Sharepoint

Technical Preview Document of SharePoint 2010

pramod12345 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:51:03 +0000

Technical Preview Document of SharePoint 2010

1) Services Applications are new model in SharePoint 2010 Technical Preview. MOSS 2007 used the concept of SSP. For the purpose of reading this overview view SSP and Services Applications can be interchangeable, but it is important to note that they do use different protocols

2) In SSP in MOSS 2007 the core platform controlled the schema of the SSP database, in SharePoint Server 2010 the Service Application can specify the database schema for their application DB when calling the core System Configuration protocols

3) Configuration Database – Configuration DB defines how SharePoint farm used the content databases. As earlier, content database contain individual site collection. However, this partitioning is abstracted from users of SharePoint frond-end protocols; the URL namespace exposed by SharePoint frontend web servers does not directly indicate which content database stores a specific site collection. This mapping from URL to content database is performed by using information stored in configuration database. Configuration database also stored configuration objects that describes settings across the SharePoint farm

4) Service Application Database – A Service Application (SSP in MOSS 2007) includes capabilities to span multiple site collections in a deployment and can even work across multiple SharePoint farms. Settings and data used by Service Applications is stored in Service Application Database

5) Usage Database – Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 has Usage Database which supports the storage, retrieval and reporting of usage and diagnostic data. It is used by SharePoint (and can be extended by 3^rd party features built on SharePoint) to store usage data of various kinds, including user request information, performance counters, data on slow or expensive queries and other relevant performance data.

6) List and Library Storage – Content database provide the core persistence for SharePoint site, list and document library content. Information such as customization to Web pages in a site and content addition to lists and libraries are stored in Content Database. Individual site collections are contained entirely within individual content databases; no information from one site collection can span across multiple content databases.

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Thanks & Regards
Pramod Attarde
SharePoint Architect
Visit my Blogs at – http://sharepointproficient.spaces.live.com/
Join SharePoint 2010 Discussion Group on Linkedin – http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2265830&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

SharePoint General Tips

pramod12345 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:49:40 +0000

General Tips what to do and not to do and also Nice Imp Notes

Do or Recommended

1) For SharePoint site content source if you want to crawl the content on a particular site collection on a different schedule than other site collections then Crawl only the SharePoint site of each start address. This option accepts any URL, but will start the crawl from the top-level site of the site collection that is specified in the URL you enter. For example, if you enter http://contoso/sites/sales/car but http://contoso/sites/sales is the top-level site of the site collection, the site collection http://contoso/sites/sales and all of its subsites are crawled.

2) For SharePoint site content source if you want to crawl all content in all site collections in a particular Web application on the same schedule then Crawl everything under the host name of each start address. This option accepts only host names as start addresses, such as http://contoso. You cannot enter the URL of a subsite, such as http://contoso/sites/sales when using this option.

3) For Web sites content source if relevant content is only the first page then crawl only the first page of each start address

4) For Web sites content source if you want to limit how deep to crawl the links on the start addresses then Custom — specify the number of pages deep and number of server hops to crawl. We recommend you start with a small number on a highly connected site because specifying more than three pages deep or more than three server hops can crawl the entire Internet. You can also use one or more crawl rules to specify what content to crawl

5) For File shares or Exchange public folders content source if Content available in the subfolders is not likely to be relevant then Crawl only the folder of each start address

6) File shares or Exchange public folders Content Source type if Content in the subfolders is likely to be relevant then Crawl the folder and subfolder of each start address

Avoid

Search:

1) You cannot crawl the same address using multiple content sources. For example, if you use a particular content source to crawl a site collection and all its subsites, you cannot use a different content source to crawl one of those subsites on a different schedule. For performance reasons, you cannot add the same start addresses to multiple content sources

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Search

1) Content is any item that can be crawled, such as a Web page, a Microsoft Office Word document, business data, or an e-mail message. Content resides in a content repository, such as a Web site, file share, or SharePoint site.

2) A content source is a set of rules that tells the crawler where it can find content, how to access the content, and how to behave when it is crawling the content. It includes one or more addresses of a content repository from which to start crawling, also called start addresses. These settings apply to all start addresses within the entire content source.

3) Type of Content Repository – Sites, SharePoint sites, Exchange Folder, Network Folders, BDC

4) Each content source contains a list of start addresses that the crawler uses to connect to the repository of content

5) When the crawler accesses the start addresses listed in a content source, the crawler must be authenticated by and granted access to the servers that host that content. The user account that is used by the crawler must have at least read permission to crawl content

6) The crawler in uses protocol handlers to access content and then IFilters to extract content from files that are crawled. IFilters remove application-specific formatting before the engine indexes the content of a document. Only file types for which a protocol handler and IFilter are installed are crawled by Office SharePoint Server 2007

7) The crawler uses protocol handlers and IFilters as follows:

· The crawler retrieves the start addresses of content sources and calls the protocol handler based on the URL’s prefix.

· The protocol handler connects to the content source and extracts system-level metadata and access control lists information.

· The protocol handler identifies the file type of each content item, based on the file name extension, and calls the appropriate IFilter associated with that file type.

· The IFilter extracts content, removing any embedded formatting, and then retrieves content item metadata.

· Content is parsed by one or more language-appropriate word breakers and is added to the content index, also called the full-text index. Metadata and access control lists are added to the search database.

8) If there is no IFilter for a file type that you want to crawl, the content index in SharePoint can only include the file’s properties, and not the file’s content. If you want to index content that does not have an IFilter installed by default, you have to install and register an IFilter for that file type, for example for PDF

9) Content is only crawled if the relevant file name extension is included in the file-type inclusions list and an IFilter is installed on the index server that supports those file types

10) The crawler uses protocol handlers to access content. When creating a content source, shared services administrators specify the protocol handler that the crawler will use when crawling the URLs specified in that content source

11) Default Protocol handlers for example – http, https, bdc, sps, sps3, bdc2, sts, rb

12) If you want to crawl content that does not have a protocol handler installed, you must install a third-party or custom protocol handler before you can crawl that content. Several third-party protocol handlers

Search Performance

1) Database Server: The index server writes metadata that it collects from crawled documents into tables on the database server. When Indexer Performance is set to Maximum, the index server can generate data at a rate that overloads the database server. This can affect the performance of other applications that are using the same database server. It can also affect the performance of other shared services that are running under the shared services provider (SSP), such as Excel Calculation Services.

2) Index server: Indexing can place considerable demands on index server resources such as the disk, processors, and memory. An index server must have sufficient hardware to accommodate the amount of indexing required by your organization

3) Web Front End Server: To crawl content on local SharePoint sites, the index server sends requests to Web front-end servers that host the content. Such requests consume resources on the Web front-end servers and can thus reduce the responsiveness of the SharePoint sites that are hosted on these servers for end users.

4) Monitoring server performance during crawls can help you determine the appropriate setting for Indexer Performance. We recommend that you conduct your own testing to balance crawl speed, network latency, database load, and the load on crawled servers.

5) Consider the following suggestions regarding adjusting the Indexer Performance setting:

· If you are using the index server and database server only for searching (using the Office SharePoint Server Search service), you might want to set the Indexer Performance level to Maximum and note how this affects your database server performance. If the increase in database server CPU utilization exceeds 30 percent, we recommend changing the Indexer Performance level to Partly reduced.

· If the index server and database server are shared across multiple services, such as the Office SharePoint Server Search service and Excel Calculation Services, we recommend that you select the Partly reduced or Reduced setting for Indexer Performance.

6) Manager Crawler Impact: Content crawls can place a significant load on crawled servers and thereby adversely affect response times for server users. Therefore, we recommend that you use crawler impact rules to specify how aggressively your crawler should perform. A search services administrator can manage the affect of the crawler on a crawled site by using a crawler impact rule to specify one of the following:

· The maximum number of documents that the crawler can request at a time from the specified site.

· The frequency with which the crawler can request any particular document from the specified site.

7) Try to avoid crawling internal servers at peak load times

8) You can increase or limit the quantity of content that is crawled by using:

· Crawl settings in the content sources For example, you can specify to crawl only the start addresses that are specified in a particular content source, or you can specify how many levels deep in the namespace (from those start addresses) to crawl and how many server hops to allow. Note that the options that are available within a content source for specifying the quantity of content that is crawled vary by content-source type.

· File type inclusions You can choose the file types that you want to crawl.

· Crawl rules You can use crawl rules to exclude all items in a given path from being crawled. This is a good way to ensure that subsites that you do not want to index are not crawled with a parent site that you are crawling. You can also use crawl rules to increase the amount of content that is crawled — for example crawling complex URLs for a given path.

SharePoint Updates Information

pramod12345 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:48:19 +0000

SharePoint Updates Information

Title

KB No

File Name

Zip File Name

WSS SP2

kb953338

wssv3sp2-kb953338

Not Available

MOSS 2007 SP2

kb953334

officeserver2007sp2-kb953334

Not Available

WSS April Cumulative Update

KB968850

Wsskb968850fullfilex86glb

379581

MOSS 2007 April Cumulative Update

KB968851

officekb968851fullfilex86glb

381035

WSS June Cumulative Update

KB971538

wsskb971538fullfilex86glb

386540

MOSS 2007 June Cumulative Update

KB971537

officekb971537fullfilex86glb

388488

Bug Fix for Key

KB971620

Office2007-KB971620fullfile

Not Available

Available on following Site

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/13/april-cumulative-update-packages-ready-for-download.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/07/20/june-cumulative-update-packages-ready-for-download.aspx

IIS 6.0 Architecture

pramod12345 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:45:53 +0000

IIS 6.0 Architecture—A New Request Processing Architecture

Web site and application code is becoming increasingly complex. Dynamic Web sites and applications might contain imperfect code that leaks memory or causes errors such as access violations. Therefore, a Web server must be an active manager of the application run-time environment and automatically detect and respond to application errors. When an application error occurs, the server needs to be fault-tolerant, meaning it must actively recycle and restart a faulty application while continuing to queue requests for the application and not interrupting the end-user’s experience. IIS 6.0 features a new fault-tolerant request processing architecture that has been designed to provide this robust and actively managed runtime, and achieve dramatically increased reliability and scalability by combining a new process isolation model, called worker process isolation mode, with performance enhancements such as kernel mode queuing and caching.

The previous version of IIS, IIS 5.0, was designed to have one process, named Inetinfo.exe, function as the main Web server process. This process transferred requests to “out of process” applications hosted in DLLHost.exe processes. In comparison, IIS 6.0 has been redesigned into two new components, a kernel-mode HTTP protocol stack (HTTP.sys) and a user-mode administration and monitoring component. This architecture allows IIS 6.0 to separate the operations of the Web server from the processing of Web site and application code—without sacrificing performance. These two major components of the IIS 6.0 fault-tolerant architecture are:

· HTTP.sys. A kernel-mode HTTP protocol stack that queues and parses incoming HTTP requests, and caches and returns application and site content. HTTP.sys does not load any application code, it simply parses and routes requests.

· WWW Service Administration and Monitoring component. A user-mode configuration and process manager that manages server operations and monitors the execution of application code. Like HTTP.sys, this component doesn’t load or process any application code.

Before discussing these components, it is important to introduce two new IIS 6.0 concepts: application pools and worker processes.

Application pools are used to manage a set of Web sites and applications. Each application pool corresponds to one request queue within HTTP.sys and the one or more Windows processes that process these requests. IIS 6.0 can support up to 2,000 application pools per server, and there can be multiple application pools operating at the same time. For example, a departmental server might have HR in one application pool and finance in another application pool. An Internet Service Provider (ISP) might have the Web sites and applications of one customer in one application pool, and the Web sites of another customer in a different application pool. Application pools are separated from other application pools by Windows Server 2003 process boundaries. Therefore, an application in one application pool is not affected by applications in other application pools, and an application request cannot be routed to another application pool while being serviced by the current application pool. Applications can easily be assigned to another application pool while the server is running.

A worker process services requests for the Web sites and applications in an application pool. All Web application processing, including loading of ISAPI filters and extensions, as well as authentication and authorization, is done by a new WWW service DLL, which is loaded into one or more host worker processes. The worker process executable is named W3wp.exe.

HTTP.sys

In IIS 6.0, HTTP.sys listens for requests and queues them appropriately. Each request queue corresponds to one application pool. Because no application code runs in HTTP.sys, it cannot be affected by failures in user-mode code that normally affect the status of the Web service. If an application fails, HTTP.sys continues to accept and queue new requests on the appropriate queue until one of the following: the process has been restarted and begins to accept requests, there are no queues available, there is no space left on the queues, or the Web service itself has been shut down by the administrator. Because HTTP.sys is a kernel-mode component, its queuing operation is especially efficient, enabling the IIS 6.0 architecture to combine process isolation with high performance request processing.

Once the WWW service notices the failed application, it starts a new worker process if there are outstanding requests still waiting to be serviced for the worker process’s application pool. Thus, while there may be a temporary disruption in user-mode request processing, an end user does not experience the failure, because requests continue to be accepted and queued.

WWW Service Administration and Monitoring Component

The WWW Service Administration and Monitoring component makes up a core portion of the WWW service. Like HTTP.sys, no application code runs in the WWW Service Administration and Monitoring component. This component has two primary responsibilities: system configuration and worker process management.

Server Configuration

At initialization time, the configuration manager portion of WWW service uses the in-memory configuration metabase to initialize the HTTP.sys namespace routing table. Each entry in the routing table contains information that routes incoming URLs to the application pool that contains the application associated with the URL. These pre-registration steps inform HTTP.sys that there is an application pool that responds to requests in a particular part of the namespace, and that HTTP.sys can request that a worker process be started for the application pool when a request arrives. All pre-registrations are done before HTTP.sys begins to route requests to individual processes. As application pools and new applications are added, the Web service configures HTTP.sys to accept requests for the new URLs, sets up the new request queues for the new application pools, and indicates where the new URLs should be routed. Routing information can change dynamically without requiring a service restart.

Worker Process Management

In the worker process management role, the WWW Service Administration and Monitoring component is responsible for controlling the lifetime of the worker processes that process the requests. This includes determining when to start, recycle, or restart a worker process, if it is unable to process any more requests (becomes blocked). It is also responsible for monitoring the worker processes, and can detect when a worker process has terminated unexpectedly.

Worker Process Isolation Mode

IIS 6.0 introduces a new application isolation mode for managing the processing of Web sites and applications: worker process isolation mode. Worker process isolation mode runs all application code in an isolated environment without incurring a performance penalty for that isolation. Applications can be completely isolated from each other, where one application error does not affect another application in a different process, using application pools. Requests are pulled directly from the kernel instead of having a user-mode process pull them from the kernel for the application, and then route accordingly to another user-mode process. First, HTTP.sys routes Web site and application requests to the correct application pool queue. Then, the worker processes serving the application pool pull requests directly from the application queue in HTTP.sys. This model eliminates the unnecessary process hops encountered when sending a request to an out-of-process DLLHost.exe and back again (as was the case in IIS 4.0 and 5.0), and increases performance.

It is important to note that, in IIS 6.0, there is no longer any notion of in-process applications. All necessary HTTP application run-time services, such as ISAPI extension support, are equally available in any application pool. This design prevents a malfunctioning Web site or application from disrupting the operation of other Web applications or the server itself. With IIS 6.0 it is now possible to unload in-process components without having to take down the entire Web service. The host worker process can be taken down temporarily without affecting other worker processes serving content. There is also a benefit from being able to leverage other operating system services available at the process level (for example CPU throttling), per application pool. Additionally, Windows Server 2003 has been re-architected to support many more concurrent processes than ever before.

Worker process isolation mode prevents one application or site from stopping another. In addition, separating applications or sites into separate worker processes simplifies a number of management tasks, for example: taking a site/application online or offline (independent of all other site/applications running on the system), changing a component the application uses, debugging an application, monitoring counters for an application, and throttling resources used by an application.

Features of IIS 6.0 worker process isolation mode include:

· Kernel-mode caching. Windows Server 2003 introduces a new kernel-mode HTTP driver called HTTP.sys, which is specifically tuned to increase Web server performance and scalability. Kernel-mode caching is available when using IIS 6.0, both in worker process isolation mode and in IIS 5.0 isolation mode (see below). As a single point of contact for all incoming (server-side) HTTP requests, HTTP.sys provides high-performance connectivity for HTTP server applications and provides overall connection management, bandwidth throttling, and Web server logging. IIS 6.0 has been built on top of HTTP.sys and has been specifically tuned to increase Web server throughput. In addition, under specific circumstances, HTTP.sys directly processes requests in the kernel. Both static and dynamic content from Web sites and applications can be cached in the HTTP.sys cache for high-performance responses.

· Clean separation between user code and the server. All user code is handled by worker processes, which are completely isolated from the core Web server. This improves upon IIS 5.0, because an ISAPI can be, and often is, hosted in-process to the core Web server. If an ISAPI loaded in a worker process fails or causes an access violation, the only thing taken down is the worker process that hosts the ISAPI. Meanwhile, the WWW service creates a new worker process to replace the failed worker process. The other worker processes are unaffected.

· Multiple application pools. With IIS 5.0, applications can be pooled together out-of-process, but only in one application pool, which is hosted by DLLHost.exe. When IIS 6.0 operates in worker process isolation mode, administrators can create up to 2,000 application pools, where each application pool can be configured separately.

· Better support for load balancers. With the advent of application pools, IIS 6.0 has a well-defined physical separation of applications; it is quite feasible to run hundreds or even thousands of sites/applications side by side on one IIS 6.0 server. In worker process isolation mode, it is important that errors in one application do not affect other applications. IIS 6.0 can also automatically communicate with load balancers/switches to route away only the traffic for a problematic application, while still allowing the server to accept requests for the other, healthy applications. For example, imagine a server processing requests for applications A and B. If application B fails so often that IIS 6.0 decides to automatically shut it down (see section on rapid fail protection below), the server should still be able to receive requests for application A. IIS 6.0 also has a built-in extensibility model that can fire events and commands when the WWW service detects a specific application’s failure. This configuration ability allows load balancers and switches to be configured to automatically stop routing traffic to problematic applications while still routing traffic to healthy applications.

· Web gardens. Multiple worker processes can be configured to service requests for a given application pool. By default, each application pool has only one worker process. However, an application pool can be configured to have a set of N equivalent worker processes that share the workload. This configuration is known as a Web garden because it is similar in nature to a Web farm, the difference being that a Web garden exists within a single server. Requests are distributed by HTTP.sys among the set of worker processes in the group. The distribution of requests is based on a round-robin scheme, where new connections with requests for the application pool are assigned to specific worker processes in that application pool. A benefit to Web gardens is that if one worker process slows down, such as when the script engine becomes unresponsive, there are other worker processes available to accept and process requests.

· Health monitoring. The WWW Service Administration and Monitoring Component monitors the health of applications by pinging worker processes periodically to determine if they are completely blocked. If a worker process is blocked, the WWW service terminates the worker process and creates another worker process in its place. The WWW service maintains a communication channel to each worker process and can easily tell when a worker process fails by detecting a drop in the communication channel.

· Processor affinity. Worker processes can have an affinity to specific CPUs to take advantage of more frequent CPU cache (L1 or L2) hits. Processor affinity, when implemented, forces IIS 6.0 worker processes to run on specific microprocessors or CPUs and applies to all worker processes serving the Web sites and applications of an application pool. Processor affinity can also be used with Web gardens that run on multiprocessor computers where clusters of CPUs have been dedicated to specific application pools.

· Allocating sites and applications to application pools. In IIS 6.0, as in IIS 5.0, applications are defined as those namespaces that are labeled in the metabase with the AppIsolated property. Sites, by default, are considered to be a simple application—where the root namespace “/” is configured as an application. An application pool can be configured to serve anything—from one Web application to multiple applications, up to multiple sites. You can assign an application to an application pool using IIS Manager or directly editing the metabase.

· Demand start. Application pools get benefits. For example, on-demand starting of the processes that service the namespace group, when the first request for a URL in that part of the namespace arrives at the server. The WWW Service Administration and Monitoring Component does on-demand process starting, and generally controls and monitors the life cycle of worker processes.

· Idle time-out. An application pool can be configured to have its worker processes request a shutdown if they are idle for a configurable amount of time. This is done to free up unused resources. Additional worker processes are started when demand exists for that application pool. (For more information, see the section on Demand Start above.)

· Rapid-fail protection. When a worker process fails, it drops the communication channel with the WWW Service Administration and Monitoring component. The WWW Service Administration and Monitoring component detects this failure and takes action, which typically includes logging the event and restarting the worker process. In addition, IIS 6.0 can be configured to automatically disable the worker process if a particular application pool suffers a configurable number of failures in a row in a configured time period. This is known as rapid-fail protection. Rapid-fail protection places the application pool in “out-of-service” mode and HTTP.sys immediately returns a 503–Service Unavailable, out-of-service message to any requests to that portion of the namespace—including requests already queued for that application pool.

· Orphaning worker processes. Worker process isolation mode can be configured to “orphan” any worker process that it deems “terminally ill.” For example, if a worker process fails to respond to a ping message in the configured time period, normally the WWW service would terminate that worker process and start a replacement. If “orphaning” is turned on, the WWW service leaves the “terminally ill” worker process running and starts a new process in its place. Also, the WWW service can be configured to run a command on the worker process (like attaching a debugger) when it “orphans” a worker process.

· Recycling worker processes. Today, many businesses and organizations have problems with Web applications that leak memory, suffer from poor coding, or have indeterminate problems. This forces administrators to restart their Web servers periodically. In previous versions of IIS, it was not possible to restart a Web site without an interruption of the entire Web server. Worker process isolation mode can be configured to periodically restart worker processes in an application pool to manage faulty applications. Worker processes can be scheduled to restart based on the following criteria: elapsed time, number of requests served, scheduled times during a 24-hour period, virtual memory usage, physical memory usage, and on demand. When a worker process wants to restart, it notifies the WWW service which then tells the existing worker process to shut down and gives a configurable time limit for the worker process to drain its remaining requests. Simultaneously, the WWW service creates a replacement worker process for the same namespace group, and the new worker process is started before the old worker process stops. This process prevents service interruptions. The old worker process remains in communication with HTTP.sys to complete its outstanding requests, and then shuts down normally, or is forcefully terminated if it does not shut down after a configurable time limit.

Global Assembly Cache

pramod12345 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:44:50 +0000

Global Assembly Cache

Each computer where the common language runtime is installed has a machine-wide code cache called the global assembly cache. The global assembly cache stores assemblies specifically designated to be shared by several applications on the computer.

You should share assemblies by installing them into the global assembly cache only when you need to. As a general guideline, keep assembly dependencies private, and locate assemblies in the application directory unless sharing an assembly is explicitly required. In addition, it is not necessary to install assemblies into the global assembly cache to make them accessible to COM interop or unmanaged code.

Note There are scenarios where you explicitly do not want to install an assembly into the global assembly cache. If you place one of the assemblies that make up an application in the global assembly cache, you can no longer replicate or install the application by using the xcopy command to copy the application directory. You must move the assembly in the global assembly cache as well.

There are several ways to deploy an assembly into the global assembly cache:

Use an installer designed to work with the global assembly cache. This is the preferred option for installing assemblies into the global assembly cache.

Use a developer tool called the Global Assembly Cache tool (Gacutil.exe), provided by the .NET Framework SDK.

Use Windows Explorer to drag assemblies into the cache.

Note In deployment scenarios, use Windows Installer 2.0 to install assemblies into the global assembly cache. Use Windows Explorer or the Global Assembly Cache tool only in development scenarios, because they do not provide assembly reference counting and other features provided when using the Windows Installer.

Administrators often protect the WINNT directory using an access control list (ACL) to control write and execute access. Because the global assembly cache is installed in the WINNT directory, it inherits that directory’s ACL. It is recommended that only users with Administrator privileges be allowed to delete files from the global assembly cache.

Assemblies deployed in the global assembly cache must have a strong name. When an assembly is added to the global assembly cache, integrity checks are performed on all files that make up the assembly. The cache performs these integrity checks to ensure that an assembly has not been tampered with, for example, when a file has changed but the manifest does not reflect the change.

–
Thanks & Regards
Pramod Attarde
SharePoint Architect
Visit my Blogs at – http://sharepointproficient.spaces.live.com/
Join SharePoint 2010 Discussion Group on Linkedin – http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2265830&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

.NET Assembly

pramod12345 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:43:53 +0000

.NET Assembly

Assemblies are the building blocks of .NET Framework applications; they form the fundamental unit of deployment, version control, reuse, activation scoping, and security permissions. An assembly is a collection of types and resources that are built to work together and form a logical unit of functionality. An assembly provides the common language runtime with the information it needs to be aware of type implementations. To the runtime, a type does not exist outside the context of an assembly.

Assembly is partially compiled code library
There are two types of Assemblies – Process Assembly (EXE) and Library Assembly (DLL)
Process Assenbly represent process which uses Classes in Library Assembly
.NET Assembly contain code in CIL, and then compiled in machine language at run time by the CLR
Assembly consists of one or more files. Code files are called Modules

Assembly Names - The name of Assembly consists of FOUR parts

The Short Name
The Culture – The Library and Process Assembly should be culture neutral
The Version – This is dotted number made of Four Values – Major, Minor, Build and Revision
A Public Key – This is 64 bit hash of the Public Key which corrosponds to the private key used to sign the Assembly

Few Terms in SharePoint MOSS 2007

pramod12345 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:49:49 +0000

Few Terms in SharePoint MOSS 2007

Farm – collection of servers that act together to provide a set of Web applications. The farm is most easily defined by the configuration database which defines the server member and roles of the farm as well as database servers used for storage.

Web application – In a SharePoint deployment contains IIS Web Sites previously known as IIS Virtual Servers that have been extended with SharePoint Server and have been set up to use the .NET assemblies to provide the SharePoint Application. There are content Web applications, and administration Web applications for both the central admin and the SSP admin. Web applications are known for their ability to isolate content in separate memory space with application pools which contain worker processes. In a collaboration service the Web application provides the container for the site collections in the farm.

Site Collection – A site collection is the most scalable unit in a SharePoint deployment and is a container for sites. The special properties of the site collection are the ability to have a quota, contain a global navigation, masterpage, and various galleries provided across the sites below it, and the ability to contain ownership. Considered the most scalable object in a deployment and the easiest to manage for its ability to be backed up and moved full fidelity across databases.

Site – a container of multiple lists which can inherit security, and leverage the galleries of the site collection above it. Primarily usage in a collaboration environment is for delegation of projects or to divide up content for easy navigation.

Portal – A special site template designed to host many sites below it. Common properties include special page galleries for Internet, or site directory on an Intranet portal. Another term might be hub based on navigation and a common place to go where you don’t know where to look for something. It’s the top of the breadcrumb navigation.

SharePoint Content sources summary

pramod12345 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:48:58 +0000

Content sources summary: Consider the following when planning your content sources:

· A particular content source can be used to crawl only one of the following content types: SharePoint sites, Web sites that are not SharePoint sites, file shares, Exchange public folders, Lotus Notes databases, and business data.

· Shared services administrators can create up to 500 content sources in each SSP, and each content source can contain up to 500 start addresses. To keep administration as simple as possible, you should create only as many content sources as you absolutely need.

· Each URL in a particular content source must be of the same content source type.

· For a particular content source, you can choose how deep to crawl from the start addresses. These configuration settings apply to all start addresses in the content source. The available choices on how deep you can crawl the start addresses differ depending upon the content source type that is selected.

· You can schedule when to perform either a full or incremental crawl for the entire content source. For more information about scheduling crawls, see “Full and incremental crawl schedules” earlier in this article.

· Shared services administrators can modify the default content source, create additional content sources for crawling other content, or both. For example, they can configure the default content source to also crawl content on a different server farm or they can create a new content source to crawl other content.

· To effectively crawl all the content needed by your organization, use as many content sources as make sense for the types of sources you want to crawl, and for the frequency at which you plan to crawl them.

What is Solution in SharePoint?

pramod12345 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:47:16 +0000

What is Solution in SharePoint?

The Windows SharePoint Services solution framework provides a way to bundle all the components for extending Windows SharePoint Services in a new file that is called a solution file. A solution file has a .CAB-based format but a .WSP extension. A solution is a deployable, reusable package that can contain a set of Features, site definitions, and assemblies that apply to sites, and that you can enable or disable individually. You can use the solution file to deploy the contents of a Web Part package, including assemblies, class resources, .dwp files, and other package components.

The Windows SharePoint Services solution framework is built upon the functionality provided in Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 by site and list definitions, .stp files, and .fwp files. It supersedes the functionality provided in Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 by Web Part packages (.wpp files). For backward compatibility, Web Part packages are supported in the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 solution framework. However, it is recommended that you deploy Web Parts through solution files (.wsp files) because the solution framework is more robust and can be used to deploy more types of entities than Web Part packages.

Benefits of the Solution Framework

The solution framework provides the following advantages:

· A unified infrastructure for deploying solutions. For ease in making changes to site functionality, Web sites do not need to be bound permanently to the Features and functionality of the sites when they were first created. By using Features, you can easily enable or disable functionality at a specified scope, as well as convert sites from one type to another.

A Feature is a collection of SharePoint elements that helps a user accomplish a particular goal or task

· Integrated deployment. Solutions enable developers and administrators to easily install files on the front-end Web servers in a server farm. Windows SharePoint Services can package all your Windows SharePoint Services entities as one file, add the file to the solution store, and deploy it to the front-end Web servers.

The solution framework allows you to do the following:

· Deploy new solutions and upgrade existing solutions across the farm.

· Synchronize a front-end Web server so that its state is consistent with the state of other servers in the farm.

The solution framework supports deployment of solutions to both front-end Web servers and to application servers configured in the farm

Unified localization There are central facilities for specifying localization settings, as well as ways to specify localizable token databases

Understanding More SharePoint Key Service Terms

pramod12345 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:46:04 +0000

Understanding SharePoint Key Service Terms

Quota – The SharePoint Server feature of Quota allows for a notification level and a maximum level. The notification advises the owners that the site is nearing the maximum quota and the site should be “cleaned up.” When the maximum quota is reached, the state of the site is read only and no further content can be added. When one quota is referred to, it is always the maximum quota.

Site Administrator – The manager of the permissions, providing delegation of rights and permissions levels

Site Owner – Specified during creation the primary and secondary owners provide the determination of the site. They receive both quota notification and expiration notifications for the site collection. It is common that site administrators and owners are the same individuals.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer / SharePoint Designer – Tool used to create master pages, create and manage workflows, and Web Part designer. A powerful tool for managing sites and its usage should be monitored.

WSS – Windows SharePoint Services provides the foundation of the collaboration platform with permissions levels and common templates.

MOSS – Office SharePoint Server provides application functionality on top of the base platform including auditing, expiration, common workflow templates, better master page galleries, and intranet and internet templates for quick deployment scenarios.

Master page – Controls the consistency and look and feel of a site or site collection.

Gallery – A special list or library containing Web Parts, master pages, and layouts.

Web Part – A snippet of code used for displaying lists, libraries, images, navigation or functional UI. Also used synonymously with widget, gadget, JQuery plugin.

List – A collection of items with rows and columns similar to a table. A list can contain documents, images, a user contact, a row of text, as well as business data.

Content type – Controls the aspect of what data can be added to a list and how that data is handled, but this document won’t provide the depth of the abilities of content types as this is primarily a collaboration environment with flexible content types to be delegated and managed by the site owner.