Sharepoint 2007 Content Type Templates Suck

One big issue I found out today RE: MOSS 2007 is that there is only ONE template per content type. I think this is a serious limitation - and prevents us from moving word templates into Sharepoint. In particular, we really would like the content type of "Fax" to be able to have 3 different templates when you create a new document in Sharepoint. e.g. end user fax, business-to-business fax and legal fax templates. There would of course be a default template per content type so you don't have to choose every time if you don't want to.

ASP.NET 2.0 VS Sharepoint 2007

One of my clients, Pfizer - wanted a list of reasons vs reasons against using Sharepoint 2007 compared to using classic ASP.NET 2.0.

Here is a list that I came up with:

Integration Level 0 (No Integration)
Advantages

1) Simplest solution as there is no need to integrate with SharePoint 2007 or deployNOTE: This is based on requirements outlined by Pfizer (Document versioning is not required)
2) More reliable as there is no reliance on SharePoint 2007 services
3) Simpler to customise look and feel as no customisation of SharePoint is required.
4) Pages render faster in native ASP.NET rather than being hosted in SharePoint 2007.
5) Server requirements are reduced as SharePoint services are not running/not required.
6) Better control of caching than when hosted in SharePoint 2007
7) Simpler development and deployment model and debugging (no .webpart & GAC deployment required, don’t need SharePoint on development machines)

Disadvantages
1) (We are not planning on using ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts) - No user customisation possible
2) Limited integration with existing SharePoint 2007 Portals
3) Outlook Task creation is more difficult

Integration Level 1 (Using ASP.NET 2.0 hosted inside SharePoint 2007 without any changes to make SharePoint 2007 aware)
It is possible to simply add aspx pages developed outside SharePoint to a Sharepoint 2007 site – and pointing to the Sharepoint 2007 master page.
http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2006/09/05/application-development-on-moss-2007-amp-wss-v3.aspx

Advantages
1) Hosted inside SharePoint, but not integrated – so deployment model is the same as for other SharePoint 2007 sites currently in use.
2) Simpler development Model compared to higher levels of integration
3) SharePoint is aware of the page – so the link is natively visible to portals (ie the link doesn’t need to be added to SharePoint)
Disadvantages
1) Dependency upon SharePoint 2007
Integration Level 2 (Using ASP.NET 2.0 and Web Parts hosted inside SharePoint 2007)
Disadvantages
1) Integration of Web Parts is more complex than a standard ASP.NET 2.0 page.
2) Pages render slower in SharePoint 2007.
3) There is a reliance on more components – so reliability of system is lower.
4) Reduced control over Caching.
5) Creating the desired look and feel is more complicated if we are using Master pages in SharePoint 2007.
6) More powerful servers are required for SharePoint 2007.

Advantages
1) Can leverage current look and feel of SharePoint 2007 sites if they already exist
2) Direct Access to SharePoint 2007 versioning control if we did need it (we don’t)
3) Outlook task integration is simpler to perform.
Integration Level 3 (Deep Integration with SharePoint 2007 using Lists)
Advantages
1) All advantages of Level 2 integration PLUS
2) Lists are easily customised by users
3) Notifications when data Changes
Disadvantages

1. All limitations of Level 2 integration PLUS
2. Problems with the performance and scalability limits of lists (see http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/07/25/scaling-large-lists.aspx)

A list of Heidi's First Words... how cute!

To pre-emptively settle any disputes with my gorgeous wife in advance, I have recorded a list of all of Heidi's first words. Her fist swear-word is below too!.... Here we go:

1. Baba (Mandarin for "Daddy") - for official record - this was her first word (Yes!!! Daddy IS clearly the favourite.)
2. Gaga (Anything that has fur including fur coats, teddy bears or any miscellaneous small animals)
3. Bapthf (as in I want to have a Bath)
4. Mama (especially when bawling her eyes out)
5. Hi (but she only says it when she is holding a phone!)
6. Feigee (Mandarin for "Plane") - but Heidi uses it for any kind of airborne vehicle.
7. Deeal! - From watching too much of the gameshow "Deal or No Deal" on Channel 7.
8. Rubbish (she stopped saying this one for some reason)
9. Baye ("Bye") - said whilst waving vigorously
10. Cya Daddy
11. Bugger - for amusement's sake we got her to say this one. It was a long haul but we got there in the end. Heidi doesn't know what this means - it is just a combination of Baba and Gaga - ie "BaGa"
12. Grandba (aka Grandpa)
13. Oh-oh - whenever Heidi drops anything or simply throws things on the ground in anger, this gem comes out of her mouth.
14. Flowers (new as of today)
15. Weena (new as of today)
16. Tankchoo (Thankyou)
17. SeeeDeee (CD)
18. Chooos (Shoes)
19. Keys
20. Eiidee (Heidi)
21. Lights
22. Bayybee (pointing at other kids - she doesn't see herself as a baby anymore!)
23. Whygoong (Mandarin for grandpa)
24. JiuJiu (Mandarin for Uncle)
25. Hat
26. Juice
27. Apfl (Apple)
28. ABC
29. Car

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition - Report Designer

Just had a call from McKesson (a pharmaceutical company). They had a requirement for the creation of fairly complicated multi-section end user reports by non-technical people. My final recommendation was to use the development tools that come with SQL Server Express Edition to design the reports.

One thing to note: To have full design functionality for reports, the SQL Express Toolkit also needs to be installed on the developer machines. You can get this toolkit from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3c856b93-369f-4c6f-9357-c35384179543&displaylang=en

For more information, see:
http://www.vsj.co.uk/articles/display.asp?id=608

Vista does not support .hlp files

Turns out that Vista does not support .hlp files. Unfortunately, the Australian Tax Office eTax software uses hlp files not chm files (which MS supports)

However, it looks like MS decided to support them AFTER the release of Vista. You can download winhelp.exe for Vista from the following link
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=6ebcfad9-d3f5-4365-8070-334cd175d4bb

The remote name could not be resolved (Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.UI.RSClient)

As per Pete Wards blog (http://wardyit.com/blog/blog/archive/2006/08/15/139.aspx), this error may be caused as a result of modifying the machine name.
In order to resolve the error you need to ensure that the element http://localhost/reportserver in the rsreportserver.config is configured to the correct computer name.
By default the rsreportserver.config file is in the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer\.

David Klein www.ssw.com.au

Why MOSS 2007 is pitiful for business level applications

According to this article (on MS No Less), at 100,000 records, it will take 8 seconds to delete a record. It is performance like this that kills off prospects of using Sharepoint 2007 and the built in lists for serious applications. The Sharepoint 2007 list/library limit performance-wise is for 2000 per root list folder (you should use folders for a more scalable approach.

See the following for more details:
http://office.microsoft.com/download/afile.aspx?AssetID=AM102377231033

This link also shows the percentage decline in performance. In particular, see the section on Flat structure versus folder structures.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/2aa12954-2ea7-475c-9dce-663f543820811033.mspx?mfr=true

The relvant part of the article can be found here:

Throughput differences between flat document library vs. document library with folders

Throughput for certain operations decreases as the number of items in a folder increases.

The following figure shows the difference in throughput between viewing all items in a document library with and without the effective use of folders, which is critical for scaling. As shown in the graph below, throughput performance degrades as the number of documents increases when flat library storage is used. The quickest drop in throughput occurs when the total number of documents is less than 2,000, from 151 RPS (at 200 documents) to 63 RPS (at 2,000 documents). At 4,000 documents, throughput decreases to about 13 RPS, or an overall throughput decrease of over 90% from an empty library.

The following figure shows the relative performance between folder views when folders are used to store and organize documents, and an indexed view of a flat library structure. Each folder contains 500 documents created by different users. In this scenario, there is no significant throughput degradation up to 1 million documents for either scenario, provided that the number of items in the view does not exceed the performance threshold for your system. However, performance is better when folders are used.

As the number of items in a folder increases, folder view performance will gradually degrade. Note that the above results are estimates based on our testing, and results may vary in your environment.

David Klein http://www.ssw.com.au/

MOSS 2007 Sharepoint Workflow Client Development

Amazingly, the oft recommended development setup for MOSS Workflows is to have Visual Studio 2005 installed on the development server. You actually NEED it on the MOSS server to have debugging work properly!

To develop on a box separate from your Sharepoint Box (using the Windows Workflow Extensions and Visual Studio 2005), you also need to copy the many dlls from the GAC to your development machine GAC.
http://www.paylasimnoktasi.com/en/programmingMOSSonclientmachines.aspx

Alternatively, you could just have a development image with Windows 2003 on it with your full install of VS 2005 and MOSS 2007

David Klein http://www.ssw.com.au/

Heidi At the Noosa Strawberry Patch

We had a wonderful time at a strawberry patch south of Noosa and on Noosa beach. See this link for the piccies of Heidi consuming a copious number of strawberries...

http://www.ddkonline.com/Gallery/2007_07_July_StrawberryPatch_Noosa/gallery.html