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Imagine a business scenario where we have a lookup field in our list. The reference list contains items Title and their status.  Previously it always difficult to create filtered lookup field with minimal development task. But now, we can use InfoPath 2010 to achieve that functionality.

Part III , InfoPath 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Productivity series webcast shows how to create filtered lookup field.  There are two lists in the scenario “Books” and “Members” list.  The Books list contains list of books Title, Author and Status. There are 2 status of books, “Available” , “In-Used” and “Missing”.

“Members” list has Books  , lookup field – which should show only the “Available” books.

English:

Imagine that user wants to build Book lending application using SharePoint 2010. Initially they must register the book description , and sub-sequently they will update book lending status.  On the registration, the status should not be available in the form – however on lending event , they have to modify the status of the book.
Following webcast shows how to use InfoPath Designer 2010 to customize New/Edit/View form in SharePoint List to build that application.

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Whether you are geek SharePoint 2007 who are migrating to SharePoint 2010  – or freshmen who are starting to develop application for SharePoint 2010; Microsoft Patterns and Practices is always good resources to learn. In the SharePoint 2007 era, Microsoft release paterns and practices quite long time after the release of SharePoint 2007.

But, good news – MS just  released MS Paterns and Practices to develop application for SharePoint 2010; only few weeks after the release of SharePoint 2010.

Grab it here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203468.aspx
and codeplex here:
http://spg.codeplex.com/

Faboulous 40 have become a good showcase for us for SharePoint 2007 implementation.  I personaly deployed it in some of my clients – and it is a good start to play with SharePoint 2007 business implementation.  They are not perfect tough – but they create conversation on the functionalities and enhancements.

So far, Microsoft has not release Fab40 for SharePoint 2010 – but we can find un-official Fab40 by Khalil here : http://techsolutions.net/Blog/tabid/65/EntryId/17/Fab-40-Templates-for-MOSS-2010.aspx

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One of new feature in SharePoint 2010 is Sandboxed Solution. The ideas is to create solution and deploying them in a way that you can trust will not damage or change SharePoint farm. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335711.aspx)

Sandboxed Solution is aimed for isolation between one solution to another; which implies that you can not include anything inside the hive folder. If you try to include TemplateFile, Layouts or Images in package, VS2010 will raise an error stating “The deployment type …… is not compatible with a Package in a Sandboxed Solution”.  And it means you have to think about the solution architecture again and refine the rules.

For example, you may consider custom document library to store the images for your solution, etc.

However, sometimes we need to get rid from sandboxed solution. Then we need to change the project type into non-sandboxed solution. To change project type to non-sandboxed solution,

1. Click on project property
2. Set Sandboxed Solution = False.

Now continue your work.

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Today, for the first time after installing the latest version of 2010 families, I encounter this error “Cannot start service SPUserCodeV4”. This error message comes when I tried to deploy – sandboxed solution.

Try to Google what would be the issue, I’ve found some blog here:

http://littletalk.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/cannot-start-service-spusercodev4-when-deploy-sharepoint-webpart-in-vs-2010/

http://blog.dennus.net/2009/11/18/sp2010-spusercodev4-your-new-web-part-project-isnt-deploying/

However, in my case it is not “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation User Code Service”. It is “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service” instead.

After starting the “Central Administration” > “Services” > “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service” everything goes to normal.

Now, I can deploy my solution from Visual Studio 2010.

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You may encounter “Access denied by Business Data Connectivity” error when trying to access External List. The reason is because External List requires External Content type ; and External Content type is using Business Data Connectivity services proxy to access external Data Source. With the same principle of BDC in MOSS 2007 – users are required to have BDC Object permission before they can use it.  There are several set of permission available for the BDC object:

- Edit                                  
- Execute                            
- Selectable in Clients
- Set Permissions

How to configure the BDC access rights?

1. Open Central Administration page, and click on Manage service application.

2. Click on Business Data Connectivity Service

3. Open the context menu of the External Content type (ie. External CT in this example). Click on Set permissions.

4. Add account (Group, or User) and assign the permissions.

5. Set appropriate permission to the BDC object. Remember that BDC object permission rules the interaction between user and external data source through BDC object. It doesn’t rules his/her permission accessing Forms in the list (New / Edit / Delete  form).

English:

External Content type allows you to make seamless interface between SharePoint 2010 and external data storage (ie. SQL server). Using External Content type, you can create an External List which stores the data to predefined storage. You can imagine of having a table with SharePoint list interface.

To create an External Content type, you need SharePoint Designer 2010. If you curious enough, the External Content type is enhancement of Business Data Connector (BDC) in previous version. It will now depend on Business Connectivity Services (BCS) – which more or less same as BDC.

Imagine that you have a table in SQL Database and you want to create SharePoint list which directly stores the data in that table.

1. Open SharePoint Designer and click on External Content Types

2. Define the new External Content Type name. Then click on “External System” to start to connect to external Data Storage.

3. Define connection to external data storage. (ie. DB name,  and security)

In my case, I use SQL server as my data storage.

There are 3 security connection options in SQL Server Data Source:
– Connect with User’s Identity   => it will use running user’s credential to access to DB server. This implies that you need to manage user’s access rights in DB server.
– Connect with Impersonated Windows Identity => it will use impersonated Windows Identity ; usually the Application Pool identity.
– Connect with Impersonated Custom Identity => it will use specified user/password combination ; you need to define the Custom Identity separately.

Now, we already have the External List with the tables and views.

4. Select any table for the External Content types. In this scenario, I select RequestTbl for my data storage. Right click on the selected table, and SPD2010 will show you the available operations.
The External Content Types requires at least “Read Item” and “Read List” operation.  In every operation you will need at least 1 identifier.

Follow the wizard to create an operation.

Don’t forget that every operation requires at least 1 identifier. You can choose ID field from the table.

You can also define the default view filter, for example, by default this external content type will show only the first 100 items.

5. Publish the new content type by click “Save” button.

Now you already have new External Content Type. You can also create external content type to call .NET CLR and WCF Service. Next , how to use the external content type in a list.

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In SharePoint, there is SPPropertyBag which can stores arbitrary key-and-value pairs into configuration database. And this is very good location compared with web.config. Moreover we can also create our custom class from SPPersistedObject to persist it state in a permanent store and retrieve it for later usage. (see MSDN refence SPPersistedObject)

But don’t be so happy – the SPPropertyBag can only store primitive types such as strings, integers, and GUID; and collection of above. The main keyword to understand is SPPropertyBag can only store primitives type and not arbitrary key-and-value pairs.

When you try to store complex object, you’ll unstablize configuration DB. And most of the time, you will not be able to install WSP, or perform anything related with SPPropertyBag operation. For example the timer job will stops to work, any component that reads SPPropertyBag will suddenly stuck. All because SharePoint will try to retrieve any persisted object from configuration DB and it fails. It will then show you and error message like this,

The platform does not know how to deserialize an object of type [TYPE]. The platform can deserialize primitive types such as strings, integers and GUID; other SPPersistedObjects or SPAutoserializingObjects or collections of any of the above. (..more..)

The visual error will be something like this,

So how to troubleshoot this issue?

IMPORTANT! 
1. Please backup configuration DB before proceeding with following procedure.
2. This procedure will modify configuration DB directly , and is un-supported by Microsoft.

TROUBLESHOOT.

1. Remove offending assembly from GAC (C:\Windows\Assembly) store.

2. Open Query Manager in SQL Management Studio, and connect to SharePoint content DB. Check that you have all reference to the offending property bag.

3.  Offending property bag can be found in “Properties” field of Objects table. If you dig into the content you will find something like

<object type=……>
…<fld type=”[YOUR TYPE]”></fld>..
</object>

where [YOUR TYPE] is the one causing problem. Once you have sure that you have all rows selected, then you can do clean up.

4. Replace SELECT [Fields] statement with DELETE statement.

And voila, I have saved you from big trouble.

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Remember about critics to “stsadm –o copyappbincontent” to deploy SharePoint resource in my previous post here.

At the end of the post, I think that it should be “stsadm –o copyfarmappbincontent” instead.

Why?
Because the last will work in centralized deployment mode, same as solution deployment.

But what’s the secret? Why the standard copyappbincontent doesn’t work in farm configuration?

I’ll post in another article. But now, I have created the project in Codeplex. You can grab the code or download the binary here.