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Fake CVs : it's a big problem

2012-05-03T17:25:00.000+05:30

A fast growing technology/development platform like SharePoint will always face the talent crunch. The simple principle of demand and supply in recent times have made the SharePoint developer a hot commodity, this puts pressure on companies which doles out extra dough as compared to a similar experienced developer.

All this has been attracting low lives who will fake their CVs and their salary information to secure that lucrative job. Landing a job is easier, trouble starts afterwards when expectations are higher than their calibre, no amount of text mugging or tech talk will help them in getting the task done. Two attributes will clearly suffer i.e. time and quality. There is cost involved too but by the time the hole is identified, the damage of time and quality would be irreparable.

Switching the resource immediately is the best solution otherwise the technology has to take all the blame later.

From my experience, following checklist should ensure a credible technical screening:

Pseudo code for a variety of scenarios should be discussed on paper to get the candidate's grasp on technology. In SharePoint it means the API.
Just talking topics and basics of terms is not at all sufficient. Better ask them about a recent challenge that you have faced, the response will tell about their depth of knowledge and experience. Talking about topics is once thing a fraudster will prepare best.
Ignore Microsoft certification like MCP, MCTS etc. Anybody or everybody can get one easily.
It goes mainly for HR, instead of asking for salary slips ask for last few years income tax return. It's so easy to forge a computer generated slip than it is to forge a tax return.
The professional background checking company are the most lazy of lot. A couple of calls to landline of previous company should be enough. In a few instances in India, I have seen people staging these too with their previous managers, so don't always trust the number given by them!

Hope it helps somebody somewhere. It's far easier to train a technical guy in a technology than hiring a poser with high expectations.

Saving Site as a Template Results in an Error in SharePoint 2010

2011-12-03T22:04:00.001+05:30

When you try to save a template in SharePoint 2010, you may receive an error at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSolutionExporter.ExportWebToGallery where the system fails to upload the created solution in solution gallery.

If you receive the Runtime error, first disable custom errors in application web.config. More info here..

To find the cause of problem, try running the command from Powershell by which you can trace ULS log.
$Web=Get-SPWeb http://site
$Web.SaveAsTemplate("Name","Title","Description",1)

The most common error is the duplicate feature folder in farm's 14 hive. If you have saved a site with same name anywhere in the site, try retracting the solution first. As soon as the feature folder is available again, the template will be saved/copied successfully.

2011-09-14T22:06:00.000+05:30

If you have a great SharePoint idea, we'll develop it for free!

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How to override Core Results Web Part's limit of 50 results per page?

2011-09-07T21:22:00.001+05:30

By default "Core Results Web Part" can result a maximum of 50 results. But grouping results require as many items as per requirement. To achieve this, we need to create our own CoreResults Web Part. The following code snippet help to achieve that.

public class cvsearch : CoreResultsWebPart
    {
        protected override XPathNavigator GetXPathNavigator(string viewPath)
        {
            QueryManager queryManager = SharedQueryManager.GetInstance(Page).QueryManager;
            queryManager[0].ItemsPerPage = 100;
            XmlDocument xmlDocument = queryManager.GetResults(queryManager[0]);
            return xmlDocument.CreateNavigator();
        }
    }

How to get the folder of SPListItem?

2011-08-30T16:29:00.000+05:30

Need to get the item's parent folder in an event/feature receiver? The code snippet below seems to be the most practical way to do that.

foreach(SPListItem item in Items)
{
    SPFile fItem= item.Web.GetFile(item.Url);
    SPFolder folder = fItem.ParentFolder;
}

How to get recurrence events? For Today and for this Month?

2011-07-24T23:17:00.001+05:30

SharePoint provides powerful calendar object model support for developers to leverage on. As it suffers from the lack of kickass documentation, one gets used to it with practice.

Recurring events are such. The major task with such events is to query them correctly so as to avoid in code checks which can burden the web part's performance.So use SpQuery properties correctly.

For example, to get all the recurrence events for this month:

//Get the first day of the Month
                DateTime caldate = new DateTime(DateTime.Now.Year, DateTime.Now.Month, 1);
                SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
                //Check the  tag, that's important to retrive a month of events including the recurrence one
                query.Query = "";
                query.ExpandRecurrence = true;
                //feed the month's first day to query
                query.CalendarDate = caldate;
                //fire the query to get list of items
                SPListItemCollection items = lst.GetItems(qry);

As a second example, to get all the recurrence events for today

//Get the date for today
                DateTime caldate = new DateTime(DateTime.Now.Year, DateTime.Now.Month, DateTime.Now.Day);
                SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
                //Check the  tag, that's important to retrive all events including the recurrence one for today
                query.Query = "";
                query.ExpandRecurrence = true;
                //feed the month's first day to query
                query.CalendarDate = caldate;
                //fire the query to get list of items
                SPListItemCollection items = lst.GetItems(qry);

So if the dates are correct and CAML are well formed, we get our results correctly.

SharePoint on Cloud

2011-06-28T21:50:00.002+05:30

SharePoint 365 is here! Now that's an edge.

From the SharePoint Blog

Whether you’re a small business or large enterprise the best way to learn about a new product offering like Office 365 is to experience it for yourself. From there it’s easy to build a plan that fits your business needs and make it your own.

· Try it out - If you didn’t sign up for the beta back in April I would check out the Office 365 site and try it out today.

· Develop a migration strategy and plan - There’s an immediate cost benefit to be gained by moving all your My Sites, Team Sites and Intranet Sites to SharePoint Online and the SharePoint Online planning guide for Office 365 will help you get started.

· Customize and Extend with business solutions - Simplifying routine tasks using online forms and workflows is a great place to begin and for developers theSharePoint Online Developers Guide will help you quickly build simple applications and extensions tailored to your business.

How long a particular piece of code took to execute?

2011-06-12T22:20:00.000+05:30

The Stopwatch class under the System.Diagnostics namespace is the key. The Stopwatch class makes it easy to use the high resolution timer in your code.

        // Create new stopwatch
 Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
 // Begin timing
 stopwatch.Start();
 // Do something
        // Code Here
 // Stop timing
 stopwatch.Stop();
 // Write result
 Console.WriteLine("Time elapsed: {0}",stopwatch.Elapsed);

The Taxonomy feature (Feature ID “73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C”) has not been activated

2011-06-09T16:15:00.000+05:30

Use the following command to activate the farm level "Taxanomy Feature" on your SharePoint 2010 farm before you try to add a custom column of the Managed Metadata type.

STSADM -o activatefeature -id 73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C -url http://<ServerName>

<ServerName> is the name of the server hosting SharePoint.

SharePoint, Query & Large Result Set

2011-06-09T14:07:00.000+05:30

SharePoint Server 2010 provides a class titled "ContentIterator", We can use it to query on lists with large number of rows.
We should consider using this class if our query returns more than 5000 items. The ContentIterator divides the list into batches and runs the query against one batch of list data at a time. For example

protected void OnContentIterator(object sender, EventArgs args)
{
SPQuery listQuery = new SPQuery();
listQuery.Query = "< Query >";
SPList list = SPContext.Current.Web.Lists["List"];
ContentIterator iterator = new ContentIterator();
iterator.ProcessListItems(list,listQuery,ProcessItem,ProcessError);
}
public bool ProcessError(SPListItem item, Exception e)
{
// Process the error
return true;
}
public void ProcessItem(SPListItem item)
{
// Process the item
}

Visio Stencils for SharePoint 2010

2011-05-31T11:09:00.000+05:30

On John Chapman's blog, he has compiled the graphics of SharePoint 2010 for using in Visio!

Download

Please note: The stencils may not have all SharePoint icons and graphics, but they have the majority of them. Also, some stencil graphics have been named while others have not been.

Royal Mail turns to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for Help

2011-03-22T11:50:00.001+05:30

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has been installed by the Royal Mail to help it reduce outgoings and improve its IT infrastructure.

The move is part of a "rapid modernisation" of postal services to help fend off increased competition and the threat of privatisation.

Furthermore, the company now has a scalable solution to help it pay for what it uses, while having Microsoft SharePoint 2010 hosted off-site. Source...

SPDisposeCheck : SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool

2011-01-26T01:17:00.000+05:30

SPDisposeCheck is a tool that helps developers and administrators check custom SharePoint solutions that use the SharePoint Object Model helping measure against known Microsoft dispose best practices. This tool may not show all memory leaks in your code and may produce false positives which need further review by subject matter experts.

SPDisposeCheck tool can be downloaded here

SharePoint Twitter WebParts

2010-11-26T14:53:00.001+05:30

Are you looking to show the twitter updates of your organization on your sharepoint portal ? If yes, then we are providing two webparts for SharePoint 2007 & SharePoint 2010, one that can be used to show the tweets of any user on the SharePoint portal. Second webpart can be used to post tweet to twitter directly from your sharepoint portal. Just download and install, and you are all set.

All you need is to configure the twitter settings after installation.

These web parts use out of the box SharePoint CSS elements that match automatically with your current site theme.

http://code.google.com/p/sharepoint-twitter/

Update Choice field through Web Service

2010-11-02T16:21:00.000+05:30

Updating the choices in a choice column is easy through SharePoint web services.

//Get the service ready
listsWS.Lists wsList = new listsWS.Lists();
wsList.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("username", "password","domain");
wsList.Url = strWebSiteURL;

//Prepare the node for updating SharePoint Choice Column/field

XmlDocument xmlDocField = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
System.Xml.XmlElement xFields = xmlDocField.CreateElement("Fields");
xFields.SetAttribute("OnError", "Continue");

StringBuilder strChoice = new StringBuilder();
//Define the attributes for fields and in case of any errors, try defining all fields
strChoice.Append("");

//Notice the capital name of nodes
strChoice.Append("Option 1");
strChoice.Append("Option 2");
strChoice.Append("Option 3");

strChoice.Append("");
xFields.InnerXml = strChoice.ToString();

//Call the UpdateList Method
XmlNode xResultUpdateField = wsList.UpdateList("List Name", null, null, xFields, null, null);

SharePoint Facebook WebParts

2010-11-02T15:52:00.001+05:30

Have you ever needed to show the facebook updates of your organization on your sharepoint portal ? If yes, this project is for you.

What we provide is two webparts for SharePoint , one that can be used to show the facebook wall of any user on the SharePoint portal. Second webpart can be used to post updates to facebook directly from your sharepoint portal. Just download and install, and you are all set

http://code.google.com/p/sharepoint-facebook-wall/

Sharepoint Multiple Lookup Field : SPFieldLookupValueCollection

2010-10-25T22:09:00.000+05:30

Field Class: SPFieldLookup
Field Value Class: SPFieldLookupValueCollection

How to use the lookup column values (through a method)?

itemValues.ForEach(Operate) //Operate is the method name

void Operate(SPFieldLookupValue iValue) //All LookUp values are passed to function one by one

How to use the lookup column values?
SPFieldLookupValueCollection itemValues = (SPFieldLookupValueCollection) item["FieldName"];
   foreach (SPFieldLookupValue iValue in itemValues)
   {
   int nID = iValue .LookupId;
   string strValue = iValue .LookupValue;
   }

SharePoint 2010 Site templates : how to deliver with custom assemblies

2010-08-19T17:11:00.002+05:30

The site templates are no longer .stp file in 2010, but they are improved upon as solution files (.wsp). That changes the delivery equation a lot, as earlier we could deliver site templates as a part of solution. But never-than less, in Visual studio 2010 we have the option to import the solution and operate it upon.

Follow these steps to deliver a site template customized with a custom assemblies (web part, event handler etc)

Save the site as template to generate the .wsp file
Import the solution in Visual Studio 2010 to create a new project
Next, right click on the package to open Solution Designer
In the advanced tab, you can specify new assemblies (ensure that they are included in the project)
The default features can also be modified in the edit options of the features. The properties specified here will overwrite the existing feature properties
All set, simply create the package of the project and deliver the wsp file.

Custom DLLs in Bin folder

2010-06-09T12:10:00.000+05:30

Untrusted solutions
Deploying custom code in bin folders can cause slow server performance. Every time a page containing untrusted code is requested, SharePoint Server 2010 must perform security checks before the page can be loaded.Unless there is a specific reason to deploy untrusted code, you should install custom assemblies in the GAC to avoid unnecessary security checking.

10 Steps to optimize Sharepoint Performance

2010-05-25T16:44:00.000+05:30

An article by Eric Shupps, Network World shed light on the 10 steps to improve the performance of our SharePoint servers.

Separate user and database traffic
A common misconception is that servers connected to a high-speed network segment will have plenty of bandwidth to perform all required operations. But SharePoint places a tremendous amount of demand on SQL - each request for a page can result in numerous calls to the database, not to mention service jobs, search indexing and other operations. In order to mitigate the conflict between user and database traffic, connectivity between front-end servers and SQL should be isolated, either via separate physical networks or virtual LANs. Typically this requires at least two separate network interface cards in each front-end Web server with static routes configured to ensure traffic is routed to the correct interface. The same configuration may also be applied to application and index server.
Isolate search indexing
A typical medium server farm consists of one or more Web front-end servers, a dedicated index or application server and a separate SQL database server. Search traffic initiated by the index server must be processed by the same servers responsible for delivering user content. In order to prevent search and user traffic from conflicting, an additional server may be added to the farm, which is dedicated solely to servicing search queries (in smaller environments, the index server may also serve this function). The farm administrator would then configure the search service to perform crawls only against this dedicated server. This configuration may reduce traffic to the Web front-end servers by as much as 70% during index operations.
Adjust SQL parameters
One quick way to avoid future headaches is to provision the major SharePoint databases on separate physical disks (or LUNs if a storage-area network is involved). This means one set of disks for search databases, one for temporary databases and still another for content databases. Additional consideration should be given to isolating the log files (*.ldf). Although these do not incur the same level of I/O as other files, they do play a primary role in backup and recovery and they can grow to several times the size of the master database files.Another technique is to proactively manage the size and growth of individual databases. By default, SQL grows database files in small increments, either 1MB at a time or as a fixed percentage of database size (usually 10%). These settings can cause SQL to waste cycles constantly expanding databases, and prevents further data from being written while the databases are expanding. An alternative approach is to pre-size the databases up to the maximum recommended size (100G) if space is available and set auto growth to a fixed size (e.g. 10MB or 20MB).
De-fragment database indexes
SQL Server maintains its own set of indexes for data stored in various databases in order to improve query efficiency and read operations. Just as with files stored on disk, these indexes can become fragmented. It is important to plan for regular maintenance operations, which includes index defragmentation. Special care should be taken to schedule these types of operations as they are resource-intensive and, in many cases, can prevent data from being written to or read from the indexes.
Distribute user data across multiple content databases
Most SharePoint data is stored in lists: tasks, announcements, document libraries, issues, picture libraries, and so forth. A great deal of this data is actually stored in a single table in the content database associated with the site collection. Regardless of how many sites and subsites are created within the SharePoint hierarchy, each site collection has only one associated content database. This means that a site collection with thousands of subsites is storing the bulk of the user data from every list in every site in a single table in SQL. This can lead to delays as SQL must recursively execute queries over one potentially very large dataset. One way to reduce the workload is to manage the mapping of site collections to content databases. Administrators can use the central administration interface to pre-stage content databases to ensure that site collections are associated with a single database or grouped logically based on size or priority. By adjusting the 'maximum number of sites' setting or changing database status to "offline", administrators can also control which content database is used when new site collections are created.
Minimize page size
For SharePoint users connected to the portal via a LAN it is easy to manage content and find resources, but for users on the far end of a slower WAN link the heavyweight nature of a typical SharePoint page can be a real performance-killer. If you have many remote users, start with a minimal master page, which, as the name implies, removes unnecessary elements and allows designers to start with a clean slate that only contains the base functionality required for the page to render correctly. Second, most SharePoint pages contain links to supporting files, including JavaScript and style sheets, which require additional time to retrieve and execute. Designers can alter how SharePoint pages retrieve these files using a technique called "delayed loading", which essentially loads the linked files in the background while the rest of the page is rendering.
Configure IIS compression
SharePoint content consists of two primary sources -- static files resident in the SharePoint root directories (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\12 for 2007 and \14 for 2010) and dynamic data stored in the content. At runtime, SharePoint merges the page contents from both sources then transmits them inside an HTTP response to the requesting user. Internet Information Server (IIS) versions 6 and 7 both contain various mechanisms for reducing the payload of HTTP responses prior to transmitting them across the network. Adjusting these settings can reduce the size of the data transmitted to the client, resulting in shorter load times and faster page rendering.
Take advantage of caching
Much of the content requested by users can be cached in memory, including list items, documents, query results and Web parts. Site administrators can configure their own cache profiles to meet different user needs. Anonymous users, for example, can be assigned one set of cache policies while authenticated users are assigned another, allowing content editors to get a more recent view of content changes than general readers. Cache profiles can also be configured by page type, so publishing pages and layout pages behave differently, and administrators have the option to specify caching on the server, the client, or both. In addition, the SharePoint Object Cache can significantly improve the execution time for resource-intensive components, such as the Content Query Web Part. For example, large objects that are requested frequently, such as images and files, can also be cached on disk for each Web application to improve page delivery times.
Manage page customizations
SharePoint Designer is a useful tool for administrators and power users but page customization can be harmful to overall performance. When customization occurs, the entire page content, including the markup and inline code, is stored in the database and must be retrieved each time the page is requested. This introduces relatively little additional overhead on a page-by-page basis, but in larger environments with hundreds or even thousands of pages, all that back-and-forth to the database can add up to significant performance degradation. To prevent this problem, administrators should implement a policy that restricts page customizations to only those situations where it is absolutely necessary. Site collection and farm administrators also have the option to disable the use of Designer or, when necessary, use the 'reset to site definition' option to undo changes and revert back to the original content.
Limit navigation depth
One of the most significant design elements on any portal site is the global, drop-down, fly-out menu at the top of each page. It seems like a handy way to navigate through all the various sites and pages -- until it becomes so deep and cluttered that all ability to navigate beyond the first few levels is lost completely. Even worse, fetching all the data to populate the navigation menus can be resource-intensive on sites with deep hierarchies. SharePoint designers have the ability to customize the depth and level of each navigation menu by modifying the parameters for the various navigation controls within the master page. Administrators should limit that depth to a manageable level that does not impact performance.

SharePoint 2010 Themes : DIY

2010-05-25T16:26:00.000+05:30

Activating the publishing feature on the SharePoint 2010 site gives you an option to customize the pre-installed theme and save it as "Custom Theme". There can only be one custom theme per site and if somebody else tries to play designer and customize any other theme, then it overwrites your changes. So at a time there is only one custom theme allowed.

An article by Todd Bagsinki details the method of creating .thmx files and using them as SharePoint designer. Though the idea is simple but the output isn't always sweet. Mapping all the classes and images etc. isn't easy at all.

Raymund Macaalay visual guide on SharePoint 2010 has take a clever approach and here is what you have to do to get it done.

Goto theme gallery <site>/_catalogs/theme/Forms/AllItems.aspx
Download a pre-installed theme as sample.thmx file
Get the theme builder free from Microsoft's connect portal and edit the theme so easily
All done, simply save the .thmx file and upload back to site's theme gallery to use it.

SharePoint 2010 Technology Stack

2010-05-14T15:06:00.003+05:30

SharePoint 2010 is launching today!!!
Here is 3 minute video for the developers explaining the basics.

Another very good video showing SharePoint 2010 bird eyes view

CAML query for searching users with their ID and not name

2010-04-07T12:39:00.000+05:30

When building a CAML query using U2U CAML Query builder, if you need to search for a user then the only option is to provide user's login name. That's not neat and you can beat it by providing an extra parameter called "LookupId" with the field. For example

MyQuery.Query = "<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='Employee' LookupId='TRUE' /><Value Type='User'>UserID</Value></Eq></Where>";

After specifying the attribute, you can select a user by his/her ID.

Microsoft SharePoint: Three Social Networking Alternatives

2010-02-08T14:13:00.002+05:30

Another good article by Shane O'Neill, CIO.com

"Microsoft's SharePoint suite started out in the early 2000's as a place to store and manage Office documents, but it has quickly evolved into a vast enterprise information portal and content management system. And more and more it's becoming a "social networking platform." read more...

As the social networking influence of Facebook and Twitter (profile pages, news feeds, status updates, 140-character microblogs) spill over into workplace, more enterprises are deploying social media tools to improve efficiency and communication, and vendors both young (startups SocialText and Jive) and old (IBM's Lotus Connections) are eager to provide the tools.

MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) integrated social tools through partnerships with companies like NewsGator for RSS feeds and Atlassian for enterprise wiki software. But the MOSS 2007 social features have been viewed as clunky.

"Blogs and wikis in MOSS 2007 were weak compared to best-of-breed solutions," says Rob Koplowitz, principal analyst at research firm Forrester.

SharePoint 2010, now in beta and set for general availability in June, is upping the ante with more native social networking features that Microsoft promises will be easier to use.

Microsoft is relying on the smooth integration of profile pages, RSS and activity feeds, wikis, blogs, and microblogs as it faces the threat of Enterprise 2.0 SaaS (software as a service) vendors that offer specific social tools to businesses at a fraction of SharePoint's price.

"SharePoint 2010's biggest strength, its breadth of capabilities, is also its greatest weakness," says Koplowitz. "For companies not currently invested in SharePoint that are looking to only fulfill a basic need, like deploying a set of publicly facing blogs, the full SharePoint platform will look like a sledgehammer compared to products from companies like Socialtext, Jive, and others."

Such SaaS startups have the advantage of developing new features quicker than big companies like Microsoft and IBM can. But SaaS companies have much to fear now that Microsoft has made social tools a priority in SharePoint 2010, says Koplowitz. SaaS upstarts also have to walk the thin line of both competing with SharePoint and making their software compatible with it.

Yet the fact remains: social tools are just a portion of the SharePoint platform and procuring and managing the entire SharePoint suite is a huge task. It entails license and server costs, the training of staff, providing virus protection and backup, and possibly paying for consultant help. It's worth noting that a stripped down, online version of SharePoint has been available since November 2008 and Microsoft cut prices for it in November 2009. SharePoint 2010 will come as both as an on-premises and hosted online offering.

Nevertheless, if you're a company that just wants a powerful set of social networking tools, implementing the whole SharePoint suite is not a wise choice, says Koplowitz.

"That's like killing a whole buffalo when all you want is a sandwich," he adds.

Here are three SaaS vendors that provide specific enterprise social tools.

SocialText

SocialText, founded in late 2002 and based in Palo Alto, Calif., is one of the earliest vendors to adapt Web 2.0 tools to the business world, now referred to as Enterprise 2.0.

SocialText's flagship product, the SocialText Workspace wiki tool, allows workers to communicate, share information and content, add comments, and pose questions to groups.

The integrated SocialText suite also includes: a personalized homepage called Dashboard where users can access employee profiles, wiki pages and other social networking features; a Twitter-like microblogging tool called Signals; and SocialText People pages, the equivalent to Facebook's profile pages.

SocialText platform is available as a hosted service or an on-site or hosted appliance. It can be purchased as a standalone suite (click here for pricing information) but it is also designed to work within SharePoint and Lotus Connections.

Jive

Portland, Ore.-based Jive has been around since 2001, and, like SocialText, is a SaaS company that aims to connect the enterprise through consumer-friendly social networking technologies.

Jive's software suite, Jive SBS (social business software), combines collaboration software and social applications. SBS is in its fourth generation. Some of its features include: wikis, blogs, discussion forums, dashboard-like homepages, personalized profile pages, status updates, tagging, bookmarking, document creation and management, and private storage.

Jive reported an 85 percent year-over-year increase in revenue for 2009 and last month acquired social monitoring company Filtrbox for an undisclosed sum. SBS is a standalone suite that, like SocialText, also connects with SharePoint.

Atlassian

Atlassian, an Australian company founded in 2002, has a broad set of software tools that help IT pros and developers track software bugs, manage help desk tickets and test and edit code.

Atlassian's software development tools are led by JIRA for issue tracking and project management and JIRA Studio, a hosted suite of tools for development teams. But it is probably best known for its enterprise wiki software, Confluence, through which workers create intranet pages and communicate with co-workers in real time, blog, and edit and share documents. Like the Jive and SocialText offerings, Confluence provides a main page (dashboard) with access to all workspaces, people and content.

The Confluence enterprise wiki can be purchased on its own, although Atlassian is a Microsoft partner and Confluence connects with SharePoint.

Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.

The Great Debate: SharePoint Designer vs. Custom Site Definitions

2010-02-08T14:06:00.002+05:30

A good post by Eric Shupps :

"I often get asked about the pros and cons of using SharePoint Designer versus custom site definitions for branding purposes. There seems to be a great deal of confusion surrounding this topic so I'll offer my two cent's worth in hopes that it clears the air and helps you, the SharePoint developer or administrator, make a more informed decision on which to use and where." read more...

First, let's be clear on the difference between the two. SharePoint Designer is an off-the-shelf tool that provides add-on functionality for SharePoint – namely workflows, data view web parts, and UI customization (by this I mean the HTML structure, styles, and overall design of individual layout and master pages). It is targeted mostly at power users but can also be employed by developers to create quick data-driven applets or implement serial workflows quickly with minimal coding. Site definitions, on the other hand, are a set of Features and XML-driven configuration files which provide a framework for deploying SharePoint sites with a certain look, feel, structure, and functionality. For the most part, the two are mutually-exclusive in that a site must already be deployed for it to be customized by SharePoint Designer and site definitions are only applicable during the creation of a new site. The confusion arises from the ability of both methods to implement advanced interface customizations; however, the manner in which they do so is drastically different.

SharePoint Designer

To begin with, SharePoint Designer must be attached to an existing site in order to change anything related to the site's look and feel (what we commonly refer to as the "chrome"). This makes it an "out-of-band" process (to borrow an old networking term) in that the site is deployed first then edited later. This has the advantage of providing a comfortable GUI environment for the developer as SPD can render a view on-the-fly of how HTML and style changes impact the chrome. It is also able to enforce certain security requirements, such as the need to check out documents before they can be edited, and provide contextual assistance for style references and easy-to-use HTML design tools.

This out-of-band approach may sound easy (and it is) but it comes with some major drawbacks. First, editing a master or layout page in SPD causes the evil "unghosting" monster to rear its ugly head. You've probably heard this term before, especially if you worked with Frontpage in the previous version of SharePoint, but you may have also heard its new, more politically correct variant, "customized". Whatever you call it, the results can have a significant impact on the overall performance and maintainability of your SharePoint farm. In order to understand why this issue is so important, you first need to understand how SharePoint renders pages to the requesting web browser. The following diagram illustrates the rendering method for both customized (unghosted) and uncustomized (ghosted) pages.

Figure 1 – The SharePoint Page Rendering Process

As the diagrams demonstrate, the unghosting process can be significantly less performant because page content must always be loaded from the database before it can be rendered. Ghosted pages, on the other hand (so-called because they actually live on the file system of each front end server and only a pointer is held in the content database), are loaded locally from disk. SharePoint already creates a tsunami of network traffic between front-end servers and the database; adding another request to the stack, especially for large blocks of text that are transferred over long-running TCP sessions *during* the ASP.NET Just In Time (JIT) compilation and page-rendering process, can completely overwhelm physical resources if the traffic load is high enough. To make things worse, because the content is dynamically retrieved from the database, it cannot be cached effectively by IIS (it still gets cached and compressed to a certain degree but much less efficiently than static resources on disk). That being said, the situation may not be so desperate as it first appears, as SharePoint employs its own caching mechanisms on top of IIS and a single site collection with a custom master page, no matter how many levels deep it goes, still only uses one dynamic resource for page rendering. But – and this is a biggie – the same cannot be said of any form pages (editform.aspx, dispform.aspx, newform.aspx, etc.) and pages which include data view web parts (DVWP). Yes, MOSS still employs some caching, but each page instance is stored in the database. And, it should be noted, the caching benefits only apply to MOSS farms; if the portal is based on WSS then no caching mechanisms are available within SharePoint.

Second, customizations achieved with SPD are static. That is, they cannot be replicated from site to site. Want to deploy a new site collection for Finance using the same branding you created for Human Resources? Sorry, proceed to the back of the line; you'll have to start all over from the beginning. Need to have a set of common templates for ad-hoc site creation? Nope, can't do that either – each site either inherits the parent master page or uses its own that you create from scratch (or copy over from another site). Need to make sure that all Wiki pages (remember, Wiki's and Blogs are custom templates that you choose when creating the site) deployed in your organization have the same set of functionality? Dream on.

Finally, SPD customizations "break" the connection with the site and its underlying site definition. Once the master or layout page has been customized, any changes to the template it was based on (such as "Team Site" or "Collaboration Portal") from an update or service pack will not be available. The design is effectively frozen at the point in time at which it was created. This makes deploying updates, such as a new set of header images supplied by Marketing, across multiple site collections a nightmare as you must open each customized page in SPD and apply the changes (or copy the page from site gallery to site gallery).

So all of these issues beg the question "Just what is SharePoint Designer good for?". Well, for one thing, it makes creating new master and layout page designs a quick and enjoyable experience. Because it duplicates the ASP.NET JIT model in the design view (meaning it merges the layout and master pages together into a single view), modifying these pages is much easier than doing it all by hand in HTML. It's quite difficult to envision what impact your changes have in a child page when you can't see its parent. Secondly, it makes the devilishly difficult task of applying new styles much simpler as you have a context-aware CSS editor at your disposal (this is especially true for MOSS pages as they often employ several interrelated CSS files that override each other). Finally, it's a great prototyping and RAD tool as new designs can be envisioned and tested very quickly in situ.

Custom Site Definitions

Now that we understand the limitations and advantages of SPD, we still have to ask ourselves: What about those pesky unghosting and replication/maintainability issues? That's where custom site definitions and the SharePoint Feature framework come in (note that when I use a capital "F" I am referring to an element in the SharePoint Feature framework, not an element of functionality within the overall system, which I differentiate with a lower case "f"). When you create a new site or site collection in SharePoint, it gives you a list of available templates to use, grouped by functionality into a set of four tabs. The first two tabs are for WSS and the second two are for MOSS. SharePoint uses these definitions, which are sets of features and configuration files that provide the underlying structure for site creation and the deployment of associated functionality, to determine what type of site to create and what to put in it once it's in place (web parts, sub sites, workflows, etc.).

Figure 2 – Site Definition Structure

Thankfully, Microsoft gave us the capability to create our own custom site definitions that mimic the way in which the product itself functions. If you think about it, that's quite a powerful statement; it's like buying a shirt and getting the tailor who made it thrown in as a freebie in case you ever want another one. By building our own site definitions, we can control what gets provisioned during site creation and how it looks when the process is done. Even more importantly, the custom code will follow the same rules as the built-in definitions (assuming it's written properly, of course) and thereby avoid all the pitfalls of SPD's out-of-band model. Our master pages will be stored on disk, new sites will be able to use a pre-defined template, and a single change to the ghosted source files will immediately replicate across all of the sites that rely upon them. In addition, custom site definitions allow the developer to programmatically restrict what features are available to the user – including the use of other definitions and templates – and provide a more controllable environment with only those features necessary to meet the requirements.

Naturally, there are some drawbacks to this method as well. First and foremost, custom site definitions are complex and difficult to create. They involve numerous XML files and code-only HTML files (sorry, no GUI's here) and they must follow a strictly defined structure. I've known many an ASP.NET developer to sit with their mouth hanging open after the first hour of learning how to do a basic site definition thinking "You've got to be kidding me! Is all this stuff really necessary?".

Second, for maximum effectiveness, site definitions should be deployed using the Solution and Feature framework and make extensive use of Feature Stapling (attaching features to a definition in a specified order, not to be confusing with Feature Dependencies, in which one feature calls another feature from within the Feature definition file). As both Features and Solutions require their own learning curve, they invariably introduce further confusion into the process.

Third, due to the stapling function of site definitions, along with some of the various content type associations and layout dependencies required for MOSS, there is no way to avoid getting your hands dirty with at least the superficial aspects of Microsoft's Collborative Application Markup Language (CAML). CAML isn't necessarily difficult to learn but it is tempermental, laborious and poorly documented, all of which doesn't exactly add up to a rich and rewarding developer experience.

Finally, site definitions are only applicable during provisioning; that is, they have no effect after a site has been created. Certain Features of a definition may be applied after provisioning, such as a custom master page, but the entire definition is applied only once when the site is created. This means that sites which are already in place cannot be customized using site definitions. This doesn't completely prevent their use post-provisioning, as any child sites created after the new definition is in place may use it, but it does effectively limit the scope to new deployments.

Making the Right Choice

Fortunately, choosing between SPD and site definitions isn't a zero-sum equation. The SharePoint platform is flexible enough to allow the use of both and they can be employed interchangeably in a single environment quite successfully. The decision of which route is best often depends upon the stage of the deployment and the nature of the application. If a portal is to be used primarily as an outward-facing public Internet site it is very unlikely that multiple templates will be required that have different chrome elements; in that situation, provisioning the site using an out-of-the-box template then customizing it with SPD might be a perfectly acceptable solution. Similarly, if an Intranet site has been in place for some time, or has been upgraded from a previous version, there may be no other option but to implement customizations in place.

On the other hand, a new internal deployment that may have multiple branding components or departmental functional requirements may be better served in the long run by employing site definitions via the Features and Solutions framework. In those cases where SharePoint serves as a middle-tier operating environment for line of business applications, site definitions are a better method for stripping out those functional elements which are not absolutely required, rather than repetitively having to deploy a standard template and manually remove those elements which do not serve the core purpose.

One factor which may have a definitive impact on the decision behind which method to use is overall portal performance. All the evidence suggests that site definitions, which make the best use of disk-based caching and compression mechanisms, will perform better under heavy loads, especially when scaled to thousands of concurrent users. While site definitions may require a heavier investment on the front end, they pay off in terms of delivery cost and resource utilization.

Furthermore, the use of custom site definitions improves maintainability and reduces operational overhead by requiring less manual intervention to effect changes. Various update mechanisms are available within SharePoint to push changes out to local file systems on every server in a farm; in turn, the definitions which rely on these files are automatically updated. The same cannot be said for SPD customizations. While it may be argued that a change to the UI within SPD is, in fact, a global change as the customizations are stored in the content database, that argument overlooks the fact that the changes will not cross site collection, web application, or content database boundaries, and may not be propagated within a single site collection if a child site has broken its inheritance on the parent master or layout pages. In the same vein, any system-wide updates, such as those introduced by a service pack or hotfix, will also not be inherited by SPD-customized sites and must be introduced manually (if possible).

Conclusion

In my experience, SPD is most appropriate in small, static deployments where the organization does not possess the requisite development skills (or budget) to implement custom site definitions. It is also the only effective solution for upgraded legacy installations. For larger deployments, and those where performance is a key consideration, the benefits of site definitions make them a much more attractive option. Site definitions may also be the only answer when the specification calls for many customized sites to be provisioned programmatically (such as in hosted and Software-as-a-Service environments).

But these are not the only options. It is quite common to use SPD to prototype new designs, export the resulting master page, and include it as a Feature in a custom site definition. In some cases, portions of the portal which are lightly stressed or "one off" sites designed for a particular purpose, SPD customizations my coexist side-by-side with a more robust definition-based environment.

In the end, it comes down to suitability for purpose, resource availability, and, of course, cost. What may work in a portal that starts out as a small departmental deployment may not work quite so well when the portal grows exponentially into an enterprise information resource. Likewise, the overhead of an enterprise-class solution may be overkill for a portal whose primary purpose is a small user base focused on a particular set of tasks. As with any new system, consider first what the application is supposed to do, then determine which tools are right for the job. This may mean trying both methods before eventually deciding that one or the other is right for a particular environment.

Resources

For more information on branding and customization using SharePoint Designer:

SharePoint Products and Technologies Customization Policy [MSFT]
Heather Solomon's List of SharePoint Branding Resources [Heather Solomon]
Understanding SharePoint Branding Options [Robert Bogue]

For more information regarding custom site definitions, Features, solution packages and custom master pages:

Site Definitions and Configurations [MSDN]
Creating a Custom WSS Site Definition [Eric Shupps]
Creating a Custom Site Definition in WSS v3 / MOSS [Todd Baginski]