Dom Cosgrove Blog

You can use the following syntax to get the fully qualified URL to a Form for a SharePoint List / Library.

SPList list = SPContext.Current.List;

SPListItem item = list[0];

item.Web.Url + "/" + item.ParentList.Forms[PAGETYPE.PAGE_DISPLAYFORM].Url + "?ID=" + item.ID

PAGETYPE is an enumeration of the SharePoint Forms:

Visual Studio 2005 for Software Testers (VSST) allows you to create custom Counter Sets, which are a set of performance counters that can be applied to a computer in the test farm. VSST comes with some Counter Sets out-of-the-box (OOTB) for the Load Test, Controller and Agent amongst others:

Invariably when creating performance tests, you’ll develop them on a computer, which is not in the SharePoint Server Farm. This computer will most probably not have a number of the performance counters that you want to monitor. For instance SharePoint uses the w3wp (IIS) worker process, which unless you have IIS installed on your local machine, you will not be able to add the counters. To add the counters you need to specify a computer that has the counters that you require.

Typically I create a counter set for each of the server roles in the farm. This allows me to monitor different counters for different roles. For instance the Web Front End (WFE) servers counters are very different to the Back End SQL server. Joel Oleson has publish a good list of counters that the SharePoint Performance Team use.

Creating Custom Counter Set
1. Open or create a new Load Test in VSST;
2. Right mouse click on the Counter Set node and select Add Custom Counter Set;

3. In the properties pane give the newly created Counter Set a useful name e.g. SharePoint WFE, SharePoint DB, SharePoint Search e.t.c
4. Right mouse click the newly created Counter Set and select Add Counters;

5. Enter the name of the computer that you are going to collect the counters from e.g. SharePoint WFE or SQL Database server. The List of Performance Categories will be refreshed for the categories available on that server. If you select Process for instance, the list of instances will be different for the WFE and the DB servers. Select the required counters.

Note:
If you work in an environment where least privileges are employed you may not have sufficient right to add performance counters from a remote computer. You may encounter a message such as “Cant read performance counter categories for computer xxx”.

To be able to access the performance counters you need your system administrators to add you (or the account you are running the test under) to the following server roles:

• Performance Log Users – Members of this group have remote access to schedule logging of performance counters on this computer
• Performance Monitor Users – Members of this group have remote access to monitor this computer

Using Custom Counter Set
1. Open the Load Test where you created your custom counter set;
2. Right mouse click on Counter Set Mappings and Select Manage Counter Sets…;

3. In the Manage Counter Sets dialog box select Add Computer. Select the newly created Custom Counter Set and click OK;
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References:

• How to configure Stress Test Project For MOSS 2007 using VS2008 Team Suite for System Testers
• Working with Load Tests

If you need to browse your SharePoint site or for that matter any site, hosted on your VPC while you are not connected to a network, read on. If you are not connected to a network the VPC does not get an IP address issued hence why you cannot browse hosted sites. The solution to this is the MS Loopback Adapter. The following shows you how to set up your loopback adapter.

Add Loopback adapter

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. Then click Add Hardware:
   
2. Select Yes, I have already connected the hardware:
   
3. From the list of devices select Add a new hardware device:
   
4. Select Install the hardware that I manually select from list (Advanced):
   
5. From the list of hardware types select Network Adapter:
   
6. From the list of Manufactures select Microsoft and from the list of Network Adapters select Microsoft Loopback Adapter:
   
7. Click Finish once the adapter is installed.
8. The Loopback Adapter will now appear in you list of Network Connections:
   

Configure Loopback Adapter

1. In the Network Connections right mouse click on the newly created Loopback Adapter and select Properties;
2. From the Properties select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties:
   
3. In the Properties add the IP address as follows:
    
4. Click OK to commit the changes.

Configure VPC Network Adapter

1. On Virtual PC (VPC) Console click Settings;
   
2. On the settings dialog box select Networking and then select Microsoft Loopback Adapter as the 1st Adapter. Click OK;
   
3. On the VPC click the Network icon in the task bar or navigate to the Network Connections through the control panel. The network icon may display a warning message “Limited or no connectivity”. Don’t worry about this at the moment;
   
4. On the Network Connections window, right mouse click on the Local Area Connection and click Properties;
   
5. On the TCP/IP settings for the Network adapter enter the following details. Click OK;
6. You will notice that the network icon on the desktop task bar no-longer displays the warning message;
7. On the VPC, launch the Command Prompt and type IPConfig you should see that the VPC now has the IP address, subnet and gateway that you just entered;
   
8. From the VPC Command prompt ping 192.168.5.10 to confirm connectivity to the host;
    
9. Ensure that you don’t have any network connectivity on your host computer, then from the Command Prompt ping the VPC 192.168.5.11 to confirm connectivity to the VPC;

Configure Host File

If your SharePoint (or website) uses Host Headers then you’ll need to edit your Host file:

1.   Open your Host file C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\host;
   
2. In the host file put the IP address of your VPC 192.168.5.11 and set the host in my case that is scratch;
    
3. You should now be able to browse your SharePoint (Web Site) hosted on a VPC even if you do not have connection to a network;
    

Ok, so there are loads of these sort of blogs already out there, but hey thought I’d let you know the suite of tools that I’ve added to my arsenal. All these tools should help make your SharePoint life allot easier… they definitely save me a load of headaches over the years. Thanks to all the community folks for developing these tools, with out them our lives would be a lot harder.

Microsoft Windows PowerShell command line shell and scripting language helps IT professionals achieve greater control and productivity. Using a new admin-focused scripting language, more than 130 standard command line tools, and consistent syntax and utilities, Windows PowerShell allows IT professionals to more easily control system administration and accelerate automation.

A free book called Mastering PowerShell is available to download here:

http://powershell.com/Mastering-PowerShell.pdf

This is a useful reference to determine the scope of your features:

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms454835.aspx

MVP John Holliday has extended the wss.xsd schema to provide a rich CAML IntelliSense editing experience. By furnishing the out of the box schema with additional xs:annotation and xs:string, the IntelliSense now provides descriptions for each of the elements (from the SDK) and optional attribute values.

I highly recommend use this schema when developing your SharePoint features definitions.

The CAML.NET IntelliSense comes as an .msi installer to make your life even easier.

Thanks again to John Holliday

CAML.NET IntelliSense project

By default, SharePoint web parts are always put into a web part group called “Miscellaneous”.

All you need to do is locate your Feature Element Manifest XML file and add a Property Element called Group and assign it a value. This is normally the XML file that is in your WebPart Folder.

Nice and easy hey… enjoy

If you need to get the SharePoint Installation Directory Path then you can use the SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath method. For instance if you needed to get the path to a features directory to load some XML you could use the following syntax:

string FeaturesPath = SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath(@”TEMPLATE\FEATURES\” + FeatureName)

The SPUtility Class is full of static methods for assisting you in your SharePoint Development.

Every SharePoint Developer should have SPDisposeCheck Tool in there arsnel! This tool, developed by the guys on the SharePoint Team will intergoate your compiled .dll’s to ensure that you are correctly disposing of SharePoint objects, primarily SPSite and SPWeb. Why do we need to dispose of SharePoint object, well from the horses mouth as such :

“Several of the Windows SharePoint Services objects, primarily the SPSite class and SPWeb class objects, are created as managed objects. However, these objects use unmanaged code and memory to perform the majority of their work. The managed part of the object is much smaller than the unmanaged part. Because the smaller managed part does not put memory pressure on the garbage collector, the garbage collector does not release the object from memory in a timely manner. The object’s use of a large amount of unmanaged memory can cause some of the unusual behaviors described earlier. Calling applications that work with IDisposable objects in Windows SharePoint Services must dispose of the objects when the applications finish using them. You should not rely on the garbage collector to release them from memory automatically.”

Roger Lamb has an excellent blog article - SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 Dispose Patterns by Example

Add SPDisposeCheck to Visual Studio

Visual Studio IDE allows you to add External Tools such as SPDisposeCheck. The follow steps explain how:

1. In Visual Studio select Tools | External Tools

2. Add the following settings:

Title:  SPDisposeCheck
Command: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\SharePoint Dispose Check\SPDisposeCheck.exe
Arguements: $(TargetName)$(TargetExt)
Initial Directory: $(TargetDir)
Use Output Window: Checked

SP Dispose Check External Tools

Reference

Introduction to Using Disposable Windows SharePoint Services Objects