the Title tag to read “Code File Header”.

Next put your name within the Author tags, so are the author of your code snippet. ;)

Modify the shortcut tag with “codehead” which is the rigger word that will activate the snippet.

”Adds a header to a code file” can be the text between the description tags. And yes I love C#, so I will choose the language attribute of the code as C#.

Now we need to alter the Literal section. Literals allow you to define editable values that are inserted into your snippet. I want the you to enter your own name in the author section, so change the ID value to Author and enter your name in as the Default tag.

Code section contains what will be added when you add the snippet.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
<Header>
<Title>Code File Header</Title>
<Author>Prabath Fonseka</Author>
<Shortcut>codeHead</Shortcut>
<Description>Adds a header to a code file.</Description>
<SnippetTypes>
<SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
</SnippetTypes>
</Header>
<Snippet>
<Declarations>
<Literal>
<ID>Author</ID>
<Default>Prabath Fonseka</Default>
</Literal>
</Declarations>
<Code Language="CSharp">
<![CDATA[
/**************** Code File Header ******************
Author: $Author$
Date: 
Version:
Description:
****************************************************/
]]>
</Code>
</Snippet>
</CodeSnippet>

Above is how your final snippet should look like.

Next step is to load the snippet in to Visual Studio which we have to do through Code Snippet Manager under the Tools menu. But by default (in VS 2010 RC) Code Snippets Manger does not comes under Tools menu so our next task is to add it under tools menu.

Go to Tools > Customize > Commands > Tools > Add Command…

By default Menu bar: radio button is selected, select Tools from the dropdown.

Under categories select Tools and under commands select Code Snippets Manager, click OK.

Create a folder where you can keep all your personal/custom code snippets. Then copy the verHeader.snippet to that folder. Open Code Snippets Manager, select Visual C# as language and a folder to place your custom snippets, select Imports.

Ok, if you followed me, you have successfully created and added a code snippet to VS 2010. Wanna test? :P

Add a class file in to your project. Move the curser to the first line Press Ctrl + K + X

Happy Coding.

Bing for iPhone

2009-12-17T23:49:00.001+05:30

I did my last post when I got to know Microsoft is developing Bing and Messenger for iPhone. Today I was lucky to get my hands on Bing for iPhone. If there is something that the word awesome is not enough, I would happily use Masterpiece to describe it. :) Yes “Microsoft Team iPhone” you’ll have done a tremendous job by designing and developing Bing for iPhone. Glance through the pics below, you’ll see how feature rich and eye catching the app is.

First screen of the Bing for iPhone

Filter your search by Web, Images, Movies, Maps, Businesses, News, etc…

Pic below shows how the voice search works.

Setting screen.

Image search results.

Web search results.

Apple.. Microsoft.. you made my day. :)

Bing and Messenger iPhone Apps

2009-12-08T21:05:00.001+05:30

“If you can’t beat them, join them”
Microsoft is working on two new applications for iPhone. Microsoft Bing and Live Messenger Apps for the revolutionary phone.

Both applications are likely to be released alongside the upcoming Windows Live Wave 4 updates due in approximately March 2010. Last week Microsoft principal group program manager David Raissipour confirmed to Cnet news that "We are actively working on it" when questioned over the Bing iPhone plans.

How the Windows 7 start up animation evolved

2009-12-04T09:52:00.001+05:30

Recently I saw this article on how the Windows 7 start up animation evolved and not to forget, the person behind the Windows 7 start up animation, Rolf Ebeling.

“Having only been with the company for four months and suddenly finding myself working on the first thing millions of people would see when they started up Windows 7 … was a peculiar realization to wake up to each morning,” Ebeling says.

Link to the original article with video.

Knowledge Sharing with Peradeniya Engineering Undergraduates

2009-11-30T22:57:00.006+05:30

As for my understanding it’s the most beautiful University in Sri Lanka, the Peradeniya University. Thanks to Microsoft Technology Evangelist Wellington and Dinesh Priyankara (MVP – SQL) I got a chance to host two technical sessions for Engineering students at Peradeniya University.

First session was an Introduction to .NET Framework and Visual Studio IDE hosted by me. Windows Server 2008 and IIS was done by Susantha Silva. Third session which was an Introduction to MS SQL Server was done by Dinesh Priyankara (MVP). Back again the fourth session was a Deep Dive session which was on LINQ (Language Integrated Query) done by me. Wellington hosted a session on Silverlight. Also not to forget, Tharindu Nanayakara explained the importance of communities-Student Champ.

Well, it was a good experience as 99% of the students were from an open source background. But I’m sure they were so impressed seeing the new UI and features of Visual Studio 2010. One thing that worries me is, I didn't have enough time to go through all the wonderful features of VS 2010.

Presentations are available to download…

Some pics of the event after the break.

Many thanks to Chanarangana Rathnayake and all who supported to make the session a success.

Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development – SharePoint Object Model

2009-11-24T16:49:00.008+05:30

It was in end of year 2007 my good old friend installed Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) in the company I worked previously. There were two main reasons why we installed it. We were new to the product so yes; we wanted to learn more about SharePoint. Collaboration and document management was key requirements in the project we worked.

But in this article I’m not going to explain about neither what SharePoint is nor its usage. The targeted audience of this article is programmers who are already familiar with SharePoint but wants to learn more about SharePoint Object Model and programmers who are new to SharePoint development.

Namespaces

The well known factor about SharePoint is it’s an application on its own and the less know is it’s a highly customizable application framework. SharePoint is functionally segmented by Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). Technically Windows Server 2003 R2 includes WSS. To add additional enterprise portal functionality such as Excel Services, farm-enabled search, Single Sign-on and Business Data Catalog MOSS can be installed on top of WSS. There are two root namespaces for MOSS and WSS. The Microsoft.Office.Server namespace is the root namespace of all Office Server Objects as well as Microsoft.SharePoint is the root namespace for all WSS objects.

Functional Areas of Object Model
According to the functionality of SharePoint there are different namespaces given to manage and customize SharePoint using Object Model.

List Management
List is more like a Table in a Database. Of all the tasks a SharePoint programmer can do in SharePoint, working with Lists is the mostly common task.
Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint
Classes: SPList, SPListItem, SPListItemCollection

Document Libraries
This is a special type of list created to store documents. Managing and storing different types of documents, pictures and files will be handled within SharePoint Document Libraries.
Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint
Classes: SPDocumentLibrary, SPPictureLibrary

Sites
Site Collections, Sites, Web Collections and Webs which is obviously bit confusing tough is an area developers should have a clear understanding.
Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint
Classes: SPSite, SPSiteAdministration, SPSiteCollection, SPWeb

Features and Solutions
With Features and Solutions it’s dramatically easier to customize sites and site collections. Features provide the ability for sites to reuse functionality that exists in other sites without manually copying and pasting XML code from one template to another. Solutions package Features in a cabinet (.cab) file and define important metadata about the included Features.
Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint, Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration
Classes: SPFeatureDefinition, SPElementDefinition, SPFeatureProperty, SPFeatureScope, SPFeature, SPSolution, SPFeatureReceiver, SPSolutionCollection

Business Data Catalog
BDC is the most recommended way of Integrating Enterprise Data in to SharePoint. ERPs, Different Data sources, your own in house applications, BDC can cater the integration with SharePoint.
Namespace: Microsoft.Office.Server.ApplicationRegistry.Administration
Classes: EntityCollection, ApplicationRegistry

Meetings
SharePoint has used Meetings to provide collaboration within organizations. Meeting Workspaces provide websites dedicated to supporting and maintaining meetings, meeting information, attendee lists, minutes, meeting-related documents, and much more. (Meting workspace is a web template installed with default SharePoint installation)
Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint.Meetings
Classes: SPMeeting, MtgUtility

User Profiles
User Profile is used to create, update and manipulate user profiles and profile properties which is way beyond storing basic information of an individual user but which also provide features for community building social networking, etc…
Namespace: Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles
Classes: UserProfile, UserProfileManager

Windows SharePoint Services Server Architecture
In relation to the collections and objects of the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration namespace the SPFarm object is the top most object in the Object Model hierarchy. Servers and Services properties represent the collections of each. Each SPServer object represents a physical server machine.

SPService object represents a logical service or application installed in the server farm. The SPWebService object provides access to configuration settings for a specific logical service or application. The WebApplications property gets the collection of Web applications that run the service. The SPDatabaseServiceInstance object represents a single instance of a database service running on the server computer. The Databases property gets the collection of content databases used in the service. Each SPWebApplication object represents a load-balanced Web application based in Internet Information Services (IIS). The SPContentDatabase class represents a database that contains user data for a SharePoint Web application. The Sites property gets the collection of site collections for which the content database stores data, and the WebApplication property gets the parent Web application. The SPSiteCollection object represents the collection of site collections within the Web application. The Add method creates a site collection within the collection.

Windows SharePoint Server Site Architecture
The diagram below shows the site architecture in relation to the collections and objects of the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace.

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.OpenWebmethod of the SPSite class returns a specific Web site. Each site collection includes any number of SPWeb objects, and each object has members that can be used to manage a site. Each SPList object has members that are used to manage the list or access items in the list. Each SPField object has members that contain settings for the field and each SPListItem object represents a single row in the list.

Development Environment
Well, when SharePoint development is concerned you can setup the development environment in two different ways, remote and local. Each has its own pros and cons. In this article I’m not discussing how to setup those two development environments rather I’ll show how to cheat by setting up a remote development environment despite debugging and easy testing, to try out your first SharePoint application developed by you.
First tool you need is Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/2008. If you are not a licensed user of Visual Studio please download the Express edition for free from Microsoft site. Setting the development environment remotely is simply a development environment that is not on a SharePoint server.
After setting up Visual Studio, open a new Console Application project. Now let’s get to the cheating part of copying the required assemblies from the SharePoint server to your development machine. Browse to the location:
[drive]:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\isapi
Copy the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll assembly (only assembly required for the test application) and add reference to the assembly in your project.

Next the most important thing is to setup the doorway which is to establish the site context. Site context is the link between your code and the SharePoint site collection hierarchy which is represented by SPContext class.

Note: Establishing site context is done differently between Web Parts and console/WinForms/WPF applications.

The SPSite constructor used in the preceding code obtains a reference to the site collection contained at the given url (http://sharepointsvr:4488). You can access the web application to which a given site collection belongs using the WebApplication property, which is of type Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication. http://sharepointsvr:4488 is where my SharePoint server is. 4488 is the port number. Change yours accordingly. Given below is the result I see in the console window.
Root collection found at Url http://sharepointsvr:4488 is part of Web Application SharePoint - 4488
Hit F5 and check out the output in the console window. WAIT!! You are on a remote dev machine if you followed me till now. Let’s deploy your application.

Application Deployment
For a Windows or Console SharePoint application there’s no difference than a standard application deployment. Either you can create a Click Once deployment. You can simply copy the application and its dependencies (no need to copy the SharePoint DLLs as it’s already there in the server) in to the SharePoint server and checkout the output.
But if you are developing SharePoint applications commercially make sure to follow a proper development & deployment process covering the QA stage.

Summery
SharePoint Object Model is a very powerful application programming interface (API) which gives developers the ability to control virtually every aspect of SharePoint through managed code.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

2009-10-19T23:25:00.003+05:30

Of course, this is a happening week for all Microsoft .Net lovers. Today Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is available for MSDN subscribers and as Microsoft says it’ll be available for everyone on Wednesday. Visual Studio and MSDN with very unique and beautiful logos. Not to forget the awesome splash screen of Visual Studio.

For more check out Scott Hanselman’s blog.

Happy Programming.. :)

Static Analysis with NDepend - Dependency Graph

2009-10-14T12:09:00.015+05:30

Last week I was so lucky to get my hands on one of the most awesome software tools I’ve ever worked with. Even though I have worked with some static analysis tool, there were so many times I imagined if I could get some assembly or project analyzed and get it in to a visual diagram, where I could see the dependencies of each class, assembly and namespace. Thanks to Patrick Smacchia a C# MVP, finally my dream came true with the tool NDepend.

“Static analysis, also called static code analysis, is a method of computer program debugging that is done by examining the code without executing the program. The process provides an understanding of the code structure, and can help to ensure that the code adheres to industry standards. The principal advantage of static analysis is the fact that it can reveal errors that do not manifest themselves until a disaster occurs weeks, months or years after release.”

NDepend is a static analyzer. This is how the tool is introduced in the official site www.ndepend.com. NDepend is a tool that simplifies managing a complex .NET code base. Architects and developers can analyze code structure, specify design rules, plan massive refactoring, do effective code reviews and master evolution by comparing different versions of the code. The result is better communication, improved quality, easier maintenance and faster development.

Do I need say more… Let’s get in to action…

How easy it is to understand the underlying architecture of a particular assembly or a project specially which is compiled or deployed. Actually past few days I was bit busy working and writing about SharePoint Object Model. So I’ll take the assembly Microsoft.SharePoint.dll for the analysis process.

Opening the VisualNDepend.exe will open the Start Page of NDepend where you get easy access to recent projects (with new projects), Getting Started Guide and Visual Studio and Reflector Add-Ins as shown below.

Click File > Select .Net assemblies to Analyze will open a window where you can browse any assembly you need or it’s just a matter of very common drag and drop method from windows explorer.

As I mentioned earlier I’ll browse and select the assembly Microsoft.SharePoint.dll for the analysis process. Magic begins… Give few seconds/minutes and given below is what you will see. Just to my idea this product is super fast as for the information it analyzes. Specially the multi threading :)

Basically I'm trying to get the transitive closure of WorkflowRuntime. Transitive closure is a powerful mean to deconstruct software because it shows how the code is really layered.

Okay.. the result shown below.

I could have chosen the transitive closure made of methods, types or assemblies too. You can see a Query suggested by NDepend (more like a T-SQL Query) which is a Code Query Language (CQL) Query.
Let's see these namespaces mapped to a graph.

Below given is the result... which is the 1st reason that made me fall in love with this awesome product.

Let's say I wanna see the assemblies which are using the System.Workflow.Runtime on a graph. It has never been easier than this. Select the assembly name, right click and select "Who is using me on graph" as in the below screen.

This is only a single feature of NDepend which is the Dependency Graph. Next.. tune-in for the Dependency Matrix. If you want to see the features on one go, here it is.

Patterns & Practices - Developing SharePoint Applications

2009-09-09T11:05:00.001+05:30

Microsoft Patterns & Practices group released the updated version of the “Developing SharePoint Applications” basically the final release with tons of articles, code samples and videos helping people to develop LOB applications in/on SharePoint.

Visit HERE.

Code Camp

2009-09-05T10:27:00.004+05:30

Code Camp!! A Code Camp is bit of a new word for the Sri Lankan tech community. But as the Sri Lankan .Net Forum we are proud to announce the 1st Code Camp held in Sri Lanka. It was on 6th August 2009 at Excel World.

The event went very well, there were 7 tables hosted by MVPs and techies from the .Net community. Just to name them Joy Pradeep - SharePoint, Jinath Premarathne – ASP.Net, Prabath Fonseka – Patterns and Practices, Dinesh Asanka – MS SQL, Chanaka Gamage – Windows Workflow Foundation, Chandana Athauda - Azure and Uditha Bandara – Windows Presentation Foundation.

5th Anniversary of the .Net Forum Sri Lanka

2009-09-05T09:52:00.003+05:30

I know I’m late on the below post and the one to come next. But it’s better to be late than never.

24th July 2009 was a remarkable day for the Sri Lankan .net forum community. It was the fifth anniversary of the .Net forum. It started with a nice “a look back” video from Wellington. First session on “What’s new in Visual Studio 2010” was carried by Joy. “What’s new in .Net Framework 4.0”, the second session was conducted by me. Third session “MVC” was hosted by Fikri.

It was nice to see the auditorium on 3rd floor was filled with the members of the forum. This wasn’t an end of a journey but another promising step towards a long way ahead and a look back of the successful journey we have come.

Thanks Wela for the beautiful pic.

SharePoint Workspace 2010

2009-08-14T11:15:00.003+05:30

I wanted to start a blog series about the next version of SharePoint, SharePoint 2010. But with the superb new features of this awesome product, I was quite lost where to start from. So I thought of starting with the new features and the major changes.

SharePoint Workspace 2010

SharePoint Workspace 2010 is the offline, desktop client for SharePoint enabling people to collaborate and contribute to SharePoint sites even with they're not connected. Actually it’s the next version of Microsoft Groove.
As Microsoft claims, Groove to SharePoint is like Outlook to Exchange. So basically it’s an offline client. Users will be able to work offline with the SharePoint contents and when online SharePoint Workspace will reflect any changes made within the client immediately in the SharePoint site. If SharePoint Workspace detects the user is offline and thus disconnected from the SharePoint site, it will cache any changes and automatically synchronize the changes once the user is online and can connect to the SharePoint site again. Even though it’s the next version of Groove, it’s not the same product with a new name.

Is Google really worried about Bing?

2009-06-16T17:35:00.003+05:30

This is something I still cannot believe. I believe Microsoft is a great company which has some solid products. I know that because I work with many of those products. But will you ever believe that one of Microsoft’s recent product releases made Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page think twice. Microsoft released their new decision engine which is more than a typical search engine. Sergey Brin is concerned enough losing their market share to Bing. He has put together a team of top engineers [Yes, TOP ENGINEERS… cool…], to begin making vast improvements to the web service starting immediately. Brin is heading the team, and the project they will be working on is trying to determine how Bing's search algorithm is different from Google. Wow what will be the end result?

I know new search engines have come and gone in the past 10 years, but did Sergey or Larry ever concerned about those, I don’t think so. But Bing, Microsoft you really did something to keep Google open their eyes. That begins the competition.

Bing is powered with a 100 million budget just for advertising. Also it is said to be rare that the Google founders join on the daily operations of the company, so having one of them back leading a team there must be quite significant. The real search engine war has started!!

[Image courtesy of the NY Times]

VSTS 2010 First Look

2009-06-09T22:14:00.002+05:30

I’m amazed to see the UI of the next version of Visual Studio, VSTS 2010. It looks sooo cool as it’s developed on WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). According to the Program Manager responsible for the Start Page in the Visual Studio Adrian Collier, we can create custom start pages. Below I’ve uploaded screen shots of the default start page.

WPF has been criticised for being resource-hungry, lacking some standard control elements and inadequate designer support in Visual Studio. Come on… can a newborn run? WPF celebrated its 1st Birthday sometime back. Now it can talk, laugh and walk. I guess VSTS 2010 is the first enterprise application running on WPF “tasting my own dog food”. I’m really proud of you WPF.

If interested creating your own start page, check out this URL.

Design Patterns in .NET Framework

2009-06-07T09:19:00.006+05:30

First of all I would like to thank all who participated for Sri Lanka .NET Forum June 4th Session and to make it a success. Also my special thanks go to Wellinton and Jinath who gave me this opportunity.

Time to apologies, I’m extremely sorry for getting delayed [3 days] to upload the presentation. Presentation is uploaded here in PDF format [PDF reader required].

http://cid-ffdefd872b33a2df.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public

Please do not think twice in putting your comments about the session… all kinds of comments are welcome.

Silverlight 3 on 10th July

2009-05-30T19:45:00.003+05:30

Another cool product from Microsoft I like to work is Silverlight. Microsoft is planning to launch Silverlight 3 and its Expression Studio 3 designer tools on 10th July 2009.

Silverlight 3 introduces more than 50 new features, including 3D support, GPU acceleration, H.264 video support and out-of-the-browser capabilities to Silverlight. The out-of-browser support will enable developers to build applications that work like Adobe's AIR plugin. Dramatic video performance and quality improvements are also expected.

Bing a potential Google Killer

2009-05-29T09:52:00.003+05:30

I’ve seen few Google killers recently. Among them are live, cuil, wolframalpha [though they say it’s not]. Microsoft Bing seems to be the next Google killer actually a potential Google killer (still I didn’t get a chance to check it out). Microsoft position itself as “decision engine”. Users can easily filter the results with simple clicks. Microsoft decided to “kill” Live Search and start a new brand: Bing.

“I bing the web” sounds cuil [cool] than “I live the web” :D
Check out the full video demo here.

Source: winandmac

VSTS 2010, TFS 2010 & .Net Framework 4 BETA 1

2009-05-21T10:32:00.003+05:30

Time to play with the beta 1 of my favourite duo. Visual Studio Team Suite 2010 & Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 1 is released. It’s available to download here.

Downloading… 35% completed. :)

Few achievements in my life

2009-05-15T08:42:00.002+05:30

I’m still alive. :)

It wasn’t a break like the Musical band Eagles took… But honestly I was busy with so many things. Few great achievements in my life, I’m happy to say I completed my MSc. in Advanced Software Engineering (University of Westminster) and received the certificate few weeks back. Wait… I’m not finished yet.. :D

I completed four Microsoft certifications in the past few months. Now I’m a Microsoft Certified Professional Developer. [70-536, 70-529, 70-548, MB2-632]

Happily worked on couple of challenging .net projects at the new company. Visual Studio Team System, Microsoft CRM, LINQ, Entity Framework, CCF, SharePoint are few of the applications and technologies added in to the list to power me. ;)

Looking back.. few successful milestones. Long way to go…

Google Chrome Web Browser

2008-09-02T08:41:00.006+05:30

Yes!!! It’s true and official. Google is releasing their own web browser today (Tuesday 2nd September 2008). From the screen shots it looks very simple as Gmail. Google Chrome looks similar to FireFox. But will it kick FireFox?

Chrome Team has a reason for the launch of this new browser… “Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web”

More Screen shots...

What Goes Around Comes Around

2008-05-16T11:57:00.009+05:30

My day-to-day activities include reading technical news, looking for what’s new with Apple inc., Microsoft and Google. While browsing the web I found this nice article written by Jason Hiner. When I read it, the first thing came to my mind was “What Goes around Comes Around”. It’s about the Software giant Microsoft and the search giant Google. To be more specific, it’s about the top heads Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Sanity check: Has Eric Schmidt finally outmaneuvered Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer?

A need for speed: the path to a faster loading sequence

2008-05-15T09:35:00.006+05:30

While signing in to Gmail, I saw this really interesting article regarding how Gmail crew has improved Gmail loading sequence. It's really worthwhile reading if you are in to web development.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/need-for-speed-path-to-faster-loading.html

But I wonder whats this popular network site they are referring to... ;)

Head First C#

2008-03-29T11:03:00.003+05:30

Four months after the release of Head First C# (by Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene) I was lucky enough to get my hands on this great book. Yes I said “Great”. I’ve read Head First Design Patterns and Head First Object Oriented Analysis & Design books too. It’s specially the way they present the contents to the reader attracted me to this series of books.

You don’t have to be a pro or an expert to understand the contents of Head First C#. My gesture is they’ve targeted the readers from novice to professional. Below is a sample page form this book. (I hope OReilly wont sue me doing it :D )

Google Nap

2008-03-18T09:19:00.003+05:30

People who works for Google and who are interested knows how good Google’s office is. It’s more like home. Very recently I got to know that they have this super duper machine where you can have a good nap. It’ll provide you the best environment for a cool nap.

Windows Mobile 7

2008-03-14T10:49:00.005+05:30

Microsoft mobile development team is busy developing their next Windows Mobile OS which is known as Windows Mobile 7. It has been designed to… Okay… I’ll make it easy…

Windows version of Apple iPhone Killer. Need I say more?

Check out…

InsideMicrosoft

Bend Your Nokia

2008-02-26T09:17:00.007+05:30

Finally Nokia and University of Cambridge has developed a bendable mobile phone. I've seen bendable concepts sometime back, but never thought it would come true. Oh!!!... I forgot I'm in 21st century.

Nokia says the concept device demonstrates handset features that nanotechnology might be capable of delivering, including flexible materials, transparent electronics, and self-cleaning surfaces. Even though Morph is still in early development, Nokia believes that certain elements of the device could be used in high-end Nokia devices within the next seven years. And as the technology matures, nanotechnology could eventually be incorporated into Nokia's entire line of products to help lower manufacturing costs.
As they say... you have to wait for another 7 years. :D

Time to be aware of Microsoft?

2008-01-18T10:02:00.000+05:30

Are you an employee having a hard time with your employer? WARNING! You’ve been watched. Microsoft is on the process of developing a spy kind of software, which is capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence using wireless sensors connected to their computers. As they say, it’s a Big Brother style software.

The system is designed to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure.

As TIMES ONLINE say, Microsoft has submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.

The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.
HHHMMMM… Wanna be your own boss?

Source: TIMES ONLINE (Alexi Mostrous and David Brown)

There is something in the Air

2008-01-16T10:00:00.000+05:30

To be honest, I’m in love with apple (not the fruit), and apple products. Even though I don’t use a mac, I’m a proud owner of an iPhone, which is extremely rare in Sri Lanka, and an iPod. Apart from developing quality and solid products, I love the way Steve Jobs do his presentations. Especially the iPhone keynotes.

Apple Inc., acquired the Medal of Honor for producing the worlds thinnest laptop, the “Macbook Air” which was introduced in Macworld 2008. The other exciting feature of this product is, it comes with a multi-touch mouse pad. This awesome product is priced at US$ 1799.

LINQ - Language Integrated Query (Part 1)

2007-12-20T11:28:00.000+05:30

End of another rainy morning. Thought of sharing an end result of a recent R&D, LINQ.

LINQ the Language Integrated Query.
OK… So what’s this so hyped word carry with it. Actually it’s another way of querying data sources within .Net languages.

LINQ libraries came with .NET Framework 3.5, and Visual Studio 2008 IDE can be used to take the maximum out of it. Languages that facilitate LINQ provide type safety as well as compile time checking of queries. VS 2008 provides debugging of LINQ queries, intellisense and refactoring too.

Microsoft has provided us different APIs that provide a gateway to underlying data sources, such as
LINQ to SQL
LINQ to XML
LINQ to DataSets
LINQ to Objects
LINQ to Entities (Still in beta)

Today I’m planning to show a very simple LINQ to SQL query step by step. It’s more like how to write a simple SELECT statement inline C#. OK…Fasten your seat belts.

Step 1
Open Visual Studio 2008 and select a ASP.Net Web Application. Make sure you select .Net Framework 3.5

Step 2
Add a GridView to the to a web form (and add a style to the Grid using Auto Format)

Step 3
Add a Linq to SQL Class.

Step 4
Create a connection to a Database (optional: using Server Explorer). It'll be easy if you add the connection string to the Web.config file.

Step 5
Drag the tables you want, from Server Explorer to the design surface of the Linq to SQL class. Here in this scenario I'll add the Store and the SalesPerson tables. Wow... check out the association created automatically.

Have a look at the properties window. You see the connection which has been accessed from the Web.Config.

OK... Now we have come to the coding part. First create a DataContext of the LINQ to SQL class you have already created. In this case it's AdventureWorksDataContext. Then create a var type variable and assign it to the link query. Yes... the query is not very user friendly until you get used to it. Whats this "s"? It's the structure of the db.Stores. And you can use any letter/word to represent "s". Finally, set the result to the DataSource of the GridView and call the DataBind() method of the GridView.

Build and Run the application.
Cheers!!!