Thursday 10 June 2010

Explorer and test Webservices

Case

I needed to explorer and test a corporate webservice. I needed to know which functionalities the webservice delivers, what kind of parameters the webservice expected and with what kind of responses the webservice replies.

Problem

The webservice wasn't documented and before a wanted to try to make a custom application I looked for a more dynamic solution. I didn't have the time to write a good testing program...

Solution

I learned that the awnser was pretty easy. Just use this handy tool: http://www.codeplex.com/WebserviceStudio

It allows you to explorer webservices easily!

Tuesday 11 May 2010

Converting Reporting Services (SSRS) rdl from 2005 into 2000

Case
I receive a error when uploading my report.

Error number: 0x80048298

Information:
[CrmException: Exception of
type Microsoft.Crm.CrmException was thrown.]
Microsoft.Crm.Application.Platform.Report. InternalCreate(String xml) +721
Microsoft.Crm.Application.Platform.Entity.Create() +109
Microsoft.Crm.Application.Forms.AppForm. RaiseDataEvent(FormEventId eventId)
+408 Microsoft.Crm.Application.Forms.EndUserForm. Initialize(Entity entity) +57
Microsoft.Crm.Application.Forms.EndUserForm. Execute(Entity entity) +13
Microsoft.Crm.Web.Tools.ReportProperty. ReportPropertyPage.ConfigureForm() +202
Microsoft.Crm.Application.Controls.AppPage. OnPreRender(EventArgs e) +30
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +62
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +1499
Problem
I made a mistake and created a report in VS2005 instead of VS2003. How could I change this?

Gary Cowan gave a real good tip on : http://sqlservertipsandtricks.blogspot.com/2008/06/converting-reporting-services-ssrs-rdl.html

but it wasn’t really complete for my case. In the end it turned out I had to change the document as following.

Solution
If you want to convert a SSRS rdl from 2005 to 2000, you can try the following

1) Open the .RDL file in a text editor and change the XML.
2) Change the first node to look like this:

Report
xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2003/10/reportdefinition”
xmlns:rd=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQLServer/reporting/reportdesigner”

3) Do a search for “Interactive” You should find 2 nodes InteractiveWidth and InteractiveHeight. You need to delete these nodes.

4) The XML in the RDL file is different between 2005 and 2000 when you want to pass parameters to a SQL procedure.

In 2000 they pass parameters this way in the RDL file. I used

&lt Query>
&lt CommandType> StoredProcedure< /CommandType>
&lt CommandText> =”procGetInvMovement”< /CommandText>
&lt QueryParameters>
&lt QueryParameter Name=”@BegDate”>
&lt Value> =Parameters!pBegDate.Value< /Value>
&lt /QueryParameter>
&lt QueryParameter Name=”@EndDate”>
&lt Value> =Parameters!pEndDate.Value< /Value>
&lt /QueryParameter>
&lt /QueryParameters>
&lt DataSourceName> JLG SQL< /DataSourceName>
&lt /Query>

and in 2005 they do it this way:

&lt Query>
&lt rd:UseGenericDesigner> true< /rd:UseGenericDesigner>
&lt CommandText> =”Execute procGetInvMovement ‘” & Parameters!pBegDate.Value & “‘, ‘” & Parameters!pEndDate.Value & “‘”< /CommandText>
&lt QueryParameters>
&lt QueryParameter Name=”pBegDate”>
&lt Value> =Parameters!pBegDate.Value< /Value>
&lt /QueryParameter>
&lt QueryParameter Name=”pEndDate”>
&lt Value> =Parameters!pEndDate.Value< /Value>
&lt /QueryParameter>
&lt /QueryParameters>
&lt DataSourceName> JLG SQL< /DataSourceName>
&lt /Query>

Notice how they don’t include the parameters in the commandtext tag in 2000

5) Delete the CommandType-tag if you want to use a query

6) In to the 2000 version of the .RDL file. You will need to add this line:
StoredProcedure after the first tag.

7) In the ReportParameters don’t use the tag Hidden

THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED SO I WOULD BACKUP YOUR REPORTS BEFORE ATTEMPTING THIS AND USE THIS ADVICE AT YOUR OWN RISK.


Tuesday 13 April 2010

Support SharePoint 2007 without SP2 ends on July 13th, 2010

Is your SharePoint 2007 farm already on Service Pack 2? If not, read this!

*** update April 12th, 2010 ***
Microsoft announced that the official retirement date for SP1 is 13th of July!
***

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2010/03/23/updated-retirement-date-for-wss-3-0-and-moss-2007-sp1.aspx

I've quoted the blog post of Stefan Goßner about the support of MOSS 2007
installation without SP2.

Please consider this information, if you're
not already planning to upgrade your systems!

"Based on the above listed information support for SharePoint
servers without SP2 will end on April 28th, 2010"
More
information:
http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2010/01/07/is-your-sharepoint-2007-farm-already-on-service-pack-2-if-not-read-this.aspx

Monday 12 April 2010

Content Deployment - 'Bible' - The complete Guide

This time I want to introduce the blog of Stefan Goßner. This man works as a 'Escalation Engineer' for SharePoint. This month Stefan Goßner wrote a beautifull ode about the Content Deployment funtionality of SharePoint 2007:

A while ago I created a deep dive article series covering the WSS content deployment and migration API which helped many people to develop their own applications to do export and import in a customized manner.

Today I will start a new article series which will discuss all aspects of Content Deployment – with other words the MOSS feature sitting on top of the WSS API.

Most customers see this feature as a monolithic implementation which does not allow any customization – but that is not the case as you will see in future chapters of this article series.


Read the 'Bible':

Source: Stefan Goßner

Thursday 1 April 2010

QNH @ DevDays 2010

I have been to DevDays 2010 this year and it was great!In this post I will tell you which presentations a watched, with some comment on it. I hope it helps you to get interested with some of these great new technologies!

On the 30th and 31th of March 2010 I have visited the following presentations:

Day 1

  • What's new in office 2010 for developers by John R Durant.

    He made a video of us during lunch: (view the post) We had a nice chat about culturial differences.




  • More follows soon!

Geek Night

  • Keynote
  • More follows soon!

Day 2

  • More follows soon!

Thursday 11 March 2010

Launch date for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010

Launch date is May 12th, 2010
RTM date will be in April

I hope I can sleep tonight :D

Thursday 14 January 2010

The resource object with key 'NamexxxField' was not found

Normaly a solution deployment would copy important dll's, resource files etc. to the Global_Resources map in your (inetpub) web applications bin directory. Somehow one of my build SharePoint solutions didn't copied those file during deployment.

I recieved the following message

Exception Type: System.Web.HttpException Exception Message: The resource object with key 'NamexxxField' was not found.
I needed to execute the following command to fix the problem:

"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server
extensions\12\BIN\STSADM.exe" -o copyappbincontent
After that SharePoint had copied the files and my solution worked correctly, but my wsp needed futher investigation.

Source: http://software.sharepointsolutions.com/Community/t/75.aspx

Friday 8 January 2010

Remove lost/broken Webparts

Previously, I retracted a solution from my web application. The consequence of this action was that I was not able to load the pages anymore. I recieved:

Error

An error occurred during the processing of . Could not load file or assembly 'Solution.WebParts, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=a7985c93d0151889' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

In this case, the only thing you have to do is to remove the webpart. Removing the webpart in the webpart gallery doesn't solve this.

Solution:
Append ?Contents=1 to the webpart page's URL to display the Webpart Maintenance Page. On that page you can delete the malefactor.

Example: http://moss/default.aspx?contents=1