Reza Alirezaei’s Blog

Summary: Explore different options you have to work with structured data in a high volume while you need to perform complex queries and actions against such data ranging from authoring, approval and landing information on Web Part pages, all the way down to the physical storage. This blog post is part 3 of a blog post series that I am planning to write on this topic. (31 printed pages)

See Also:

• Part 1 : Configuring Single Sign On Service and Database
• Part 2 : Exposing LOB Data
• Part 4 : SharePoint Designer

Applies to: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Office Info Path 2007

Download this post in PDF version here.

Content:

• It’s all about reusability
• Create a Data Connection Library
• Create a data connection in InfoPath connecting to Products Web service
• Design the form
• Publish the form to Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Testing the solution
• Working with InfoPath form data
• enabled InfoPath forms and SSO
• Additional links

It’s all about reusability

One of the most important characteristics of a well-designed application is reusability. In my first exposure to InfoPath, I was drawn to the product for exactly the same reason. I was excited to see a completely schema-based solution which would give me the ability to design the schema outside of the InfoPath authoring tool, import the schema into my InfoPath form and create an electronic form based on that specific schema.

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First off, Toronto Code Camp is not a SharePoint focused event. Second, my session was scheduled to be the last session of the day (Grrrr 😉 ) and even worse, there were 3 popular sessions (Specially the ASP.NET MVC one) in the same time slot!

BUT…..

Honestly, I was surprised when I saw that the room got packed with a great bunch of enthusiasts who once again were there to validate that how much SharePoint rocks! So, If you attended my session titled “Best Practices for Developing SharePoint Applications“, thank you for showing up. I hope you walked out of the room with some lessons and takeaways!

Arguably, best practices is a very broad topic and it’s tough to wrap it up in an hour and half kinda talk, hence I had to tune my session at a fast pace. If you missed some parts of my presentation , here are the links to the PPT deck and code I used in my session.

PowerPoint Slides
Code

Remember, the safety net of following best practices lets us do our job without an “oops, what the heck should I do now?” kinda moment.

Summary: Explore different options you have to work with structured data in a high volume while you need to perform complex queries and actions against such data ranging from authoring, approval and landing information on Web Part pages, all the way down to the physical storage. This blog post is part 2 of a blog post series that I am planning to write on this topic. (9 printed pages)

Applies to: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. SQL Server 2005 /2008

See Also:

• Part 1 : Configuring Single Sign On Service and Database
• Part 3 : Browser enabled InfoPath Forms
• Part 4 : SharePoint Designer

Download this post in PDF version here.

Content:

• Introduction
• Coding the Northwind Web Service
• Exposing the ProductsBySupplierID stored proc as a document literal SOAP Web Service

Introduction: SharePoint is a composite application platform meaning that it can be layered on the top of a variety of Microsoft or non-Microsoft data repositories and interact with them either in real time or in background. An issue that arises in the early stages of the design of your SharePoint applications is that how best to make this interaction happen.

Well, Web Services are part of the .NET framework and therefore they are available to SharePoint as well. They provide a cross-platform solution for exchanging data between SharePoint and other systems in a distributed model. As you will see later in this blog post, I will create two service interfaces to expose LOB data to SharePoint and its complementary citizens such as InfoPath forms, Data View Web part and BDC.

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Summary: Explore different options you have to work with structured data in a high volume while you need to perform complex queries and actions against such data ranging from authoring, approval and landing information on Web Part pages, all the way down to the physical storage. This blog post is part 1 of a blog post series that I am planning to write on this topic. (13 printed pages)Applies to: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007See Also:

• Part 2 : Exposing LOB Data
• Part 3 : Browser enabled InfoPath Forms
• Part 4 : SharePoint Designer

Download this post in PDF version here.Content:

• Introduction
• Creating the Northwind Database
• Creating the Suppliers List
• Configuring SSO
• Additional Resources

Introduction: Data presentation is such a common requirement that it affects just about every layer of a platform on which you build your solution. Structured data must be stored somewhere (right?), so deciding where to physically store your data is just as important as the techniques you leverage to interact with it. Typically, when it comes to working with structured data in SharePoint, you have three options:

1) Keep all your data in a backend system and query it real time. In case this is the first thing that comes to you mind, then you are certainly among those who believe that SharePoint is not meant to be used as a database management system.

2) Keep all your data in SharePoint. In another word, you use SharePoint as your main data repository which means no dependency on any other extra data sources. Less deployment headaches, less configuration and easier maintenance.

3) Use a hybrid approach. It is all about keeping the balance between great features lists and document libraries offer in SharePoint and what database engines can bring to the table. This approach may or may not require some extra work to keep both data structures in sync.

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 In case you didn’t hear it in mix09 keynote, IE 8.0 was RTMed today (Download). According to the benchmarks ,IE 8.0 is without any doubt, the best IE ever and we all know that there is no better browser to view SharePoint sites in than IE! 

First off, a big “Thank You” to the IE team for their fabulous efforts to improve IE 8.0 with regards to standards based compliance. That’s the first obvious thing that comes to my mind. Work with it a little bit and you know what I am talking about!

As the IE8 team claims, the IE 8.0 performance is now much better comparing to its predecessors (i.e IE 7.0), and my feeling after a few HOURS of trying it tells me the exact  same thing.

>>IE 8.0 really loads my SharePoint pages noticeably faster:

In order to test both browser’s speed response, I put them through a number of tests. I used just one computer to ensure that the tests compare just the browsers, and not the hardware or software they run on. The calculated average response time  was recorded before and after I upgraded my IE 7.0 instance to IE 8.0. Almost in all cases , I got my testing sharepoint pages loaded faster!

For example for the OOTB default.aspx page (in a publishing context) the average request and response delta was 7-8 ms faster in IE 8.0.

In IE 7.0:

In IE 8.0 :

Yeah , I know that 7 ms is trivial , but remember, this was for a plain vanilla OOTB page! In some of the pages I got to 2-3 seconds faster load time.

>>UI Elements are rendered in IE 7.0 mode by default:

>>Navigation is just plain broken in IE8 Standards Mode:

Albeit they’ve fixed many  of the UI inconsistencies since Beta 1 , so far the out of the box MOSS UI experience in IE 8.0 standards mode looks messy. Blueband master page in publishing sites is an exception as it works in both IE 7.0 and IE 8.0 modes.

OOTB  default.master page and System master page simply do NOT work in IE 8.0 mode unless Document Mode is set to Quirk.

ECB menu (and flyouts menu) don’t render properly as well:

All right people, that was a quick observation of IE 8.0 and SharePoint. I am off to bed!

Update March 20/2009: You wanna dig deeper? See Randy’s post here. While you are at it, check out this KB article too.