We start “Subsite A” like the following:

Then, we change the URL into something malformed (deliberately for this exercise). See the Web Site Address field below? We’re purposely putting in a bad value (the end-user accidentally did it in the real-world scenario).

After you click the Save button on the Title, Description, and Icon Settings Page, you get the following error on the browser:

This error (HTTP 500 Internal Server Error) means that the website you are visiting had a server problem which prevented the webpage from displaying.

Trying to access the site yields HTTP 500 error:

You think maybe you can rename using SharePoint Designer. But SP Designer throws you an error message instead:

Server error: The version of the Windows SharePoint Services running on the server is more recent than the version of the SharePoint Designer you are using. You need a more recent version of the SharePoint Designer.

But the SharePoint Designer error message is misleading–the SharePoint site is MOSS 2007. It’s the bad URL causing this.

You can fix this by using STSADM renameweb command. In the screenshot below, I rename the badly-formed URL to its original URL using STSADM renameWeb:

The site owner accidentally put in a bad URL and that is why we’re using STSADM to fix it. It’s hard to mess-up the site-collection URL. But if you need to change the URL of a site-collection, you can use STSADM renamesite.

For more details on how to use these commands, visit:

• How to use the new “renamesite” operation to change the URL of a host-named site collection in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
• Renameweb Stsadm operation (Windows SharePoint Services)

It’s so easy to do a “Hello World” Web part project now. These days, my Hello World projects typically involve opening up a database table and displaying records in a table. I was able to do this with minimal coding and got it up and running—a full blown Web part—in under 15 minutes!

I created a sample project that opens up the AdventureWorks database and displays employee records in a table:

Sample Visual Web Part Project using Adventure Works Database

The Web-part looks like the following when used inside SharePoint:

AdventureWorks Employees Web Part So far, I like it!Here are my first impressions:SharePoint project templates come out-of-the-box install of VS 2010. After installing VS 2010, the SharePoint project templates are ready for use. No need to do installations of VS-extensions.SharePoint Project Templates in Visual Studio 2010

• The Visual Web Part project cannot be deployed as a “sandboxed solution”. It has to be deployed as a farm solution.
• Project-debugging became a lot easier even with a full-blow farm-deployment. Press F5 in the VS 2010 IDE and Visual Studio will build, package, deploy, and activate your feature, and launch the debug-browser all in one click! When you’re done debugging, terminate Internet Explorer, Visual Studio will deactivate and retract the solution out of SharePoint.
• IIS-reset (for the target Web app) even for full-blown deployments when debugging is fast!
• Remember in VSeWSS 1.3 where you had to Google first how to specify the group the Web part appears in because it wasn’t so obvious? Well, it got easier in VS 2010! Now, the Elements.xml file has a place-holder for the Web-part group. All you have to do, is change it from “Custom” to whatever value you want it to be. It’s so visible now you can’t miss it.

Web-Part Group Place-Holder in Elements.xml File

• You can now add Web User Controls (ASCX files) into the project! As a matter of fact, the project template adds one ASCX file for you. This just made Web Part development a HECK of a lot easier! This is HUGE! Back in VS 2008 developing SharePoint 2007 Web parts, there were no designers available. If developers wanted to use ASCX files, they had to create regular ASP.NET Web apps, design the ASCX files there, write the code-behind, compile the project so the code-behind logic gets packaged with the ASCX files, deploy the ASCX files to UserControls folder within the SharePoint virtual Web app folder, deploy and enable Smart Part, add a Smart Part Web part to the SharePoint pages, then finally, hook-up the Smart Part to the ASCX files. Whew!!! Talk about LOTS of steps! In VS 2010, you don’t need Smart Part or that lengthy way to integrate ASCX file in SharePoint anymore. The challenge of “imagining” what your Web part will look like as you write your C# code is no more. The designer is built in to the Visual Web Part project. Leverage your ASP.NET skills to the max.
• Despite all the improvements, Web part development veterans should recognize familiar concepts and project files such as Elements.xml, .webpart file, strong-named key file, packages and features. 

I have many ASP.NET developer friends who didn’t want to get into SharePoint development because:

• The Web part project wasn’t easy in SharePoint 2007. No designers, hard to design a visual element.
• ASP.NET developers got accustomed to easy debugging of their projects by simply pressing F5 key or the play button on the IDE toolbar. In 2007, ASP.NET developers thought deploying the app and then attaching to the w3wp.exe process (multiple manual steps, not one) was too cumbersome.
• It took forever to even debug the code because the SharePoint Web app always recycled on deployments.

If you are an ASP.NET developer contemplating if you should try SharePoint development, I highly recommend you try it NOW! SharePoint 2010 development feels like traditional ASP.NET development more than ever!

What the heck?? You thought you were admin! You check the Farm Administrators list and your account is there. So, what gives??

Windows User-Access-Control is getting in the way. Although your account is Farm admin, because of UAC, you’re still not permitted to do stuff in Central Admin like create new Web apps. The fix? Disable UAC and reboot Windows. After reboot, you should be able to create new Web apps:

Caution: after you have created your Web apps and Site collections in Central Admin, turn on the UAC again and reboot. Turning off UAC for good is not recommended even if it’s annoying.  If you permanently turn off UAC, malware might have a chance to install in your PC (you are admin, no prompts for system mods—yikes!!)

When you run the PSCONFIGUI, since you already configured the SharePoint config database, will start-off at the following step of the Configuration Wizard. Notice that my database-server and database-name have already been pre-populated. Click Next.

SP Configuration Wizard - DB Selection

You get to specify additional information such as Authentication provider (choose NTLM, especially if you do not have domain controller  in your network). You can also choose the port number where Central Admin will run.

SharePoint Configuration Wizard -Completing

Click Next until it runs the actual  configuration of the Central Admin:

SP Configuration Wizard -Configuring

Once the Wizard is finished, run your Central Admin. If things were installed and configured correctly, you should be able to launch Central Admin:

1st Time in Central Admin 2010

New-SPConfigurationDatabase: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.IdentityModel, Version 3.5.0.0. The Power Shell looks like the following when you’re running New-SPConfigurationDatabase to configure your SP database for the first time:

Could not load Microsoft.IdentityModel

The fix: Install Microsoft Identity Framework to address this problem.

New-SPConfigurationDatabase: The user does not exist or is not unique. You get to the point in the New-SPConfigurationDatabase command-let that asks you for the Farm Credentials. You didn’t fully qualify the username with the domain or computer name.

New-SPConfigurationDatabase - user does not exist

To fix this, simply make sure that the user account you are specifying for the Farm Credentials is fully-qualified with the domain-name or, if using local accounts, the computer name. Example: “macbookpro\gabe”.

New-SPConfigurationDatabase :  Unknown error (0×80005000) At line: 1 char:20. + New-SPConfigurationDatabase <<<< + CategoryInfo    : InvalidData

Unknown error when running New-SPConfigurationDatabase

This one frustrated the heck out of me. I configured my Macbook Pro already but I was installing SharePoint 2010 on another PC(has Intel Core i7 processor) in my office when I got this message. I thought the second pass-through would be easier. I already know I must follow every-step of the SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 Development Workstation Guide.  So, how can I possibly still mess it up?? You see, I’d get past the Passphrase question and it would process the command for a while and spit out the error message only at the very end. When I look at my SQL Server, the Config database is created but the “SharePoint Admin Content” database has not been created yet. I manually added the user-account to sysadmin group in SQL. I made the  Windows login Local Admin. I serviced-pack the SQL instance at least twice. Still the InvalidData error message like above. I uninstalled SharePoint 2010 and re-installed it. When I uninstalled the entire SharePoint 2010 (remember, I was aiming for the “Complete” installation option), I reinstalled the second time just using the “Stand-Alone” install. I was thinking, this sucks, having to use SQL Express because I’m going for Stand-Alone install. I finished the Stand-Alone installation. I go ahead and try to configure it and the psconfigui.exe (SP Product Configuration Wizard) and bam—STILL an error! But this time, the error message was more helpful—it told me that IIS 6 is not installed. I look at my installed Windows 7 features and sure enough, IIS 6 wasn’t installed yet! I was pretty sure I ran everything on the checklist and I couldn’t have missed anything. Obviously, I missed something, and this something was the required Windows Features that must be turned on. So I installed II 6 feature on my Windows 7 and the Stand-Alone configuration worked and I saw the Central Admin. If you get this Unknown error (0×80005000), check your installed Windows Features and make sure you have IIS 6 Management Console installed.

IIS 6 Management Consol turned-on

Okay, after going through the stand-alone install and was made to enable IIS6, I uninstalled SharePoint 2010, again! Why did I uninstall it? Because it was installed using Stand-Alone install which uses SQL Server Express.  This final time, I was determined to make the Complete installation (can add servers to farm) work. I installed the SharePoint 2010. I ran Power Shell and ran the New-SPConfigurationDatabase command-let and was able to create the configuration database. Yay!!!

SQL Server after successful New-SPConfigurationDatabase

My MacBook Pro 13 Windows (Ultimate) Experience Index looks like the following:

Not too shabby. Lowest score is the graphics (NVidia 930M) but shouldn’t be an issue with regards to SharePoint and development work in general. See that Memory and Primary hard disk scoring 5.9? That worried me. The hard drive speed is only 5400 RPM and that could be a bottleneck for database read/writes. I went ahead and installed SharePoint 2010 on the MacBook Pro/Windows 7 anyway.

Instead of rewriting the steps needed to install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 for a development rig, I will point you to existing resources out there. Too many write-ups regarding this topic already. So here they are, the ones that I’ve tried and tested:

• If you are going to read anything about installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7, this is the resource you want – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx
• Execute EVERY step outlined in that walkthrough. Don’t even try to shortcut or think that you can do it without reading any documentation. You may get past the installation but you will pull hair out when it’s time to configure your farm. So just do it, every step in that walkthrough! I will show some of the errors I encountered when I tried to “fast-track” the SharePoint installation.
• Here’s another good one – http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112. This one talks about how to configure the scalable farm (not the Stand-Alone setup that uses SQL Express) for development purposes while using local accounts (instead of domain accounts). SharePoint 2010 needs domain accounts to configure. If you are building a “SharePoint workstation”, it’s very common to use local accounts instead of domain accounts (maybe because getting in touch with the AD admins is not easy—just create local accounts yourself). See, my MacBook Pro is not joined to a domain. I have to use non-domain accounts. I wouldn’t have been able to configure my “SharePoint farm” to use a true SQL Server 2008 if not for this walkthrough. Remember, if you do a stand-alone install, the Web apps use the SQL Express for the databases—not really  my ideal configuration!!

Here’s the first error message I encountered:

I was so excited to install SharePoint 2010 after I got my MAPS subscription that I just double-clicked the setup.exe. The above message is what I got! You have to edit the \Files\Setup\config,xml of the SharePoint 2010 install directory and add the following:

<Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/>

This was mentioned in Step 2: Install the Prerequisites for SharePoint 2010 of the MSDN walkthrough. Fast-forward to the end of the SharePoint 2010 installation/configuration. In Central Admin, you should see this:

Again, don’t skip any steps—follow each and every one!

In follow-up blog-posts, I’ll show the other errors I received while attempting to install/configure the SharePoint farm and how to address them.

Update 6/11/2010:  Here’s the screenshot of the Windows Task Manager of the Macbook Pro when running SharePoint 2010, SQL Server 2008, IIS Management Console, Internet Explorer, and Visual Studio 2010 (debugging/attaching to processes).

Windows 7 Task Manager in Macbook Pro

Sometimes you get to a point in your career where you think you’ve “mastered” something. Then BAM!—the new version of the framework you’re working with gets overhauled! I have a few friends in the industry who have “cried ‘Uncle’” and promoted themselves to management, thinking that they don’t have to catch up with changes in technology (Web apps, servers, services, etc.) anymore. But you know what? They’re still not done learning. Instead of picking up books on .NET, SharePoint, or Web Services, they have to read books on business management, project management, leadership. It’s competitive anywhere you go, especially in today’s economy. You have to keep your brain in shape and train.  It’s a never-ending process, this thing called learning. It can be tough sometimes, all these reading and learning. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t think I can be in a field where I don’t have to learn anything new in order to be competitive. It would just bore me to death.

In honor of the legendary coach, here’s a few more of John Wooden quotes (Googled tonight):

• “I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.” – when it comes to hiring IT resources, I believe in this. I’ve recommended someone with less “time-in-grade” over someone who had “twenty years of experience” many many times because at the end of the day, if you want a project done right, you need to have good people. Years in the industry do count but I’ll take talent and skills over experience anytime.
• “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes” – if you are a developer, you better make your mistakes during the development phase of the project. I’ve seen a few guys scared to make mistakes or see bugs in their apps. Mistakes and defects are good, if you can catch them early in the project cycle. If you avoid the defects and issues early on–uggh!!–good luck when you encounter issues and defects after you deliver your software!
• “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.” – Ain’t that the truth when it comes to technology books?? I have so many books (technology, leadership, business)  in my collection that I still have to read and yet I already know that I’m about to buy more books. Two books I will need to buy soon–SharePoint 2010 development and ASP.NET 4.0. In my ideal world, I only work 30 hours a week and learn/study 16 hours a week. The reality is I work average 45 hours a week and maybe study for about 4-6 hours a week. Too many things to catch up on. 
• “Never mistake activity for achievement.” – I LOVE this one. In other industries, working longer hours almost equate to achieving more than the next guy. In information technology, I see too many people patting themselves in the back for working long hours. For the life of me, I don’t understand why these people can be proud for taking a long time to solve a problem. Who’s better, the programmer who can write the solution in 2 hours and is idle for the rest of the day or the programmer who has to work 12 hours (assuming the task and problem set is the same)? It should be obvious, right? What about from an operations type person, like a DBA? Would you rather have a “lazy DBA” who sips coffee all day or the DBA who has to work 60 hours every week? I’ll take the lazy DBA anyday. He’s probably lazy and not doing anything because his ship is ran tight.  That’s achievement, getting your stuff squared-away. If you have operations people working overtime month after month–that’s NOT achievement–that’s a hug red flag that they don’t know what the heck they’re doing.

I’ve never read a John Wooden book. But after getting reminded tonight how wise the guy was, I think I’m going to get one of his books.

I purchased a Macbook Pro a week ago and started coding an app within the first 2 hours of getting home! I tell you what, I’ve been a PC for a long, long time and a first-time Mac owner. This Macbook Pro Unibody plus the Snow Leopard OS is a really one sweet device. Am I done with PC laptops? Nope–I’m just waiting for the HP Envy 14 series to come out–16Gb RAM config with newest iCore 7 chip plus SSD drives–that’s going to be my configuration for SharePoint 2010 mobile development. Anyway, back to the Macbook. So, I started coding my first night owning the Mac. I saw some samples on the Web and started coding iPhone apps. Holy-moly! I saw and typed keywords that I haven’t used since college (I think)–the malloc and dealloc commands/keywords!!! I dreaded those things as a young programmer. Memory leaks, buffer overruns–yep, I got burned many times when I was starting out and I didn’t allocate/deallocate memory properly in my programs.

So, what does iPhone development got to do with .NET development? Well, technology-wise, they are different worlds. XCode uses Objective-C while .NET (mostly) uses C#. They’re kind of like distant cousins; they’re similar in some ways but different in many ways. No, I’m not recommending you abandon .NET and totally convert to XCode. I’m recommending that you try iPhone development because it will bring you back to fundamentally sound programming practices. As a developer, I felt like it brought me back to my roots.  Developers need to be mindful of performance and memory use when developing for the iPhone.  In XCode and .NET, there are garbage collectors. Developers don’t worry about memory-allocation thanks to the garbage-collectors. iPhone apps don’t have garbage-collectors. Also, device memory is limited on the iPhone. No gigs of RAM. No swap files. Should you try iPhone development, you will see malloc and dealloc again and you will be constantly asking yourself “maybe I should clean-up stuff in memory and make room for new objects”. If you’ve never seen malloc and dealloc, we’ll I hope it’s a fun experience discovering for the first time what it’s like to develop where you are constrained by limited memory. 

.NET developer with a Mac: go try iPhone development. If anything, because you’re forced to think limited CPU cycles and limited memory, it should improve your overall programming skills!

I was supposed to go to a SharePoint conference in LA. When I saw that there was a tech conference in Amsterdam, since I’ve never been to Amsterdam, I decided signing up for The Next Web. A part of me wishes that I was in LA and participated in all the SharePoint 2010 boot camp-style sessions there. But I’m very happy I attended The Next Web; something different, something fresh. You see training and all that is nice but sometimes you get tunneled-vision for a particular technology. It depends on the personality of the person I suppose. With me, I get so focused on a particular subject/technology that I sometimes lose track of the “big picture”. ASP.NET 4.0, SharePoint 2010, Silverlight–lots of stuff to master on the Microsoft technologies and I tend to hone on these things. Sometimes you just have to take a “step back” to gain new perspective on things. Going to Amsterdam gave me perspective in more ways than one! I’ll get up to speed on Microsoft technologies like I always do.

One of the themes at the The Next Web 2010 conference is this gradual but definite move towards mobile devices. Most speakers and many startups that presented had some sort of mobile angle.  I have a very good friend, damn fine ASP.NET and SharePoint developer, and once when I told him that I’m thinking about developing mobile phone apps. He asked me “why bother building apps that a 17 year-old can hack and build?”  There is some truth to the question he asked but he is incorrect.  I went to youtube.com one time to see if I can find some iPhone coding tutorial. First video I picked was done by some 13 year-old or 14 year-old kid. The kid was enthused but man, was it a pain to follow a presentation/tutorial that is scattered and unorganized. Yeah, so teens can build iPhone apps. So what? Apps are mostly free now you say? Well, there are different business/pricing models for apps that are coming about due to mobile apps. Traditional software vendors are used to the “licensing” or “subscription” business models. In mobile apps, you can be creative how you get rewarded. Some people get paid real money for “virtual chickens”–can you believe that?? Anyway, back to the mobile stuff–there are stand-alone apps such as games and utility-apps, but there’s another category of mobile apps which really caught my attention. These are the front-end mobile apps for existing services or aggregation of existing services on the Web. Examples: Facebook app is client to the FB Web API, Tweetdeck is client for Twitter API, etc. Which brings me to the other theme that I picked up on The Next Web Conference: services.

Amazon.com Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels spoke at the conference. He spoke about what he sees as the future of apps–apps will be aggregation of existing services on Web. “Don’t re-invent what’s already out there.” You can’t help but think maybe he’s just trying to hype up cloud-computing, services, etc., since Amazon provides S3 cloud-computing. Lol. But I see the appreciation of the trend and I agree with him. Mash-up these; mash-up that. The word “app” truly has evolved over time. It used to be just a computer program. If you ask  a Java developer or .NET developer what is an app to them, they’ll probably give you Web app or Desktop app as answers. All kinds of developers from Java, .NET, to PHP know what a Web service is or what API is and know how to consume them. Yet, a lot of “apps” (Web applications) are still being developed with no API (especially in the world of custom-built applications). Without getting into a debate whether an API should be opened up for other apps, apps should use its own API. Even if no other app use that API other than that one app itself, the API, if made, is at least available and can be opened up for other apps should the need arise in the future. Take SharePoint for example: it is a Web application but underneath all that glitz is a set of services. Each SharePoint site has WSDLs available for discovery for developers wanting to hookup to SharePoint API. In SharePoint, themes and branding are nice but not as important as the content itself. I just want to be able to get my tasks, calendars, and documents.

And you know what the funny thing is? Since the inception of Web services a decade or so ago, the promise of system integration, where all kinds of different applications and domains are integrating with each other, is just being appreciated now. It’s been 10 years man since Web services came about. More in the app-development community are appreciating services (it’s assumed it’s on the Web!)

Rich apps (iPhone, Android, Silverlight) for front-end. Web Services (REST, SOAP) for back-end. Yes, it seems trivial just to say that but you know what, I’m glad I attended these sessions at The Next Web conference. Again, it was a nice step-back from .NET and SharePoint and get a fresh-perspective on application development.

Sequence property of the WebConfigModification can be used to figure out the uninstall order.

Unnamed sections such as connectionStrings and bindings sections, appear to have an XPATH expression that may result in duplicate matching. But, the ApplyWebConfigModifications method of the WebConfigModifications object will do it correctly as long as:

• EnsureChildNode is used as the type
• Add/Remove in order that is logical. Example: add connectionStrings section first then the add elements inside the connectionString section.
• If you are worried that de-activating a feature will obliterate the connectionStrings section because your feature created it, don’t. SharePoint will only take out the connectionStrings if there are no other entries created by the ApplyWebConfigModifications inside the connectionStrings section. If other features inserted 1 or more connection-string entries there, your feature-receiver will not remove the connectionStrings section. Now, if the connectionString section got edited manually, the SharePoint WebConfigModifcations object will not know this and it doesn’t matter how many child-nodes there are inside the  connectionString object. The root element (connectionString) in this case will be removed because in SharePoint’s perspective, there are no existing Web-config modifications inside connectionString.

Conclusion: if you are going to adopt feature-receivers to install web.config entries such as connection-strings and bindings (for Service-References), you must also adopt to policy to discourage manual insert/modification of the web.config entries. Be consistent.