What about an ADO adapter for SharePoint (MOSS / WSS) Lists?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is quickly becoming a dominate application for storing and maintaining enterprise data and intelligence for organizations of all sizes. This has created a need and opportunity for people who has specialized in data integration and visualization between SharePoint and external applications. In MOSS 2007 there are a few options. You can use Web services to interact with SharePoint lists and other features or use the server object model to extend the capabilities. With MOSS 2010, Microsoft has stepped up by introducing the client object model, making it possible to use the object model remotely. Querying the underlying MOSS SQL server directly is highly unrecommended.

Unfortunately, many developers experience that the learning time to be able to rapidly develop applications working with MOSS/WSS is long. The developer often spend a lot of time understanding the MOSS/WSS data structure, naming conventions and data type conversion requirements. The developer also needs to understand the CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language) syntax used to query lists and views. The code base tends to grow to a size that is not in proportion to the functionality.

So, whats the offer

Camelot .NET Connector for SharePoint is a ADO.NET driver for MOSS and WSS 2007/2010 which enables developers to query MOSS/WSS data using standard SQL language. The connector behaves like any other standard ADO.NET data provider by tranforming your queries to multiple operations sent to a MOSS/WSS Web service and returning the results using standard data types. SPC can be used by any developer with basic SQL knowledge. The following example shows how to create a Connection instance and run a UPDATE query on a list in MOSS/WSS through the Command instance.

Dim connection As New Camelot.SharePointConnector.Data.SharePointConnection("
    Server=mysharepointserver.com;
    User=spuser;
    Password=******;
    Authentication=Ntml;
    TimeOut=10;
    StrictMode=True;
    RecursiveMode=RecursiveAll;
    DefaultLimit=1000;
    CacheTimeout=5")

connection.Open()
Dim command As New Camelot.SharePointConnector.Data.SharePointCommand("UPDATE `mytable` SET `mycolumn` = 
'hello world'", connection)
command.ExecuteNonQuery()
connection.Close()

Is it free?

The connector requires a yearly subscription costing 1000€. The other products are free.

Free stuff

We offer a wide range of tools, some examples are

• Joomla Integration
• PHP toolkit to handle SharePoint data
• Cool webparts like a MySQL dump tool for SharePoint lists
• Query Browser
• And more…

We are looking for testers

Test the full release for free. The testing periods are limited to a certain date. The current end date for any test version of Bendsoft software is 30th November 2010.

Apply at our website, http://www.bendsoft.com/

For more information you can contact us at info@bendsoft.com

How to set a webpart title and description programmatically

Suppose the headline says it all, here is the code to set the name and description of a webpart programmatically in vb.net.

Just a little snippet

Public Class MyWebPart
    Inherits Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart

    ' Method to set WebPart title and description
    ' By Bendsoft 2010
    Public Sub WebPartTitleDesc(ByVal title As String, ByVal desc As String)
        Me.Title = title
        Me.Description = desc
        Try
            Me.SaveProperties = True
        Catch ex As Exception
            Me.Controls.Add(New System.Web.UI.LiteralControl(ex.Message))
        End Try
    End Sub

    Protected Overrides Sub CreateChildControls()

        ' Set the Name of the web part
        Me.WebPartTitleDesc("MyWebPart List Name", "MyWebPart Description")

    End Sub
End Class

No magic really, just make sure to call the method WebPartTitleDesc from the CreateChildControls

Error Code 80073712 in Windows 7

I must admit that Windows 7 is a big step in the right direction. However there are still some minor issues becoming major ones. Like when updating stuff… Common ms, whats up with that. Retrieving mysterious error codes when trying to perform a simple update is crap.

Anyway, It’s not always Microsofts fault…

The very annoying error code 80073712

I recently got this error “Code 80073712″ when updating some misc stuff and .Net Framework 3.5. After a couple of hours of Googling, Binging and Cursing I figured out the source of the problem.

Since I’m only running Microsoft products in virtualized environments I tend to find a minified versions (those without the bloat) to gain some performance. There are quite a few of these releases, example

• Windows XP PRO Performance (Minified version of XP ~ 250 mb)
• Tiny7 (A Tiny version of Windows 7 ~ 650 mb)

However, it seems impossible to install and correct some removed features from these releases. Hence my solution was to reinstall or repair my installations with a full version of the windows releases.

Remove svn settings and folders from Client

Sometimes the Subversion (svn) properties or synchronization data really messes up. This usually depends on some clients. In my case for instance, I use NetBeans and it can really make things go fubar sometimes. And it seems to make no difference using Mac OS or Linux, it messes up sometimes anyway. Well, there may be less unhappy reasons to remove svn settings from your development machines, you might want to switch to git or similar.

Whatevs…

First

Backup all your projects and data before running any of these commands. If done properly no project data will be removed by using this guide, only the LOCAL subversion settings.

Second

Fire up a terminal and navigate to the folder where you keep your projects, or to the specific project folder.
Example

$ cd ~/NetBeansProjects

Run this command

$ find . -type d -name .svn

What is it?

Subversion settings are kept in hidden folders, the command above can list ALOT of entries. Anything listed by this command will be deleted if you run the command below.

Third

Now, if you are certain you want to remove all local svn data/settings

$ find . -type d -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;

This will remove all entries with a .svn folder, if successful it will try to list it but fail echoing “No such file or directory” after each line.

If you’re not allowed to remove the data, add sudo

$ sudo find . -type d -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;

Be safe and have fun