Archives
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Saying Goodbye to U2U, and Hello to Microsoft
Last week was a very special week for me: I delivered my last course as a U2U trainer. I’ve been a full-time U2U employee for almost 7 years. During that time I had the opportunity to travel the world, meet lots of interesting people and make many new friends, while talking about Microsoft technologies. In the last couple of years my focus was mainly on SharePoint, but in my “early” years I was quite active with BizTalk, ASP.NET … as well. My career at U2U had many, many heights: having a drink while watching the sunset over the Kilimanjaro, strolling over Sunset Boulevard with my colleagues, speaking on large conferences in Belgium, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Milan, seeing the Northern Lights in Iceland …, and many, many more. But probably what I’ll remember most will be my dear coworkers: I count each one of them as a personal friend and every single one of them is an expert is his or her domain. I was incredibly lucky to have the privilege to be one of the U2U gang. Of course my time at U2U also had some lows, especially the time after we had to say goodbye to our colleague and co-founder Patrick Tisseghem who suddenly passed away. But, while never forgetting Patrick, we continued with our work and I think I may say we did quite well (especially Wim, our Director who managed to lead us through some rough times)! So I’d like to conclude with a big thanks to all the people who attended one of my courses (I never counted them, but you are probably more than 1000!) and who I worked with in the past years. And of course a big thanks as well to the U2U gang: I wish you all the best and keep up the good work.
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Getting Started with jQuery Templates and SharePoint 2010
Yesterday evening Scott Guthrie announced that Microsoft’s contributions to the jQuery Javascript library were accepted as Official jQuery plugins. One of those contributions is the jQuery Template plugin that allows you to do (up to a certain level) something like data binding similar to the approach we know from Silverlight. The idea is to create a template (think HTML snippet with elements bound to data properties) and data bind that template with an array of objects. You can find the API documentation over here, or you can check out Boris Moore’s excellent Getting Started guide.
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Deploying and Using jQuery with a SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed Solution
If you’re an avid reader of this blog, you probably now that I’m quite a big fan of the jQuery Javascript library, especially in combination with SharePoint sites. For a while I’ve been trying to find a mechanism to deploy jQuery and add a reference to it on all SharePoint pages of a site, by just using a Sandboxed Solution. The first part, deploying the jQuery file, is really easy; this can be done in a Module in a SharePoint project. The second part was more of a challenge; making sure the jQuery file got referenced in all pages of a SharePoint site. My initial thought was to do this by using the AdditionalPageHead Delegate control, but it’s not possible in a Sandboxed Solution (you need to deploy the .ASCX to the SharePoint root). My second thought was to use the new ScriptSrc attribute you can use in a CustomAction (I wrote about this attribute some time ago). But initially I was under the impression that the ScriptSrc attribute could only target Javascript files loaded from the SharePoint Root (the \LAYOUTS) folder, resulting in a no-go for a Sandboxed Solution as well. Daniel McPherson stumbled upon this issue as well, but neatly solved it using Javascript to add the reference dynamically.
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"Object reference not set to an instance of an object" when using SharePoint's ClientContext.Current in Silverlight
SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight is a fantastic combination, especially when you use the Client Object Model for Silverlight to access SharePoint data. But maybe you’ve encountered the following situation: your Silverlight application works great when it’s hosted in the out-of-the-box Silverlight Web Part, but when you build your own custom Web Part to show the Silverlight Application it just doesn’t work anymore: the browser tells you there is an Error on page. The details of the error are: Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
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Upgrading Features in SharePoint 2010
If you have developed Features for SharePoint 2007, you’re probably aware of a very serious limitation of Feature Development: upgradability. Deploying version 1 of your customization is no problem, but If you want to deploy a bug fix or additional functionality in version 2, you’re basically on your own. The good news is that in SharePoint 2010, this problem is solved: as a developer you can now build features that are upgradable. The basic concept goes as follows, you built your feature as usual, and optionally you’ve got the opportunity to specify what should happen when the feature gets upgraded from a previous version.
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Easily Adding SafeControls in SharePoint 2010 with Visual Studio 2010
Many SharePoint developers know that deploying your SharePoint customization to a SharePoint server often requires you to tinker the web.config of the sites where you’d like to see the customization in action. You can do these web.config modifications manually (not advisable), or automate them with the help of the SPWebConfigModification class from the Object Model. But quite often it’s not even necessary to use that class; when you deploy your customizations with the help of a Solution (.WSP file), like you should, the Solution deployment mechanism can modify the Web.Config to apply the most commonly used changes. This is defined in the Solution Manifest of the Solution file. The following Solution Manifest will add for example a SafeControl element for the current Assembly, which is required to display controls like Web Parts, User Controls etc. in the SharePoint sites.
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Where did ULSTraceLog go to in the SharePoint 2010 Logging Database?
The Logging Database is one of the many new concepts that will make the life of many SharePoint administrators quite a bit more enjoyable. In SharePoint 2007 the Unified Logging System (ULS) logged all of its data to text files, typically found on your SharePoint server in 12\LOGS. We still have that in SharePoint 2010, but besides those text files, ULS can also write the data to a database! The advantages are obvious: easy to query, one central location for all servers in the farm, easy to build reports etc. You can find this ULS data in the SharePoint 2010 logging database (typically called WSS_Logging), in the view ULSTraceLog.
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Highly recommended: "5 Things SQL Server does different from what many developers expect" by Nico Jacobs
A couple of weeks ago, the Belgian Techdays were held in Antwerp. Together with Scott Hillier I presented the SharePoint pre-conference sessions (watch them online over here, search for pre-conference or SharePoint). Even though Belgium is not a very big country, the Microsoft team managed to get some high profile speakers like Anders Hejlsberg and Scott Hanselman. But if you have like 60 minutes to spare there is one session that I'd really recommend to check out, not related to SharePoint, but very interesting and entertaining nonetheless: 5 Things SQL Server does different from what many developers expect by my U2U colleague Nico Jacobs. Nico did a fantastic job, so sit back and enjoy! :-)
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SharePoint 2010 BDC Model Deployment Issue: “The default web application could not be determined.”
Yesterday I tried to deploy a Business Data Connectivity Model project created in Visual Studio 2010 to my SharePoint 2010 test server (all RTM versions), but during the deployment of the solution, SharePoint threw my following error:
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Accessing SharePoint 2010 Data with REST/OData on Windows Phone 7
Consuming SharePoint 2010 data in Windows Phone 7 applications using the CTP version of the developer tools is quite a challenge. The issue is that the SharePoint 2010 data is not anonymously available; users need to authenticate to be able to access the data. When I first tried to access SharePoint 2010 data from my first Hello-World-type Windows Phone 7 application I thought “Hey, this should be easy!” because Windows Phone 7 development based on Silverlight and SharePoint 2010 has a Client Object Model for Silverlight. Unfortunately you can’t use the Client Object Model of SharePoint 2010 on the Windows Phone platform; there’s a reference to an assembly that’s not available (System.Windows.Browser).
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My first Windows Phone 7 App: Getting SharePoint Content
Earlier this week at the Mix10 conference, Microsoft announced the developer story of the Windows Phone 7 Series. As expected, it’s all about Silverlight! For all the details I highly recommend to watch the recorded keynotes (day 1, day 2).
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When SharePoint Matters: OneResponse
Two weeks ago I was in Iceland, talking about SharePoint 2010 at TM Software (some photos here :-) ). During the course, some students showed me a pretty cool public SharePoint 2007 site that they have been working on: OneResponse (http://oneresponse.info). OneResponse is the site the United Nations uses to collaborate and share information during catastrophes such as the recent earthquake in Haiti. Besides of the fact that the site is implemented really well, it must be pretty cool to know that your work will have such a big impact. Well done guys, it was a pleasure to be your guest!
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Speaking at the Italian SharePoint Conference Next Week
Next week on Wednesday and Thursday I’ll be in Milano, Italy during the SharePoint & Office Conference 2010. They have a nice lineup of both Italian and international speakers to deliver 60 sessions during three days. I’ll be presenting four of them:
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Referencing Javascript Files with SharePoint 2010 Custom Actions using SciptSrc
If you’re an avid reader of this blog, you are probably aware of the fact that using Javascript plus SharePoint is a very powerful combination. In SharePoint 2007 there were a couple of techniques you could use to make sure your Javascript files would be referenced by SharePoint pages:
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Little SharePoint 2010 Gem: AJAX Options in List View Web Parts
Last week I stumbled upon some pretty neat functionality of the out-of-the-box List View Web Part in SharePoint 2010: the AJAX Options. When you add a Web Part from the List and Libraries category (that basically shows you every List and Document Library you have on the SharePoint site) behind the scenes the Data View Web Part is being used to display the List or Document Library data.
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SharePoint Connections 2010 & SharePINT with Belgian Beer in Amsterdam
Next week (18th and 19th of January, 2010) the Microsoft SharePoint Connections 2010 will be held in Amsterdam RAI (The Netherlands). There is a great lineup of speakers and sessions over there, so I'm sure it will be a very interesting event! I will be presenting three sessions, one on Monday and two on Tuesday: