Passed Exam 70-630: TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring

Ok, Just an update. Yesterday I passed my exam Exam 70-630: TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring and Now I am a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), MOSS 2007 – Configuration. So what is next, may be Exam 70-542: TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Application Development

Two new .NET Killer Samples To Learn ASP.NET Ajax Extensions, Linq, Windows Communication , Windows Workflow Windows Presentation

May be I am bit late about these samples, but they are real killer .Net samples dev's cannot miss. These samples explain indetail about using ASP.NET Ajax Extensions, Linq, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, .NET Enterprise Application Server Technologies in your applications. Go get them from the following links

.NET StockTrader Sample Application

DinnerNow.net Sample

Passed Exam 70-536 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundation

Yesterday I passed my Exam 70-536 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundation, Finally now I am a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications.

Passsed 70-528 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development Exam

My fancy with Certification started in early 1998(I started my carrier in IT early 90's, was a student in Brilliants computer Centre now FirstComputer at chennai,India and later joined them as a trainer in Clipper, C, C++), when couple of my friends got their MCSD certification and suggested me to take it. I was hesitant to pursue any certification at that time but someday I wanted to give it a try. When my friend who was working in US, came to visit Chennai informed me that certified professional were preferred in US, that is what really fancied me ;-). Then I started preparing and planning for the exams every month but invariably that has became a distant dream.

After Ten years, this time my company pursued me to take PMP certification, so I attended the preparation course for PMP. For three months I slogged like any thing for preparing for the exam but this time I was moved to MOSS 2007(SharePoint) Projects. Due to this I was travelling a lot for the implementation of MOSS 2007 for various clients in India. So my PMP certification still remains as a dream.

Finally late 2006, I decided to take the exam but again years of experience I added to my profile was a spoil sport, really I don’t know whether the certification will help in long run but I determined to became certified professional. In June 1,2006, I took my MCP Exam Exam 70–229: Designing and Implementing Databases with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition and passed it. This really helped me to analyze my strengths and weakness in SQLServer(I strongly believe Only technical interviews, Exams like this will help IT professional to analyze their strength and weakness). Latter started preparing for other exams due to my busy schedule the initiative took back seat (felt like ending this statement with word dream but could not help it ;-)
)

This year again I am contemplating to be a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) before end of september, so I took my Exam 70–528: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development, on September 8th 2007 and passed the exam. Although my real time experience helped me a lot to take the exam but still my 10 days effort on preparation was the other reason. The exam is quite easy to pass, so if you are interested in this exam simply go ahead and take it.

To prepare for the exam you can start here http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-528.mspx

Some time later I will try to provide resources and links at this space.

OpenDocument vs Microsoft OpenXML

what was my view on the War of Formats,check it out here http://www.openxmlcommunity.org/quotes.aspx search for Ramakrishna ;-)

New Sharepoint Server 2007 SDK with Business Data Catalog Definition Editor Tool & SAP Sample

Microsoft released updated Sharepoint Server 2007 SDK, available from the following link
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6d94e307-67d9-41ac-b2d6-0074d6286fa9&displaylang=en

This SDK includes some very usefull tools and samples like

• Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor
• Excel Services User Defined Function Sample
• SAP Sample
• Custom Content Source

LINQ & Links

Today, I started a new weekly news letter for my team at office to share some of my thoughts on LINQ and I am planning series of blogs on LINQ coming weeks.

here are the links to know more about LINQ

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/06/CSharp30/default.aspx

LINQ 101 Samples

C# 3.0 LINQ in Action

Anders Hejlsberg on LINQ and Functional Programming

The LINQ Project

How to customize Quick Launch Menu

Check out this link for Customizing the Quick Launch menu: Adding fly-out menus to SharePoint navigation

ASP.NET AJAX eLearning Resource

Microsoft released training clinic for ASP.NET AJAX, Learn how to develop highly responsive web applications and upgrade your existing asp.net application with ASP.NET AJAX, check it out here

MOSS AJAX enabled Webparts

During one of our MOSS 2007 POC for our client , we implemented AJAX enabled weparts based on Daniel Larson's ASP.NET AJAX Extensions Toolkit for SharePoint and his blog is a good starting point for Implementing Ajax Based Webparts for Sharepoint(MOSS 2007).

A Single Sign-on error has occurred. Please contact an administrator. Details: Could not find domain controller for this domain(MOSS 2007)

During SSO configuration we have faced this problem and Here is how we solved it

1.The server should be part of a domain or a domain controller

2. The Login account must be the sharepoint server administer

3. The account should have DB creator and DBO permissions on the sql server

MOSS 2007 Customer Proof of Concepts Tricks, Tips and Links

(The links are not complete, will be updating soon)

We have been doing Lots of MOSS 2007 POC's for our clients and Most of the our client requirements fall in line with MOSS Search - Customer Proof of Concept Scoping and Typical Tasks. Check out the links for MOSS 2007 HOW TO's and Free webparts for your MOSS 2007 POC's and use this link as the starting point to understand features of MOSS 2007

Installing MOSS in a Single Server

Installing MOSS in a Server Farm and Setting up SSP, Web application and Site Collections

Configure Mysite, Blogs, Wiki, discussion board

Importing User Profiles into MOSS for index/searching

User Profile Replicator for MOSS 2007

Have BDC and People Search configured and working
BDC ASP.NET Webpart step by step
after full user profile import from Active directory(AD) some time search will not work,check whether you have added sps://yoursite:port (sitename with port) to crawl

Records Management using MOSS 2007 & Records Management Virtual Lab & MS Records management Team Blog Read from April 2006

Configure Enterprise search- TechNet Webcast: Installing and Configuring Search in SharePoint Server 2007

Building Site Collections and sites and assigning users to these

Setting up the Search site to return results

Configuring Search web parts and other search related areas

Setting up and creating BDC definitions for external content to be searched such as SAP or Siebel - For SAP R/3 you need VS.NET 2003(will not work in VS.Net 2005) and sap.net connector and SAP netweaver use SAP webservices

How to add custom tab page for Search

Build MOSS master pages, content types and page layouts

Create styles, import images and build the look and feel of MOSS

Setup Keywords for the content

Setup up Best Bets

Write other web parts as needed

Configure Single Sign on

Excel Services

Configure Form Services

Browser Enabled Infopath Forms

MOSS 2007 Form based Authentication & Forms Authentication post by Nick Swan

Cool Free Web Parts / Utilities

1. Tabbed Web Part
2. Active Directory Change Password Webpart or from here (use google to translate from german to English)
3. Smart Part now with "AJAX Connections"
4. Sharepoint Migration Utility
5. SharePoint Import Export tools and other utilities
6. Bluedog limited RSS Syndication Generator
7. 40 Fabulous Templates from microsoft
8. Whats New webpart
9. MOSS BDC Meta Manger
10. Image upload webpart
11. Sharepoint.Ajax Tool Kit

Knowledge Network (KN) for MOSS 2007 now open

The knowledge Network(KN) for MOSS 2007 is now open, now you can download KN with out any invitation https://connect.microsoft.com/knbeta

Knowledge Network release candidate is available for download

Knowledge Network release candidate is available for download,
but download is available only for KN connect members. send mail to knfeedbk@microsoft.com
requesting access to connect.microsoft.com

http://blogs.msdn.com/kn/archive/2007/02/28/knowledge-network-first-release-candidate-rc0-is-now-available-for-download.aspx

MOSS 2007 : Customizing Menu Items in Document Library and Customizing sharepoint context menus

These blogs explains how to customize context and Document Library Menus
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/helloitsliam/archive/2007/01/28/18676.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/bowerm/articles/175691.aspx

How Sharepoint custom SiteColumn and Database Fields are mapped

In sharepoint you can create a site column which can be used across sites and these articles shows you how they are mapped internally in the sharepoint database

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543680.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/andrew_may/archive/2006/06/14/SharePointTermsColumnsFieldsProperties.aspx

Return of the Smartpart

Great webpart to convert your usercontrol into SharePoint 2007 web part, To learn more on deploying and using SmartPart http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2006/12/02/deploying-the-return-of-the-smartpart.aspx

How to Host MySite and Top Level Sites on Same Port in Sharepoint 2007(MOSS 2007)

I have been trying to host Mysite and our Intranet Top Level Site on the same Port of MOSS 2007, after googling found an excellent articale on how to do the same. check Chris Johnson blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2006/09/15/754902.aspx

PerformancePoint Server Data Sheets available for download

PerformancePoint Server Data sheets are available for download

To know more refer Blogs :

https://blogs.msdn.com/btamblyn/archive/2007/01/03/performancepoint-server-data-sheets.aspx

http://performancepointinsider.com/blogs/bsm/archive/2006/12/18/microsoft-office-performancepoint-server-2007-data-sheets.aspx

PerformancePointServer 2007 Overview - [download]
PerformancePointServer 2007 Analytics - [download]
PerformancePointServer 2007 Monitoring - [download]
PerformancePointServer 2007 Planning - [download]
PerformancePointServer 2007 Reporting - [download]

How to Avoid Login Prompt - MOSS 2007

Most of the time users will be prompted to enter user name and password while logging into MOSS 2007 server, to avoid just un-install Enhanced IE security from to avoid the Login prompt

Free VHDs from Microsoft

Microsoft is giving free Fully Configured VHD images for developing and testing your applications, check this url http://www.microsoft.com/technet/try/vhd/default.mspx

How to Configure Sharepoint Server Search Service

There is an excellent document available at Technet on configuring Sharepoint Server Search Service
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/601874ea-86c9-4611-bdaf-abe17bbb68161033.mspx?mfr=true

Installing Office SharePoint Server 2007(MOSS 2007)

Check out this link for step by step instruction of installing MOSS2007 on a standalone computer.
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/bd99c3a9-0333-4c1c-9793-a145769e48e61033.mspx?mfr=true

C# Generics

A must read three part interesting blog on C# Generics by Charlie Calvert's Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 and a great video on Generics from Anders Hejlsberg(he and his team developed C#)

Comparison of Visual Studio 2005 and Dreamweaver 8

I am an avid fan of DreamWeaver and I have being using it from the very first version. It is a great tool with Intuitive IDE and rich feature sets. Follow the link to compare both products features http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/compare/vs05_dw/

Xtreme Programming - C# Test Driven Devlopement using Visual Studio Team Suite

Most Developers often thinks that their job is develop code and deliver it to the testing team for testing. The problem with this approach is more bugs and cost of quality is very high.

XP strongly advocates for Test Driven Devlopment, Practicing TTD (Test Driven Development) helps team to deliver high quality and mostly bug free product to the customer. In short it helps us to reduce rework and produce well documented test cases. Even team members can test the code without breaking it. The developers can refactor the code without affecting the core functionality later .

So how to Test
Basic steps are

• Write a test to fail
• Write a test to pass
• Start over again.

Let us look at it how to TDD using Visual Studio Team Suite

More on this future

Other Testing Tools of Interest:

NUnit is open source unit testing framework devloped in C# based on JUnit/xUnits testing frameworks for .Net Languages. Nunit is Attribute based testing framework. which can be downloaded from http://www.nunit.org

AJAX, Much Hyped Technology in Recent Times

We were in a discussion with our client, who wanted us to implement AJAX in their project. We had a brainstorming session with our team members to find out what features can be implemented. Sadly enough we found most of the members are carried away by the term AJAX and talking too much about AJAX as a whole new technoloy. They are all ignorant about the fact that AJAX is a new NAME given to the decade old technology by Jesse James Garrett of Adaptivepath.

AJAX is nothing but acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It basically groups the following technologies :
JavaScript
XML
CSS
XHTML (HTML)
XMLHttpRequest

The main part of this technology is XMLHttpRequest used for manipulating or to consume xml data from the webserver using HTTP protocal.This was developed by Microsoft and supported in IE and also adopted by Safari and mozilla webbrowsers. The XMLHttpRequest(W3C site) object is being standardized by W3C.

AJAX was popularized by Google.com in a big way. Check out thier applications like Google Maps, Google Suggestion etc.,

XQuery in .net 2.0

Microsoft decided not to ship Client Side XQuery in .Net 2.0 to know about the current status . check this URL http://msdn.microsoft.com/XML/XQueryStatus/default.aspx

ASP.NET ATLAS (AJAX)

Atlas is a new technology from Microsoft which integrates Client Scripts with ASP.NET 2.0 Server Based Development Framework. You can take advantange of AJAX techniques on the web and create awesome rich client side behaviours. AJAX details can be found on the following link

http://atlas.asp.net/

Webservices without IIS / Run ASMX without IIS

During one of our project development, our client wanted to run webservices with out IIS. There is an excellent article published by Aaron in MSDN which details how to run webservices with out IIS.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/12/ServiceStation/

Microsoft People Ready Event Photos

I am sharing some of the photos taken on the People Ready Event.

Deploying VSTO applications

while creating a VSTO deployment solution, there are lots of issues you might over come and there is a excellent two part msdn aritical about creating deployment. Its an indepth coverage of deployment technics and solutions

Check the following link to find out more
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2005_ta/html/OfficeVSTOWindowsInstallerOverview.asp

Press coverage about the Microsoft People Ready Event

If you want to know about the event follow the links

http://www.cxotoday.com/cxo/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=72607&cat_id=911

http://www.efytimes.com/fullnews.asp?edid=11365

http://www.channeltimes.com/channeltimes/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=72605&cat_id=819

http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/18ms.htm

Microsoft People Ready Program

I was at HYAT Residency , New Delhi,last week (17th april-18th april) to give a demo of our product "Office for Retail" developed for Microsoft on Office 2003 platform. It was a great experience to talk to other techie's and giving presentation to people. Needlessly to say that this was an successfull event for me.

(to know more about People Ready Program follow the link
http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/default.mspx
)

Mr.Jeff Raikas, President , microsoft Business Division unvieled Microsofts future plan for india and office 2007 (code named 012)

more about O12 (office 2007) in my future blogs.

During this Event 18 ISV's Showcased their products. we developed retail application for the unorganized retail sector. The highlight of the product is easy interface, using the features of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, XML and Webservices.

I shall share some of the problems we faced while developing the application in future blogs.