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May 10
SharePoint 2010 - Ask Me About …… “SharePoint; CPU;”

Why is my CPU load so high on my SharePoint front end server?

This is what the customer asked me.
Valid question I must say as the CPU fluctuated between the 50% and the 100%. The environment was very slowwwwww.

The investigation started:

  • In the resource manager I noticed that the w3wp.exe was causing the CPU load.
  • The event viewer contained a warning (Event Id: 3001) that occurred every 30 seconds which indicated that there was something wrong with a certain mysite
  • The ULS logs gave me more info:

High Url Path: /my/<person>/overview.aspx
Exception Exception information: Exception information: Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPartException: Thread was being aborted. ---> System.Threading.ThreadAbortException: Thread was being aborted.     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.AskMeAboutWebPart.RenderValues(HtmlTextWriter writer, Int32 startIndex, Int32 endIndex)   

So from the AskMeAboutWebPart webcontrol I decided to have a look at the users profile Ask me About property and noticed an ‘&’ sign in one the tags.

Solution: you guessed it: I removed that tag and performed an IISRESET

It could well be that this is already solved in one of the latest CU updates. I think I have read something about this but I couldn’t find it anymore. As soon as I do, I will update this post.

August 24
This is how I run my SharePoint 2010 (development) environment

When SharePoint 2010 beta was released, everyone wanted to get their hands on it as soon as possible, and so did I.

I went away installing it as a vm on my Dell XPS 1530 with a duo core processor and 4 gigs of memory on a 7200 rpm harddrive. Well I soon came back disappointed, the performance was crap (which is an understatement).

Then I noticed that it was possible to boot from VHD (see Scott Henselman post for instance), eureka :) Now it was possible to dedicate all my hardware resources to just one operating system and make the most out of it. And I must confess it actually worked rather great, that’s what I call “paddle with the paddles that you have available” (an expression that we use in Holland).
So I actually was getting some performance even during my development. This is definitely something that I would like to recommend to anyone that doesn’t have the option to get a new laptop, use a bootable VHD instead and start cracking with SP2010. Besides the performance advantage you can also make backups quite easily, just copy - paste your VHD and you’re all set :)

To avoid booting from VHD you can also consider an memory upgrade to 6 gig (if supported) and insert an SSD harddrive and use that together with your duo core processor.
Although I haven’t tested this myself this configuration should let you run SP2010 in a VM as well, see Mike Walsh his post.

Recently I am lucky enough to own a new Dell studio XPS which has an i7 core, 8gigs of memory and a SSD, in short A BEAST! It also matches my feminine white iphone :)
Anyway this thing runs like crazy, I can hardly keep up with it. I reckon the SSD is the key performer in this configuration.
You will experience a virtual environment that is just as snappy as your host operating system, it’s that fast.

Unfortunately I only have an 128 gig SSD drive and soon ran out of disk space, so I thought I will make use of my eSata connector which has twice as much read/write speed then a USB 2.0 port and run my virtual machine from there.
I can’t exactly tell why but I had high expectations, but still got a bit disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still reasonably fast but just not as fast as running it from my local SSD, I got spoiled I guess.
The eSata drive will still come in handy as it is faster then USB and will be perfect to cover my lack of storage space.

To keep a long story long, get a new laptop with an i5 or i7 core, 8gigs and an SSD drive, otherwise run your SP2010 dev environment from a bootable VHD.
As you noticed I didn’t pull in any facts and figures of the hardware technologies I have been using, it’s just my personal experience while working with SP2010.

Some useful links:

  1. Less Virtual, More Machine - Windows 7 and the magic of Boot to VHD by Scott Henselman
  2. Solid State Drive/SSD and SharePoint Server, Project Server Demo Image Benchmark by Christophe Fiessinger
  3. The myths of the requirements for SharePoint 2010 – by Mike Walsh
July 16
The zevenseas SharePoint 2010 Search admin pages solution

OK I confess …….. I am in love with search.

Occasionally (for me more frequent) you don’t know what and where “it” exactly was, but you still remember the name or part of the name of the thing you are looking for.

I really like the search capabilities of Windows 7 for instance, as an example the search box in the control panel. Personally I still don’t know where to locate the UAC option for instance, so I use search to help me.

image

And actually I have the same problem with the Central Administration Pages and the Site Settings page within SharePoint 2010. Most of the time the menu option I am looking for is right in front of me, but because I see so many options I can’t see mine.

Wouldn’t it be great if you can have the same search experience in the SharePoint Admin Pages as we have in the control panel? Well I think so.

zevenseas Search Admin Pages to the rescue…. I am crap in thinking of catchy names, so I apologies for that.

So what it does is just adding a search bar onto your Central Admin pages and your Site Settings page.

image

And when you search for something it hides the menu options that are irrelevant and highlight the option(s) that matches your search term.

image

This works the same for the Site Settings pages in your web application.

The holy grail behind this functionality is jquery which is being added to the page via a usercontrol. Unfortunately it is not a sandbox solution because the usercontrol is being added via a delegate.

You can download the SharePoint solution file from codeplex. Hope you will like it and please let me know if you have any feedback, questions or idea’s.

August 07
Screenscraper - create your screenshots within your sharepoint list

Today we are pleased to announce the release of a new free SharePoint Solution called ScreenScraper.

In short, the ScreenScraper application enables you to take screenshots of web pages based on the URL field in a list, any list.

What does it do?

Have you ever lost that article you used to visit so often?

image

Ever wanted to save the content of an article you found and you had to manually create a screenshot or had to copy-paste the content into a word document?

ScreenScraper for SharePoint helps you to store your valuable webpages by creating a screenshot and then storing it as an attachment to a SharePoint list item.

When you enable ScreenScraper on a list you will be able to fill in a url field, containing the URL or the website you want to save. That screenshot will be saved in the list as an attachment of your newly created item.

You will never lose an article again.

Go ahead and use it?

Download ScreenScraper

Installation steps:

  • Run the setup on your server

image

  • Activate the zevenseas ScreenScraper site feature

image

  • Enable the ScreenScraper in the list settings

ScreenScraper requires mandatory fields. If those fields are not present in the list than you will get the option to create them first.

image

  • Go back to the list and start creating new items.

image

Compatible

ScreenScraper is compatible with all SharePoint lists. Unfortunately, the current version of ScreenScraper will not work on SharePoint libraries like document or picture libraries.

ScreenScraper goes hand in hand with the social bookmarking solution Tagged Links, together they are a strong combination.    

So, now you are able to easily store your links in the Tagged Links list and directly create a screenshot of your stored link. Now you will never lose your valuable web sites location or its content.

Feedback

Let us know what you think of it. I am happy to receive your feedback / suggestions or any questions.

Hope you will enjoy it. 

Download ScreenScraper

December 11
Come and follow us on Twitter !!

The zevenseas team is now on Twitter.

If you are new on Twitter you might want to check out Joel his posts:

See you on Twitter !!

November 24
Store and Share your bookmarks with Tagged Links, it's free !!!!

Last weekend Daniel launched the zevenseas Tagged Links Social Bookmarking solution for free.

This nifty piece of software will let you store and share your bookmarks within your team / organization. It is a smart and fast way to share information which you came across while riding the waves of the Internet.

 

Tagged links is still evolving as we speak so stay tuned for more features !!

 

Try or download Tagged Links yourself and let us know how you feel.

Download Tagged Links here

or

Try Tagged Links here

(Username: DemoUser Password: DemoUser)

November 10
Setting up SharePoint development boxes

Last week I was happily given the task to arrange and install six SharePoint development servers for our SharePoint development team.

We requested six virtual w2k3 SP2 dual core servers with 4GB memory. By default SQL server 2005 standard edition SP2 was installed.
Although the boxes where all virtual, unfortunately we are not in the luxury to just configure 1 server and use that one for the other five boxes.

I installed and configured software on the boxes synchronously and keeping track of my actions in the following lists.

Standard software

Software Description Server 1 Server 2
Office 2007   x x
Sharepoint designer 2007   x x
Office 2007 SP1   x x
7-zip freeware zip program that unpacks everything x x
bginfo desktop background that displays system info x x
MOSS 2007 + SP1   x x
Visual Studio team system 2008   x x
Visual Studio Power tools A set of enhancements, tools and command line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server user experience. x x
Visual Studio Team Explorer used to access Team Foundation Server x x
PowerShell 1.0   x x
Windows Desktop search 4.0   x x

Additional development tools

Tools Description Server 1 Server 2
Fiddler HTTP Debugging x x
IE developer toolbar   x x
Reflector   x x
SandCastle Document your sourcecode by creating CHM files. x x
CodeRushExpress 3.2.1 Visual Studio add-on x x
AD explorer advanced Active Directory (AD) viewer and editor x x

SharePoint tools

Tools Description Server 1 Server 2
SharePoint manager SharePoint object model explorer x x
zevenseas SearchCoder Query SharePoint x x
WSS SDK   x x
Office Server SDK   x x
WSP Builder A SharePoint Solution Package (WSP) creation tool for WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007 x x
SharePoint 2007 features Bunch of very useful SharePoint features x x

Server configuration

Configurations Description Server 1 Server 2
SMTP server   x x
Add STSADM.EXE to your local variables path   x x
Quicklaunch pins show desktop, IE, 12-hyve, x x
Startmenu pins Central Admin, VS.NET, SQL server management, Computer management x x
Copy the startmenu to the all users profile   x x

I hope this is useful for you. Let me know if you have additional hints and tips.

September 07
Store relational information in Sharepoint ?

Can Sharepoint help me out with relational data? Well, Patrick Tisseghem's blog can give you an answer to that question.

But do  I really need to have a custom solution if I want to link one item with multiple items? Let me elaborate on this  a bit more.

Case
Each period you might have a performance meeting with your employees and you want to store the conclusion of this meeting in sharepoint and attach that to the employee.

Well a folder / item structure in a document library might help you.

Step 1: Create a New contact content type and base this on the existing folder content type.

Go to Site actions -> Site settings -> site content types -> create and fill in the following.
image

Step 2: Create new site columns

Create new or add existing fields to your content type. These fields will hold the employee personal information. You might want to place the new fields under a new group rather then an existing one.
image

Step 3: Create a "performance" document library

This document library will hold your employees (folders) and the performance documents (items) underneath.

Go to site settings -> create -> document library and give it a useful name.
Once the document library is created you need to go to the settings of your new document library (settings - > document library settings) and go to the advanced settings.

Here you need to make the following changes:

  1. allow management of content types = yes
  2. Display "New folder" command on the New menu = No

 image

After these changes you have the ability to attach the New contact content type you created in step 1 by clicking on the Add from existing site content types.

image

Step 4: create a new view

In order to have a nice overview with employees you can create a standard view that contains the employee fields.
In your list settings click "create a new view" -> standard view and select and order the fields you would like to display.

Make sure this is the default view for this particular list.

image

Step 5: Create a new employee

In your list you can now press new and New contact

image

Fill in the employee details

image

Now each folder is an employee and in each employee folder you can store the e.g. performance documents.

image

May 24
LAYOUTS folder revealed

A social life ....... well draw your own conclusions when reading this post but the excuse is at the end of this post.

Of course nothing goes wrong during your development and deployment. But what if for some unforeseen reason a little mistake is made and because of that only the default.aspx is screwed up, you might still want to access the other useful administration pages of your site.

Or perhaps you might want to have some shortcuts to commonly used administration pages, this post might help you. 

Fortunately there are not so many pages so therefor I will update this list bit by bit, bare with me and please feel free to help me out here.

For now I am only listing the pages that are directly accessible from your site collection and don't require a querystring. It's an oldie and kind of retro but back in his handsome younger days my mate Daniel posted an item about querystrngs.

  1. AclInv.aspx = add users
  2. AddNavigationLinkDialog.aspx = Edit the title, URL, and description of the navigation item.
  3. addrole.aspx = Add a Permission Level
  4. AdminRecycleBin.aspx = Site Collection Recycle Bin
  5. AreaCacheSettings.aspx = Publishing Site Output Cache Settings
  6. AreaNavigationSettings.aspx = Site Navigation Settings
  7. Site Navigation Settings  = Site Navigation Settings
  8. AreaTemplateSettings.aspx = Page Layout and Site Template Settings
  9. AreaWelcomePage.aspx = Site Welcome Page
  10. AssetPortalBrowser.aspx =
  11. associatedgroups.aspx = Edit Group Quick Launch
  12. AuditSettings.aspx = Configure Audit Settings
  13. avreport.aspx = ow really :))
  14. bpcf.aspx = New Basic Page
  15. ChangeSiteMasterPage.aspx = Site Master Page Settings
  16. ContentTypeHierarchy.aspx = Content Types Hierarchy
  17. create.aspx = create overview lists, sites and pages
  18. CreatePage.aspx = Create Page
  19. ctypenew.aspx = New Site Content Type
  20. deleteweb.aspx = Delete This Site
  21. dws.aspx = Document Workspace (instruction page)
  22. editpolicy.aspx = Edit Policy
  23. editprofile.aspx = Edit Details
  24. enhancedsearch.aspx = Search Settings
  25. ........ to be continued

While going trough all the pages in the layouts folder I came across some pages that I have never seen before. Have a look yourself and feel free to provide your vision about the purpose of these pages.

  1. ConnGps.aspx

Excuse: I am at the Volkswagen dealer waiting for my car to be ready.

May 12
Deploy your own custom webservices on a sharepoint environment
I was a little bit puzzled about deploying a new webservice. This is how I did it.

  1. Copy your dll file into the bin folder of your web application
  2. In the 12\ISAPI folder, which is the virtual IIS directory _vti_bin folder, locate the web.config file and modify the following:

    <webServices>
        <protocols>
            <remove add name="HttpGet" />
            <remove add name="HttpPost" />
            <remove add name="HttpPostLocalhost" />
            <add name="Documentation" />
        </protocols>
    </webServices>
Depending on your needs you can either make the web service available on farm level by using the ISAPI folder or on web application level by using your web application folder.
  1. Farm level:
    Copy your asmx file in the ISAPI folder

  2. Web application level: 
    Create a new folder under the root of your web application and copy your asmx file to this location.

Now navigate with your browser to the copied asmx file:

  • http://<web application>/_vti_bin/<service>.asmx
  • http://<web application>/<new folder>/<service>.asmx

If your webservice listens to SOAP requests then you need to enable that by adding the <add name="httpSoap" /> entry.

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It's a first day on the job 1
SharePoint 2010 - Ask Me About …… “SharePoint; CPU;” 0
This is how I run my SharePoint 2010 (development) environment 0
Store and Share your bookmarks with Tagged Links, it's free !!!! 0
Second day on the job 0
Visual Studio 2005 class project - where is my workflow template? 0
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