January 2005 - Posts

Thank god! I _finally_ finished the MOBSA extension project I’ve been working on for the past month or so.
It’s been a nightmare due to the horrible API, but yet, at some sick and twisted level, I loved it! :)

I’ve got a lot of interesting code to blog about — hoping to post some later tonight or tomorrow… If anyone has any specific request for SharePoint Web Part example code they want to see, let me know by commenting on this entry.

Initially it seemed fun and interesting working on extending MOBSA, but as I got into it, it quickly turned into a nightmare -- the class design is seriously flawed, and makes it virtually impossible to extend the functionality of the bundled Web Parts. We are talking about a complete reimplementation of all the Web Parts, just to implement a provider role. All the Web Parts also use a Table control to display the hierarchical data; instead of using an interface in the property definitions, they used the class. This also makes the job of adding a simple extra column to each of the Web Parts' tables a living hell.

If anyone on the team responsible for this product or if anyone knows anyone on the team, please contact me as I have a LOT of suggestions for improvements.
Talk about lack of blog posting! I haven't posted on this darn thing since May of last year... I should be taken out back, put up against a wall and... well you know the rest.
I'm hoping to get back into the world of blogs. Hopefully, if I start slacking off, someone will remind me of it :-)

Well anyways, these days I'm working mostly with Sharepoint Portal Server, more specifically Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Accelerator (MOBSA). Not sure how much detail I can post here, as I'm thinking my client probably wouldn't want me to give their competitors any good ideas, but it's basically extending the existing framework to add some much desired features (show-stopper features that no one can understand why MS didn't add in the first place).
I'll post some more stuff later on -- the plan is to post anything interesting I figure out while working with SPS and MOBSA, and possibly some solutions to problems I encountered and so on.
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