SharePoint Faqs -- Most Importent
Diff b/w Moss & WSS
It is important that you know the difference between Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). While WSS and MOSS are both pieces of software built by the Microsoft Office team, WSS is included as a part of the Windows Server 2003 operating system while MOSS is a separate product with its own SKU. You should think of WSS as the underlying platform and think of MOSS as a value-added set of components and services that has been built on top of this platform.
WSS does not have its own licensing model. Instead, the use of WSS is controlled through Windows Server 2003 licenses. This makes it very cost effective for companies to roll out applications that have been designed and built on top of the WSS platform. MOSS, on the other hand, has its own licensing model that includes server-side licenses and client access licenses (CALs). The MOSS licensing model is further broken out into a Standard Edition and an Enterprise Edition.
What is farm
A set of one or more server computers working together to provide WSS functionality to clients. In the simplest deployment scenario, a WSS farm consists of a single server computer that acts as both the front-end Web server and the SQL Server database server. A more complicated WSS farm would consist of several front-end Web server computers and a dedicated database server
Configuration database
Each WSS farm runs a single SQL Server database known as the configuration database. The configuration database tracks important farm-wide information. For example, the configuration database tracks which front-end Web servers are associated with the farm as well as which users have been assigned administrative permissions within WSS at the farm level.
Web application
An IIS Web site that has been specially configured to run WSS sites is known as a Web application. Every WSS site runs in the context of a specific Web application. This is important because the hosting Web application for a WSS site provides many important aspects of the WSS environment including the security configuration for user authentication.
The installation of WSS creates and configures a Web application named the WSS 3.0 Central Administration application. The WSS 3.0 Central Administration application provides pages that allow you to perform administrative chores such as converting a standard IIS Web site into a WSS Web application. The WSS Central Administration application also provides the option to create a new IIS Web site and automatically configure it to be a WSS Web application as well, all without having to use any of the IIS administration tools directly.
Web Applications versus Virtual Servers
In the last version of WSS, the product team used the term virtual server to describe an IIS Web site that has been extended with WSS functionality. In the current version of WSS and its supporting documentation, the term virtual server has been replaced with the term Web application mainly to avoid confusion with another Microsoft product of the same name. However, as a WSS developer you must remember that the new term Web application and the old term virtual server are often used interchangeably. For example, the WSS object model provides the SPVirtualServer class to program against Web application objects.
The STSADM.EXE Command Line Utility
WSS ships with a handy command-line utility named STSADM.EXE. This utility allows you to run interactive commands from the Windows command line and to script batch files that accomplish administrative tasks such as creating, backing up, and restoring site collections. When you run this utility from the command line or from a batch file, you must pass the –o parameter followed by one of the supported operations
STSADM.EXE –o CreateSite –url http://localhost/sites/Sales
-ownerlogin LitwareServer\BrianC
-owneremail brianc@litwareinc.com
-sitetemplate STS#0
Microsoft Share Point 2007 Interview Questions
Part: 1
1.1 What is MS Windows SharePoint Services? How is it related to MOSS 2007?
Windows SharePoint Services is the solution that enables you to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services -- a key piece of the information worker infrastructure delivered in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 -- provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office system and other desktop applications, and it serves as a platform for application development.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to provide additional capabilities including collaboration, portal, search, enterprise content management, business process and forms, and business intelligence.
1.2 What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?
SharePoint Portal Server is a portal server that connects people, teams, and knowledge across business processes. SharePoint Portal Server integrates information from various systems into one secure solution through single sign-on and enterprise application integration capabilities. It provides flexible deployment and management tools, and facilitates end-to-end collaboration through data aggregation, organization, and searching. SharePoint Portal Server also enables users to quickly find relevant information through customization and personalization of portal content and layout as well as through audience targeting.
1.3 What is Microsoft Windows Services?
Microsoft Windows Services is the engine that allows administrators to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office System and other desktop applications, as well as serving as a plat form for application development. SharePoint sites provide communities for team collaboration, enabling users to work together on documents, tasks, and projects. The environment for easy and flexible deployment, administration, and application development.
1.4 What is the relationship between Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and MS Windows Services? Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (including SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services) deliver highly scalable collaboration solutions with flexible deployment and management tools. Windows SharePoint Services provides sites for team collaboration, while Share Point Portal Server connects these sites, people, and business processes—facilitating knowledge sharing and smart organizations. SharePoint Portal Server also extends the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services by providing organizational and management tools for SharePoint sites, and by enabling teams to publish information to the entire organization. 1.5 Who is Office SharePoint Server 2007 designed for?
Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be used by information workers, IT administrators, and application developers. is designed
1.6 What are the main benefits of Office SharePoint Server 2007? Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.
Business users gain greater control over the storage, security, distribution, and management of their electronic content, with tools that are easy to use and tightly integrated into familiar, everyday applications.
Organizations can accelerate shared business processes with customers and partners across organizational boundaries using InfoPath Forms Services–driven solutions.
Information workers can find information and people efficiently and easily through the facilitated information-sharing functionality and simplified content publishing. In addition, access to back-end data is achieved easily through a browser, and views into this data can be personalized.
Administrators have powerful tools at their fingertips that ease deployment, management, and system administration, so they can spend more time on strategic tasks.
Developers have a rich platform to build a new class of applications, called Office Business Applications, that combine powerful developer functionality with the flexibility and ease of deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Through the use of out-of-the-box application services, developers can build richer applications with less code. 1.7 What is the difference between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007? Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 have identical feature functionality. While the feature functionality is similar, the usage rights are different.
If you are creating an Internet, or Extranet, facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites which does not require the purchase client access licenses. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition can only be used for Internet facing websites and all content, information, and applications must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an Intranet Portal scenario. See the previous section on licensing for more information on the usage scenarios. 1.8 What suites of the 2007 Microsoft Office system work with Office SharePoint Server 2007?
Office Outlook 2007 provides bidirectional offline synchronization with SharePoint document libraries, discussion groups, contacts, calendars, and tasks.
Microsoft Office Groove 2007, included as part of Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, will enable bidirectional offline synchronization with SharePoint document libraries.
Features such as the document panel and the ability to publish to Excel Services will only be enabled when using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007or Office Enterprise 2007.
Excel Services will only work with documents saved in the new Office Excel 2007 file format (XLSX).
1.9 How do I invite users to join a Windows SharePoint Services Site? Is the site secure?
SharePoint-based Web sites can be password-protected to restrict access to registered users, who are invited to join via e-mail. In addition, the site administrator can restrict certain members' roles by assigning different permission levels to view post and edit.
1.10 Can I post any kind of document?
You can post documents in many formats, including .pdf, .htm and .doc. In addition, if you are using Microsoft Office XP, you can save documents directly to your Windows SharePoint Services site.
1.11 Can I download information directly from a SharePoint site to a personal digital assistant (PDA)?
No you cannot. However, you can exchange contact information lists with Microsoft Outlook.
1.12 How long does it take to set up the initial team Web site?
It only takes a few minutes to create a complete Web site. Preformatted forms let you and your team members contribute to the site by filling out lists. Standard forms include announcements, events, contacts, tasks, surveys, discussions and links.
1.13 Can I create custom templates?
Yes you can. You can have templates for business plans, doctor's office, lawyer's office etc.
1.14 How can I make my site public?
By default, all sites are created private.
If you want your site to be a public Web site, enable anonymous access for the entire site. Then you can give out your URL to anybody in your business card, e-mail or any other marketing material. The URL for your Web site will be: http:// yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com
Hence, please take special care to name your site. These Web sites are ideal for information and knowledge intensive sites and/or sites where you need to have shared Web workspace. Remember: Under each parent Web site, you can create up to 10 sub-sites each with unique permissions, settings and security rights.
1.15 How do the sub sites work?
You can create a sub site for various categories. For example:
Departments - finance, marketing, IT
Products - electrical, mechanical, hydraulics
Projects - Trey Research, Department of Transportation, FDA
Team - Retention team, BPR team
Clients - new clients, old clients
Suppliers - Supplier 1, Supplier 2, Supplier 3
Customers - Customer A, Customer B, Customer C
Real estate - property A, property B The URLs for each will be,
for example:
http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/finance
http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/marketing
You can keep track of permissions for each team separately so that access is restricted while maintaining global access to the parent site.
1.16 How do I open an older version of a document? Normally, all previous versions are located in the shadow, so if you right click a published document from within the web folders, go to properties and then the third tab, versions you can view older versions. If you want to do this in code:
strURL = "url of the last published version"
Set oVersion = New PKMCDO.KnowledgeVersion
Set prmRs = oVersion.VersionHistory(strURL)
Set oVersion = Nothing
prmRS will contain a recordset, which contains the url to the old versions in the shadow. 1.17 Why do the workspace virtual directories show the error “stop sign” symbol in the IIS snap-in? If World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3SVC) starts before Microsoft Exchange Information Store (MSExchangeIS), “stop sign” symbols appear under the Default Web Site folder of the Internet Information Services console in Microsoft Management Console (MMC).
There is a dependency between the local paths of the SharePoint Portal Server virtual directories and the MSExchangeIS. You must start MSExchangeIS first, followed by W3SVC.
Complete the following steps to prevent the stop signs from appearing each time you restart:
1. Change the Startup type for W3SVC to Manual.
2. Restart the server. The MSExchangeIS service starts automatically.
3. Start W3SVC. 1.18 What newsgroups are available?
There are two,
microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver and
microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver.development.
1.19 What are the two base classes a WebPart you are going to use within sps 2007 can inherit from?
There are two base classes that a WebPart which is going to be consumed by SharePoint can inherit from, either the SharePoint WebPart Base class or the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class. When inheriting from the SharePoint WebPart Base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart. When inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart. It is considered good practice to use the ASP.NET WebPart base class since the old base class is meant for backwards compatibility with previous version of SharePoint, however there are four exception when it is better to leverage functionality from the SharePoint WebPart base class:
Cross page connections
Connections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zone
Client-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)
Data caching infrastructure
1.20 What are the differences between the two base classes and what are the inherit benefits of using one over another?
The difference is the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart base class is meant for backward compatibility with previous versions of SharePoint. The benefit of using the SharePoint WebPart base class is it supported: Cross page connections
Connections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zone
Client-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)
Data caching infrastructure
ASP.NET 2.0 WebParts are generally considered better to use because SharePoint is built upon the ASP.NET 2.0 web architecture. Inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 base class offers you features that inherit to ASP.NET 2.0, such as embedding resources as opposed to use ClassResources for deployment of said types.
Part: 2
2.1 How do I make my site non-restricted?
If you want your site to have anonymous access enabled (i.e., you want to treat it like any site on the Internet that does not ask you to provide a user name and password to see the content of the site), follow these simple steps:
Login as an administrator
2. Click on site settings
Click on Go to Site Administration
Click on Manage anonymous access
Choose one of the three conditions on what Anonymous users can access:
Entire Web site
Lists and libraries
Nothing
2.2 Can I get domain name for my Web site?
Unfortunately, no. At this point, we don't offer domain names for SharePoint sites. But very soon we will be making this available for all our SharePoint site customers. Please keep checking this page for further update on this. Meanwhile, we suggest you go ahead and set up your site and create content for it.
2.3 What are picture libraries?
Picture libraries allow you to access a photo album and view it as a slide show or thumbnails or a film strip. You can have separate folder for each event, category, etc
2.4 What are the advantages of a hosted SharePoint vs. one that is on an in-house server?
No hardware investment, i.e. lower costs
No software to download - ready to start from the word go
No IT resources - Anyone who has used a Web program like Hotmail can use it
Faster deployment
2.5 Can I ask users outside of my organization to participate in my Windows SharePoint Services site?
Yes. You can manage this process using the Administration Site Settings. Simply add users via their e-mail alias and assign permissions such as Reader or Contributor.
2.6 Are there any IT requirements or downloads required to set up my SharePoint site?
No. You do not need to download any code or plan for any IT support. Simply complete the on-line signup process and provide us your current and correct email address. Once you have successfully signed up and your site has been provisioned, we will send a confirmation to the email address you provided.
2.7 I am located outside of the United States. Are there any restrictions or requirements for accessing the Windows SharePoint Services?
No. There are no system or bandwidth limitations for international trial users. Additionally language packs have been installed which allow users to set up sub-webs in languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish.
2.8 Are there any browser recommendations?
Yes. Microsoft recommends using the following browsers for viewing and editing Windows SharePoint Services sites: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 with Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 6.2 or later.
2.10 How secure are Windows SharePoint Services sites hosted by Microsoft?
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Technical security measures provide firewall protection, intrusion detection, and web-publishing rules. The Microsoft operation center team tests and deploys software updates in order to maintain the highest level of security and software reliability. Software hot-fixes and service packs are tested and deployed based on their priority and level of risk. Security related hot-fixes are rapidly deployed into the environment to address current threats. A comprehensive software validation activity ensures software stability through regression testing prior to deployment.
2.11 What is the difference between an Internet and an intranet site?
An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g., www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password. The internet is used for public presence and a primary marketing tool managed typically by web programmers and a system administrator.
An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on a Web site, can only be accessed by people who are members of a specific network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator. The intranet is commonly used as an internal tool for giving employees access to company information. Content is driven by business relevance, business rules and has increasingly become a common tool in larger organizations. An intranet is becoming more and more the preferred method for employees to interact with each other and the central departments in an organization, whether or not the organization has a Web presence.
2.12 What is a workspace?
A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on Web pages, lists and document libraries. For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project, collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.
2.13 What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?
A user can be assigned one of the following roles
Reader - Has read-only access to the Web site.
Contributor - Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.
Web Designer - Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.
Administrator - Has full control of the Web site.
2.14 Can more than one person use the same login?
If the users sharing that login will have the same permissions and there is no fear of them sharing a password, then yes. Otherwise, this is discouraged.
2.15 How customizable is the user-to-user access?
User permissions apply to an entire Web, not to documents themselves. However, you can have additional sub webs that can optionally have their own permissions. Each user can be given any of four default roles. Additional roles can be defined by the administrator.
2.16 Can each user have access to their own calendar?
Yes there are two ways to do this,
by creating a calendar for each user, or
by creating a calendar with a view for each user
2.17 How many files can I upload?
There is no restriction in place except that any storage consumed beyond that provided by the base offering may have an additional monthly charge associated with them.
2.18 What types of files can I upload / post to the site?
The only files restricted are those ending with the following extensions: .asa, .asp, .ida, .idc, .idq. Microsoft reserves the right to add additional file types to this listing at any time. Also, no content that violates the terms of service may be uploaded or posted to the site.
2.19 Can SharePoint be linked to an external data source?
SharePoint data can be opened with Access and Excel as an external data source. Thus, SharePoint can be referenced as an external data source. SharePoint itself cannot reference an external data source.
2.20 Can SharePoint be linked to a SQL database?
SharePoint 2007 Portal Server (MOSS2K7) allows connections to SQL based datasources via the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The BDC also allows connecting to data via Web Services.
Part: 3
3.1 What is the GAC?
The GAC stands for the global assembly cache. It is the machine wide code cache which will give custom binaries place into the full trust code group for SharePoint. Certain SharePoint assets, such as Feature Receivers need full trust to run correctly, and therefore are put into the GAC. You should always try to avoid deployment to the GAC as much as possible since it will possibly allow development code to do more than it was intended to do.
3.2 What is strong naming (signing) a WebPart assembly file mean?
Signing an assembly with a strong name (a.k.a strong naming) uses a cryptographic key pair that gives a unique identity to a component that is being built. This identity can then be referred throughout the rest of the environment. In order to install assemblies into the GAC, they must be strongly named. After signing, the binary will have a public key token identifier which can be use to register the component in various other places on the server.
3.3 What are safe controls, and what type of information, is placed in that element in a SharePoint web.config file?
When you deploy a WebPart to SharePoint, you must first make it as a safe control to use within SharePoint in the web.config file. Entries made in the safe controls element of SharePoint are encountered by the SharePointHandler object and will be loaded in the SharePoint environment properly, those not will not be loaded and will throw an error. In the generic safe control entry (this is general, there could be more), there is generally the Assembly name, the namespace, the public key token numeric, the typename, and the safe declaration (whether it is safe or not). There are other optional elements.
3.4 What is the CreateChildControls() method? How can you use it to do something simple like displaying a Label control?
The CreateChildControls method in WebParts is used to notify the WebPart that there are children controls that should be output for rendering. Basically, it will add any child ASP.NET controls that are called instantiating each control with its relevant properties set, wire any relevant event handlers to the control, etc. Then the add method of the control class will add the control to the controls collection. In the relevant WebPart render method, the EnsureChildControls method can be called (or set to false if no child controls should be called) to ensure that the CreateChildControls method is run. When using CreateChildControls it implies that your WebPart contains a composition of child controls.
In order to create something like a label control in Create, you would create a new label control using the new keyword, set the various properties of the control like Visible=True and ForeColor = Color.Red, and then use Controls.Add(myLabelControl) to add the control to the controls collection. Then you can declare EnsureChildControls in the Render method of the WebPart.
3.5 What does the RenderContents method do in an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?
The render contents method will render the WebPart content to the writer, usually an HtmlTextWriter since WebParts will output to an HTML stream. RenderContents is used to tell how the controls that are going to be displayed in the WebPart should be rendered on the page.
3.6 What is the WebPartManager sealed class? What is its purpose?
The WebPartManager sealed class is responsible for managing everything occurring on a WebPart page, such as the WebParts (controls), events, and misc. functionality that will occur in WebPartZones. For example, the WebPartManager is responsible for the functionality that is provided when you are working with moving a WebPart from WebPartZone to WebPartZone. It is known as the “the central class of the Web Part Control Set.”
3.7 What is a SPSite and SPWeb object, and what is the difference between each of the objects?
The SPSite object represents a collection of sites (site collection [a top level sites and all its subsites]). The SPWeb object represents an instance SharePoint Web, and SPWeb object contains things like the actual content. A SPSite object contains the various subsites and the information regarding them.
3.8 How would you go about getting a reference to a site?
Select For Unformatted Code
C#:
1. oSPSite = new SPSite("http:/server");
2. 3. oSPWeb = oSPSite.OpenWeb();
Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 6.2 or later.
3.9 What does a SPWebApplication object represent?
The SPWebApplication objects represents a SharePoint Web Application, which essentially is an IIS virtual server. Using the class you can instigate high level operations, such as getting all the features of an entire Web Application instance, or doing high level creation operations like creating new Web Applications through code.
3.10 Would you use SPWebApplication to get information like the SMTP address of the sp site?
Yes, since this is a Web Application level setting. You would iterate through each SPWebApplication in the SPWebApplication collection, and then use the appropriate property calls (OutboundMailServiceInstance) in order to return settings regarding the mail service such as the SMTP address.
3.11 How do you connect (reference) to a SharePoint list, and how do you insert a new List Item?
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C#:
1. using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("yourserver"))
2. {
3. using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
4. {
5. SPList interviewList = myWeb.Lists["listtoinsert"];
6. SPListItem newItem = interviewList.Items.Add();
7. 8. newItem["interview"] = "interview";
9. newItem.Update();
10. }
11. }
3.12 How would you loop using SPList through all SharePont List items, assuming you know the name (in a string value) of the list you want to iterate through, and already have all the site code written?
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C#:
1. SPList interviewList = myWeb.Lists["listtoiterate"];
2. foreach (SPListItem interview in interviewList)
3. {
4. // Do Something
5. }
3.13 How do you return SharePoint List items using SharePoint web services?
In order to retrieve list items from a SharePoint list through Web Services, you should use the lists.asmx web service by establishing a web reference in Visual Studio. The lists.asmx exposes the GetListItems method, which will allow the return of the full content of the list in an XML node. It will take parameters like the GUID of the name of the list you are querying against, the GUID of the view you are going to query, etc.
3.14 When retrieving List items using SharePoint Web Services, how do you specify explicit credentials to be passed to access the list items?
In order to specify explicit credentials with a Web Service, you generally instantiate the web service, and then using the credentials properties of the Web Service object you use the System.Net.NetworkCredential class to specify the username, password, and domain that you wish to pass when making the web service call and operations.
3.15 What is CAML, and why would you use it?
CAML stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language. CAML is an XML based language which provides data constructs that build up the SharePoint fields, view, and is used for table definition during site provisioning. CAML is responsible for rending data and the resulting HTML that is output to the user in SharePoint. CAML can be used for a variety of circumstances, overall is used to query, build and customize SharePoint based sites. A general use would be building a CAML query
3.16 What is impersonation, and when would you use impersonation?
Impersonation can basically provide the functionality of executing something in the context of a different identity, for example assigning an account to users with anonymous access. You would use impersonation in order to access resources on behalf of the user with a different account, that normally, that wouldn’t be able to access or execute something.
3.17 What is the IDesignTimeHtmlProvider interface, and when can you use it in WebParts?
The IDesignTimeHtmlProvider interface uses the function GetDesignTimeHtml() which can contain your relevant render methods. It was helpful to use in 2003 since it allowed your WebPart to have a preview while a page was edited in FrontPage with the Webpart on it, because the GetDesignTimeHtml() method contains the HTML for the designer to render.
3.18 What are WebPart properties, and what are some of the attributes you see when declaring WebPart properties in code?
WebPart properties are just like ASP.NET control properties, they are used to interact with and specify attributes that should be applied to a WebPart by a user. Some of the attributes you see with ASP.NET 2.0 properties are WebDescription, WebDisplayName, Category, Personalizable, and WebBrowsable. Although most of these properties come from the System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts class, ones like Category come out of System.ComponentModel namespace.
3.19 Why are properties important in WebPart development, and how have you exploited them in past development projects? What must each custom property have?
Properties are important because WebParts allow levels of personalization for each user. WebPart properties make it possible for a user to interact, adjust, and increase overall experience value with the programmatic assets that you develop without having the need to use an external editor or right any code. A very simple example of exploiting a property would be something like allowing the user to change the text on the WebPart design interface so that they can display whatever string of text they desire.
Each custom property that you have must have the appropriate get and set accessor methods.
3.20 What are ClassResources? How do you reference and deploy resources with an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?
ClassResources are used when inheriting from the SharePoint.WebPart.WebPartPages.WebPart base class, and are defined in the SharePoint solution file as things that should be stored in the wpresources directory on the server. It is a helpful directory to use in order to deploy custom images. In ASP.NET 2.0, typically things such as images are referenced by embedding them as resources within an assembly. The good part about ClassResources is they can help to eliminate recompiles to change small interface adjustments or alterations to external JavaScript files.
Part: 4
4.1 What is a SharePoint Solution File? How does it differ from WebPart .cab files in legacy development? What does it contain?
A SharePoint solution file is essentially a .cabinet file with all a developers ustom componets suffixed with a .wsp extension that aids in deployment. The big difference with SharePoint solution files is is that a solution:
allows deployment to all WFE’s in a farm
is highly manageable from the interface allowing deployment, retraction, and versioning
Can package all types of assets like site definitions, feature definitions (and associated components), Webparts, etc.
Can provide Code Access Security provisioning to avoid GAC deployments
Just to name a few things…
4.2 What is a .ddf file and what does it have to do with SharePoint Solution creation?
A .ddf file is a data directive file and is used when building the SharePoint solution bundle specifying the source files and their destination locations. The important thing for someone to understand is that the .ddf file will be passed as a parameter to the MAKECAB utility to orchestrate construction of the SharePoint solution file.
4.3 What file does a SharePoint solution package use to orchestrate (describe) its packaged contents?
The solution Manifest.XML file.
4.4 What deployment mechanism can you use to instigate Code Access Security attributes for your WebParts?
SharePoint solution files can add in order to handle code access security deployment issues. This is done in the element in the SharePoint solution manifest.XML, which makes it easier to get assemblies the appropriate permissions in order to operate in the bin directory of the web application.
4.5 What is a SharePoint Feature? What files are used to define a feature?
A SharePoint Feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances, such as at the farm, site collection, web, etc. Features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature is installing, uninstalling, activated, or deactivated. They are helpful because they allow ease of upgrades and versioning.
The two files that are used to define a feature are the feature.xml and manifest file. The feature XML file defines the actual feature and will make SharePoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.
4.6 What types of SharePoint assets can be deployed with a SharePoint feature?
Features can do a lot. For example, you could deploy
Simple site customizations, Custom site navigation, WebParts, pages, list types, list instances, event handlers, workflows, custom actions, just to name a few….
4.7 What are event receivers?
Event receivers are classes that inherit from the SpItemEventReciever or SPListEventReciever base class (both of which derive out of the abstract base class SPEventRecieverBase), and provide the option of responding to events as they occur within SharePoint, such as adding an item or deleting an item.
4.8 When would you use an event receiver?
Since event receivers respond to events, you could use a receiver for something as simple as canceling an action, such as deleting a document library by using the Cancel property. This would essentially prevent users from deleting any documents if you wanted to maintain retention of stored data.
4.9 What base class do event receivers inherit from?
Event receivers either inherit from the SPListEventReciever base class or the SPItemEventReciever base class, both which derive from the abstract base class SPEventReceiverBase.
4.10 If I wanted to not allow people to delete documents from a document library, how would I go about it? You would on the ItemDeleting event set: properties.Cancel= true.
4.11 What is the difference between an asynchronous and synchronous event receivers?
An asynchronous event occurs after an action has taken place, and a synchronous event occurs before an action has take place. For example, an asynchronous event is ItemAdded, and its sister synchronous event is ItemAdding.
4.12 How could you append a string to the title of a site when it is provisioned?
In the OnActivated event:
Select For Unformatted Code
C#:
1. SPWeb site = siteCollection.RootWeb;
2. site.Title += "interview";
3. site.Update();
4.13 Can an event receiver be deployed through a SharePoint feature? Yes.
4.14 What is a content type?
A content type is an information blueprint basically that can be re-used throughout a SharePoint environment for defining things like metadata and associated behaviors. It is basically an extension of a SharePoint list, however makes it portable for use throughout an instance regardless of where the instantiation occurs, ergo has location independence. Multiple content types can exist in one document library assuming that the appropriate document library settings are enabled. The content type will contain things like the metadata, listform pages, workflows, templates (if a document content type), and associated custom written functionality.
OR
• What are content types?
A content type is a flexible and reusable WSS type definition (or we can a template) that defines the columns and behavior for an item in a list or a document in a document library. For example, you can create a content type for a leave approval document with a unique set of columns, an event handler, and its own document template and attach it with a document library/libraries.
4.15 Can a content type have receivers associated with it?
Yes, a content type can have an event receiver associated with it, either inheriting from the SPListEventReciever base class for list level events, or inheriting from the SPItemEventReciever base class. Whenever the content type is instantiated, it will be subject to the event receivers that are associated with it.
4.16 What two files are typically (this is kept generally) included when developing a content type, and what is the purpose of each?
There is generally the main content type file that holds things like the content type ID, name, group, description, and version. There is also the ContentType.Fields file which contains the fields to include in the content type that has the ID, Type, Name, DisplayName, StaticName, Hidden, Required, and Sealed elements. They are related by the FieldRefs element in the main content type file.
4.17 What is an ancestral type and what does it have to do with content types?
An ancestral type is the base type that the content type is deriving from, such as Document (0x0101). The ancestral type will define the metadata fields that are included with the custom content type.
4.18 Can a list definition be derived from a custom content type?
Yes, a list definition can derive from a content type which can be seen in the schema.XML of the list definition in the element.
4.19 When creating a list definition, how can you create an instance of the list?
You can create a new instance of a list by creating an instance.XML file.
4.20 What is a Field Control?
Field controls are simple ASP.NET 2.0 server controls that provide the basic field functionality of SharePoint. They provide basic general functionality such as displaying or editing list data as it appears on SharePoint list pages.
Part: 5
5.1 Will Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 run on a 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows?
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Office SharePoint Server 2007, Office Forms Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search will support 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003.
5.2 How Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help you?
Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help us: Manage content and streamline processes. Comprehensively manage and control unstructured content like Microsoft Office documents, Web pages, Portable Document Format file (PDF) files, and e-mail messages. Streamline business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity. Improve business insight. Monitor your business, enable better-informed decisions, and respond proactively to business events. Find and share information more simply. Find information and expertise wherever they are located. Share knowledge and simplify working with others within and across organizational boundaries. Empower IT to make a strategic impact. Increase responsiveness of IT to business needs and reduce the number of platforms that have to be maintained by supporting all the intranet, extranet, and Web applications across the enterprise with one integrated platform. Office SharePoint Server 2007 capabilities can help improve organizational effectiveness by connecting people, processes, and information. Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides these capabilities in an integrated server offering, so your organization doesn't have to integrate fragmented technology solutions itself.
5.3 What are the features that the portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include?
The portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include features that are especially useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet Web sites, and divisional portal sites. The portal components make it easier to connect to people within the organization who have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience.
5.4 What are the advanced features of MOSS 2007?
User Interface (UI) and navigation enhancements
Document management enhancements
The new Workflow engine
Office 2007 Integration
New Web Parts
New Site-type templates
Enhancements to List technology
Web Content Management
Business Data Catalog
Search enhancements
Report Center
Records Management
Business Intelligence and Excel Server
Forms Server and InfoPath
The “Features” feature
Alternate authentication providers and Forms-based authentication
5.5 What are the features of the new Content management in Office SharePoint 2007?
The new and enhanced content management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007 fall within three areas:
Document management
Records management
Web content management
Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on the core document management functionality provided by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, including check in and check out, versioning, metadata, and role-based granular access controls. Organizations can use this functionality to deliver enhanced authoring, business document processing, Web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing.
5.6 Does a SharePoint Web site include search functionality?
Yes. SharePoint Team Services provides a powerful text-based search feature that helps you find documents and information fast.
5.7 Write the features of the search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007?
The search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007 has been significantly enhanced by this release of SharePoint Products and Technologies. New features provide:
A consistent and familiar search experience.
Increased relevance of search results.
New functions to search for people and expertise.
Ability to index and search data in line-of-business applications and • Improved manageability and extensibility.
5.8 What are the benefits of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?
Provide a simple, familiar, and consistent user experience.
Boost employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities.
Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content.
Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value.
Simplify organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems.
Connect people with information and expertise.
Accelerate shared business processes across organizational boundaries.
Share business data without divulging sensitive information.
Enable people to make better-informed decisions by presenting business-critical information in one central location.
Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.
5.9 Will SharePoint Portal Server and Team Services ever merge?
The products will come together because they are both developed by the Office team.
5.10 What does partial trust mean the Web Part developer?
If an assembly is installed into the BIN directory, the code must be ensured that provides error handling in the event that required permissions are not available. Otherwise, unhandled security exceptions may cause the Web Part to fail and may affect page rendering on the page where the Web Part appears.
5.11 How can I raise the trust level for assemblies installed in the BIN directory?
Windows SharePoint Services can use any of the following three options from ASP.NET and the CLR to provide assemblies installed in the BIN directory with sufficient permissions. The following table outlines the implications and requirements for each option.
Option Pros Cons
Increase the trust level for the entire virtual server. For more information, see "Setting the trust level for a virtual server" Easy to implement.
In a development environment, increasing the trust level allows you to test an assembly with increased permissions while allowing you to recompile assemblies directly into the BIN directory without resetting IIS. This option is least secure.
This option affects all assemblies used by the virtual server. There is no guarantee the destination server has the required trust level. Therefore, Web Parts may not work once installed on the destination server.
Create a custom policy file for your assemblies. For more information, see "How do I create a custom policy file?" Recommended approach.
This option is most secure.
An assembly can operate with a unique policy that meets the minimum permission requirements for the assembly.
By creating a custom security policy, you can ensure the destination server can run your Web Parts.
Requires the most configuration of all three options. Install your assemblies in the GAC
Easy to implement. This grants Full trust to your assembly without affecting the trust level of assemblies installed in the BIN directory.
This option is less secure.
Assemblies installed in the GAC are available to all virtual servers and applications on a server running Windows SharePoint Services. This could represent a potential security risk as it potentially grants a higher level of permission to your assembly across a larger scope than necessary
In a development environment, you must reset IIS every time you recompile assemblies.
Licensing issues may arise due to the global availability of your assembly.
5.12 Does SharePoint work with NFS?
Yes and no. It can crawl documents on an NFS volume, but the sharepoint database or logs cannot be stored there.
5.13 How is SharePoint Portal Server different from the Site Server?
Site Server has search capabilities but these are more advanced using SharePoint. SPS uses digital dashboard technology which provides a nice interface for creating web parts and showing them on dashboards (pages). SS doesn't have anything as advanced as that. The biggest difference would be SPS document management features which also integrate with web folders and MS Office.
5.14 What would you like to see in the next version of SharePoint?
A few suggestions:
SPS and STS on same machine
Tree view of Categories and Folders
General Discussion Web Part
Personalization of Dashboards
Role Customization
Email to say WHY a document has been rejected for Approval
More ways to customize the interface
Backup and restore an individual Workspaces
Filter for Visio
Better way to track activity on SPS
Ability to Save as from Adobe to space on My Network Places
5.15 Why Sharepoint is not a viable solution for enterprise wide deployments?
Planning an enterprise deployment using SharePoint features is a very difficult task unless you can establish a Service Oriented Architecture, using AD for managing security with well defined roles based information access(EISA). Sounds reasonable, although it seems difficult to deploy with the tools limitations in document storage.
Document management does not scale beyond a single server, but scales great within a single server. For example, a quad Xeon machine with 4GB of RAM works great for a document management server that has about 900,000 - 1,000,000 document, but if you need to store 50,000,000 document and want to have them all in one single workspace then it does not scale at all. If you need a scenario like this, you need to plan your deployment right and it should scale for you, it just does not right out of the box. If you are using your server as a portal and search server most for the most part it scales great. You can have many different servers crawl content sources and have separate servers searching and serving the content.
If you have < 750,000 documents per server and fewer than 4 content sources and fewer than 50,000 users, SPS should scale just fine for your needs with the proper planning.
5.16 What are the actual advantages of SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) over SharePoint Team Services (STS)?
SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has MUCH better document management. It has check-in, check-out, versioning, approval, publishing, subscriptions, categories, etc. STS does not have these features, or they are very scaled back. SharePoint team Services (SPS) has a better search engine, and can crawl multiple content sources. STS cannot. STS is easier to manage and much better for a team environment where there is not much Document Management going on. SPS is better for an organization, or where Document Management is crucial.
5.17 What is SharePoint from a Technical Perspective?
Technically SharePoint illustrates neatly what Microsoft's .net strategy is all about: integrating Windows with the Web. Microsoft has previously made accessing stuff on a PC easier, (Windows) then on a network (NT) and now on the web (.NET). SharePoint is an application written to let a user access a web accessible directory tree called the Web Storage System.
SharePoint was written with a set of technologies that allow the programmer to pass data, functions, parameters over HTTP, the web's medium. These are XML, XSL and SOAP, to name a few I understand the basics of!
To the user it looks easy, like Hotmail, but every time they click a button or a link, a lot has to happen behind the scenes to do what they want to do quickly and powerfully. Not as easy as you might think, but SharePoint does it for you. Accessing this Web storage system and the server itself is also done using technologies like ADO, CDO, PKMCDO, LDAP, DDSC, ADSC. More on these later. SharePoint is a great example of how the Internet Platform can be extended and integrated into an existing well adopted technology, Windows.
5.18 What is SharePoint from an Administration Perspective?
Administering SharePoint mainly consists of setting it up, which is much easier than you expect, adding the content, which can be just dragging and dropping in whole directory structures and files, and then organizing the files better by giving them categories or other metadata. This is done either through the Web interface or through the SharePoint Client: a program what means you can access SharePoint as a Web folder and then right-click files to select options like "edit profile". Or add files by dragging them in individually or in bulk.
Setting the security is also important, using NT accounts, either NT4 or Active Directory (or both in mixed mode) you can give users access to files/folders the same way as you do in standard Windows. Users can be grouped and the groups given access privileges to help manage this better. Also SharePoint has 3 Roles that a User or Group can be given on a particular item. Readers can see the item (i.e. document/file or folder) but not change it, Authors can see and edit items and coordinators can set security privileges for the part of the system they have control over. Thus, you could set 12 different coordinators for 12 different folder trees, and they could manage who can do what within that area only.
5.19 What is SharePoint from a Users Perspective?
From a Users perspective SharePoint is a way of making documents and folders on the Windows platform accessible over the web. The user visits the SharePoint Portal web page, and from there they can add documents, change documents & delete documents. Through this Portal, these documents are now available for discussion, collaboration, versioning and being managed through a workflow. Hence the name "Share-Point". Details about the document can be saved too, such as: who wrote it, when, for whom, its size, and version, category or target audience. These can then be used to find the document through SharePoint's Search facility. Even documents not "in" SharePoint can be included in the search engine's index so they become part of the portal. All in all, it's a great way to get stuff up on the web for users with average technical skills, and for administrators to manage the content.
5.20 What are the various Sharepoint 2003 and Exchange integration points?
Link to Outlook
This is a button on contacts or events lists that lets Outlook 2003 add a pst file named Sharepoint Folders and it links to the data on the site. It’s read-only, but you could make the home page for that PST be the Sharepoint site for easier viewing. The link to outlook feature seems more to be where some can public a calendar, but not want too much collaboration. For example, a holiday schedule, company meeting schedule, etc, can be made available for people to be able to view from Outlook without having to go to a web browser. Another nice thing about OL2K3 is that you can compare these calendars with others side by side.
Displaying Public Folders in a web part Since exchange web-enables public folders, you can create a web part that displays that content. IE, http://exchangeserver/Public/IT/Helpdesk will display the IT/Helpdesk public folder via OWA. So you add the Page Viewer web part to a page and point it at that URL. The key here is to add ?cmd=contents to the end of the url if you don’t want the navigator pane on the left.
Smart web parts Some of the web parts that come with SPS allow you to add a web part to a page that actually takes the users outlook info (calendar, inbox, contacts, tasks) and put them into the page. The SmartPart Web Part project template for Visual Studio allows developers to create quickly a project which contains the base infrastructure to:
* write a web user control (ASCX)
* wrap the user control in a SmartPart instance
* generate a SharePoint Solution file (WSP) for easy deployment
* generate a setup package for a wizard driven installation
Part: 6
6.1 What is a SharePoint site definition? What is ghosted (uncustomized) and unghosted (customized)?
SharePoint site definitions are the core set of functionality from which SharePoint site are built from, building from the SiteTemplates directory in the SharePoint 12 hive. Site definitions allow several sites to inherit from a core set of files on the file system, although appear to have unique pages, thereby increasing performance and allowing changes that happen to a site propagate to all sites that inherit from a site definition. Ghosted means that when SharePoint creates a new site it will reference the files in the related site definition upon site provisioning. Unghosted means that the site has been edited with an external editor, and therefore the customizations are instead stored in the database, breaking the inheritance of those files from the file system.
6.2 How does one deploy new SharePoint site definitions so that they are made aware to the SharePoint system?
The best way to deploy site definitions in the SharePoint 2007 framework is to use a SharePoint solution file, so that the new site definition is automatically populated to all WFE’s in the SharePoint farm.
6.3 - What does partial trust mean the Web Part developer?
If you install assemblies into the BIN directory, you must ensure your code provides error handling in the event that required permissions are not available. Otherwise, unhandled security exceptions may cause your Web Part to fail and may affect page rendering on the page where the Web Part appears. The following is a typical example of a security exception:
Request for the permission of type
Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission,
Microsoft.SharePoint.Security, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c failed
As stated previously, the WSS_Minimal trust level does not grant permission to the
SharePointPermission.ObjectModel to assemblies in the BIN directory for an application. Therefore, if your code attempts to use the Microsoft SharePoint object model, the common language runtime (CLR) throws an exception. Since the minimal permission set provides the smallest set of permissions required for code to execute, the likelihood of additional security exceptions is increased.
Recommendation Try-catch critical areas to address situations where you may not have the necessary permissions to accomplish a specified objective.
6.4 What if my assemblies are installed in the GAC?
By default, assemblies installed in the global assembly cache (GAC) run with Full trust. Although, installing your Web Part assembly in the GAC is a viable option, it is recommended that you install Web Part assemblies in the BIN directory for a more secure deployment.
6.5 What if my assembly is not strongly named? How does my code group change?
You can specify membership conditions for a code group in several ways. You can use the UrlMembershipCondition to specify conditions as follows:
<CodeGroup class="UnionCodeGroup"
version="1"
PermissionSetName="MyCustomPermissions">
<IMembershipCondition class="UrlMembershipCondition"
version="1"
Url="$AppDirUrl$/bin/MyAssemblyName.dll" />
</CodeGroup>
6.6 What is a Shared Service Provider? In what circumstances might you create more than one?
The Shared Service Provider in MOSS is where the administrator manages the Search crawling and indexing in the portal. It is also where the information from Active Directory is compiled. The reasons for having more than one would be to ensure information in a secure or sensitive part of your portal is not included in search results for the rest of the portal.
6.7 What are Features and Solutions and what is the difference between the two?
Features are a method for developers to package customizations and deploy them to the SharePoint portal. They can then be activated and deactivated at the Site Collection level. Solutions are a way to bundle features together for deployment.
6.8 What is the difference between a Site Definition and a Site Template?
Site Definitions are stored on the hard drive of the SharePoint front end servers. They are used by the SharePoint application to generate the sites users can create. Site Templates are created by users as a copy of a site they have configured and modified so that they do not have to recreate lists, libraries, views and columns every time they need a new instance of a site.
• What base class do custom Field Controls inherit from?
This varies. Generally, custom field controls inherit from the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseFieldControl namespace, but you can inherit from the default field controls.
• Can multiple SharePoint installs point to the same DB?
Multiple SharePoint installs can use the same database server. Not literally the same database on that server. That server must be SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005. It cannot be Oracle or another vendor.
• How to create links to the mapped network drives?
Creating links to mapped drives in WSS v3 or MOSS 2007 can be done via the new content type for .lnk files.
• While creating a Web part, which is the ideal location to Initialize my new controls?
Override the CreateChildControls method to include your new controls. You can control the exact rendering of your controls by calling the .Render method in the web parts Render method.
• What is the difference between method activity and event activity in WorkFlow ?
A method activity is one that performs an action, such as creating or updating a task. An event activity is one that runs in response to an action occurring.
• What is a SharePoint Feature? What files are used to define a feature?
A SharePoint Feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances, scope of which are defined as
1. Farm level 2. Web Application level 3. Site level 4. Web level
Features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature is
Installing, Uninstalling, Activated, or Deactivated.
The element types that can be defined by a feature include
menu commands, link commands, page templates, page instances, list definitions, list instances,
event handlers, and workflows.
The two files that are used to define a feature are the feature.xml and manifest file(elements.xml). The feature XML file defines the actual feature and will make SharePoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.
• Workflow can be applied to what all elements of SharePoint ?
Workflow associations are often created directly on lists and libraries, a workflow association can also be created on a content type that exists within the Content Type Gallery for the current site or content types defined within a list. In short, it can be applied ...
At the level of a list/library
At the level of a content type defined at site scope
At the level of a content type defined at list scope
• What are the types of input forms that can be created for a workflow ?
You can create four different types of input forms including
1. An association form
2. An initiation form
3. A modification form
4. A task edit form.
Note that these forms are optional when you create a workflow template.
• What are 2 ways to create input forms for workflow ?
1. You can create your forms by using custom application pages, which are standard .aspx pages deployed to run out of the _layouts directory. ( disadv: lot of code required when compared to Infopath approach)
2. Using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 (disadv: picks up a dependenct on MOSS, i.e. it cannot run in a standalone WSS environment)
• What does AllowUnsafeUpdates do ?
If your code modifies Windows SharePoint Services data in some way, you may need to allow unsafe updates on the Web site, without requiring a security validation. You can do by setting the AllowUnsafeUpdates property.
• What does RunWithElevatedPrivileges do?
There are certain object model calls model that require site-administration privileges. To bypass access-denied error, we use RunWithElevatedPrivileges property when request is initiated by a nonprivileged user. We can successfully make calls into the object model by calling the RunWithElevatedPrivileges method provided by the SPSecurity class.
• What does SPWeb.EnsureUser method do?
Checks whether the specified login name belongs to a valid user of the Web site, and if the login name does not already exist, adds it to the Web site.
e.g SPUser usr = myWeb.EnsureUser("hitenders");
• Would you use SPWebApplication to get information like the SMTP address of the SharePoint site?
Yes, since this is a Web Application level setting. You would iterate through each SPWebApplication in the SPWebApplication collection, and then use the appropriate property calls (OutboundMailServiceInstance) in order to return settings regarding the mail service such as the SMTP address.
• What are the two base classes a WebPart you are going to use within SharePoint 2007 can inherit from?
There are two base classes that a WebPart which is going to be consumed by SharePoint can inherit from, either the
SharePoint WebPart Base class or
the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class.
When inheriting from the SharePoint WebPart Base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart. When inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart. It is considered good practice to use the ASP.NET WebPart base class since the old base class is meant for backwards compatibility with previous version of SharePoint, however there are four exception when it is better to leverage functionality from the SharePoint WebPart base class:
Cross page connections
Connections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zone
Client-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)
Data caching infrastructure
What are Application Pages in SharePoint?
Unlike site pages (for example, default.aspx), a custom application page is deployed once per Web server and cannot be customized on a site-by-site basis. Application pages are based in the virtual _layouts directory. In addition, they are compiled into a single assembly DLL.
A good example of an Application Page is the default Site Settings page:
every site has one, and it's not customizable on a per site basis (although the contents can be different for sites).
With application pages, you can also add inline code. With site pages, you cannot add inline code.
Typically, you link custom application pages to application.master, the master page file that is used by the default application pages in Windows SharePoint Services. You should also write application pages to inherit from a base class defined inside the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly named LayoutsPageBase.
When to use Diffrent Site Collections?
Ans. An Individual Site collection offers following :
For the Users:
Dedicated Recycle bins
Dedicated usage Reports
Distributed administration (site collection administrators)
Dedicated search scopes, keywords, and best-bets
Custom feature deployments
Dedicated language translation maintenance
Dedicated galleries for web parts, master pages, content types, site columns, site templates, and list templates
Dedicated shared libraries, such as site collection images and site collection styles
Dedicated real estate (Self Containment)
For the IT Administrators:
Site quota templates
Distributed administration
Site locking
Database maintenance options
Backup / Restore abilities
Content Deployments
InfoPath forms services global template targeting.
What are Security methods (Authentication methods) available in SharePoint?
Ans :"Out of the box", SharePoint 2007 supports nine authentication methods. NTLM (short for NT Lan Manager, which is simply the Windows authentication that everyone is familiar with) and Kerberos (also a Windows "standard" authentication) are offered during installation, but I recommend to get started with NTLM, as Kerberos requires "special configuration by the domain administrator", while NTLM works without further hassle.
What does AllowUnsafeUpdates do?
If your code modifies Windows SharePoint Services data in some way, you may need to allow unsafe updates on the Web site, without requiring a security validation. You can do by setting the AllowUnsafeUpdates property.
C#:
using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("yourserver"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
myWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
SPList interviewList = myWeb.Lists["listtoinsert"];
SPListItem newItem = interviewList.Items.Add();
newItem["interview"] = "interview";
newItem.Update();
} }
Differences between site pages and application pages
Pages that support user customization are known as site pages. E.g. the page that we could see inside our SharePoint designer like default.aspx (home page), NewForm, EditForm,DispForm.aspx etc. The site pages could easily be customized without making any changes to the local file system of the front-end web server and without any need of developer involved for that. This is possible by storing the customized version of the aspx and master page files inside the content database. The saving and retrieving of content from the database is provided using SPVirutalPathProvider class.
Site pages could exist either in customized(unghosted) or uncustomized(ghosted) state.
For e.g. when we create a new site using one of the default templates, the site as well as pages therin are in uncustomized state i.e. they are based on page templates that live on the file system of the front-end web server. Page template are used for provisioning (creating) page intances.
As long as the page is not customized using SharePoint designer or through the Site Settings option the copy of the page is not stored in the content database and the pages are loaded from the file system of the web server. A single page template is compiled into an assembly and loaded into memory of IIS worker process one per web application.
However when page is customized, SPVirtualPathProvider retrieves the customized version of the page from the content database and passes it to ASP.NET parser. Now these pages aren’t compiled into assembly. They are processed by ASP.NET parser in no-compile mode.
No-compile pages provide higher levels of scalability compared to compiled pages. Compiled pages offer following benefits
Performance Compiled code is much faster than scripting languages such as ECMA Script or VBScript because it is a closer representation to machine code and does not require additional parsing.
Security Compiled code is more difficult to reverse engineer than non-compiled source code because it lacks the readability and abstraction of a high-level language. Additionally, there are obfuscation tools that make compiled code even more resistant to reverse engineering.
However these compiled pages cannot be loaded into memory and unloaded in a manner similar to no-compile pages. .NET framework doesn’t support concept of unloading an assembly DLL from memory. By recycling the current Windows process or AppDomain it is possible to unload the dll, the issues is that it would unload all dll’s from memory, not any specific as desired. And moreover there is limit associated with number of assemblies that could be loaded in a .NET AppDomain.
With no compiled pages there is no requirement of loading assemblies into the memory. Processing for compiled pages is done by loading control trees into memory. Once the processing is finished for a customized page, the page’s control tree is unloaded to free up memory resources. And also as the pages are not compiled, it provides faster response time for pages upon first access.
No Compile Pages enables improved scaling for large sites with 1000s of pages, as windows has limit on number of DLLs loaded into an app and performance degrades as you hit this limit.
Application pages are pages that don’t support customization. They cannot be customized using SharePoint designer. E.g. settings.aspx, create.aspx etc.
These pages are deployed at \Layouts directory of 12 hive and are available to all the sites. They are compiled into a single dll and loaded into memory once per web application.
They are used extensively for provisioning and administrating sites as well as elements inside the sites. Application pages links to application.master.
So main differences between these two types of pages could be summarized as
Site pages support customization whereas application pages don’t.
Site pages once customized run in no-compile mode whereas application pages are always compiled.
Now as site pages support customization it involves risk so under default security policy enforced by WSS we couldn’t write inline code in it whereas it is allowed to write in-line code in case of application page.
Application page scale better than site page.
Description 2:
Site pages are customized pages and are saved in to content database. So when you use the SharePoint designer to make custom changes it saves the changes in to content database. If you want to make generic pages in a site collection which will be used by everyone, like for instance the ‘Settings.aspx’ page then you need to use application pages.
In other words Site pages are nothing but customized pages stored in content, while application pages are generic pages which will be used by all the sites in a site collection.
Class
A class is simply a representation of a type of object
Component
In the .NET Framework, a component is a class that implements the IComponent interface or that derives directly or indirectly from a class that implements IComponent. In programming, the term component is generally used for an object that is reusable and can interact with other objects. A .NET Framework component satisfies those general requirements and additionally provides features such as control over external resources and design-time support.
Control over external resources
The IComponent interface extends the IDisposable interface, which has a method named Dispose() in its contract. In its implementation of the Dispose() method, a component must release external resources explicitly. This provides a deterministic way to free resources, in contrast to the default nondeterministic cleanup that happens through garbage collection. Developers must propagate Dispose()()()throughout a containment hierarchy to ensure that children of a component also free resources. Additionally, a derived component must invoke the Dispose() method of its base class.
Control
A control is a component that provides (or enables) user-interface (UI) capabilities. The .NET Framework provides two base classes for controls: one for client-side Windows Forms controls and the other for ASP.NET server controls. These are Control and Control. All controls in the .NET Framework class library derive directly or indirectly from these two classes. Control derives from Component and itself provides UI capabilities. Control implements IComponent and provides the infrastructure on which it is easy to add UI functionality.
Note: Every control is a component, but the converse is not true.
WSS 3.0 vs MOSS 2007
WSS 3.0
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS3.0) comes free with Windows Server 2003.
WSS 3.0 offers all the standard site templates to build team sites, document workspaces, blank sites, blogs, wikis, and meeting workspaces.
WSS 3.0 can be used to create people and group lists.
You can integrate WSS 3.0 sites with Access 2007, Excel 2007, Outlook 2007, Word 2007 and PowerPoint 2007.
It also serves as a platform for application development. Including such IT resources as portals, team workspaces, e-mail, presence awareness, and Web based conferencing, Windows SharePoint Services enables users to locate distributed information quickly and efficiently, as well as connect to and work with others more productively.
Create Site Collection: Select template will give minimum options it's like Collaboration and Meetings.
MOSS 2007
MOSS is not free and it is installed on top of WSS 3.0.MOSS has both a server cost and a client access license (CAL) cost.
MOSS 2007 offers business intelligence features that allow you to track key performance indicators and build BI dashboards into your team site.
Moss is used as a super powerful content management system, which aims to provide content management, enterprise content services and enterprise search.
Workflow can also be integrated into MOSS 2007.
Moss also offers My Sites, which are individual mini-sites that can be set up to show who in your company you're connected to, what your tasks and skills are, your contact information, and more.MOSS 2007 is the portal system, comparable to SharePoint Portal Server 2003. It brings a wealth of built-in functionality and interoperability to a company's intranet over and above the functions of WSS 3.0.
Create Site Collection:Select template will give more options it's like Collaboration, Meetings, Enterprise, Custom and Publishing Only WSS 3.0
Advantages MOSS 2007 has over WSS 3.0:
Support User Profiles: Users could store profile information.
Site Manager: Provided with Drag and Drop functionality to manage navigation and other web parts.
Enterprise Search Tools: Tools to search SharePoint sites and portals across entire enterprise.
Business Data Catalog (BDC): Enabling access and interaction with external data from business application.
Data Search: Search data information from your business application using BDC.
Data Web Parts: One could view the list and related information could be retrieve through BDC.
Business Document Workflow Support: Using workflow applications document review, approval, signature collection, and tracking could be automated.
Retention and Auditing Policies: Allows customized information management policy to control retention period and auditing.
Spreadsheet Publishing: Allows user to share information with others and interact with published Spreadsheets.
Managing Spreadsheets: Access to spreadsheet data and analysis. Could protect data information in spreadsheets.
Excel Services for Web-based BI: Interactive, data-bound spreadsheets including charts, pivot-tables, tables could be shared easily.
Report Management: Reports, spreadsheets, and data could be managed consistently.
Key Performance Indicators: KPI web part could connect to analysis services, Spreadsheets, SharePoint lists and manually entered data.
Email Notifications: Users could be notified by emails, for improved triggering and filtering.
Single Sign On: User could sign on to multiple applications with single user id and password.
Support to Personal Website: User could create personal web sites.
Content Syndication: Use of RSS feeds to syndicate content managed in portal site.
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