It's a well known fact that versioning webparts is a real pain in the butt. Big Jim in DC and I have been pondering, searching the Internet and discussing what are some good ways to version web parts and features.  Today we decided to do something about it and came up with a simple strategy.  Use pre-build events to call a script that writes a value to the AssemblyFileVersion attribute of  the assebmlyInfo.cs (sorry vb'ers your just going to have to modify the scripts on your own ).  Then with another script read that value from the assemblyInfo.cs and write it to the feature.xml.  The description attribute to be sepcific.  That way from the user interface you can see the version and time built.

Jim wrote the script to update the Assembly and it can be found here.

This is what my pre-build events look like:

CD "$(ProjectDir)UTILS"
cscript /nologo UpdateAssemblyFileVersion.vbs  "$(ProjectDir)properties\AssemblyInfo.cs"
cscript /nologo UpdateFeatureDescriptionVersion.vbs "$(ProjectDir)TEMPLATE\FEATURES\$(SolutionName)\Feature.xml" "$(ProjectDir)properties\AssemblyInfo.cs"

The source below will read just about any attribute in the assemblyInfo.cs file and append it to the end of the description for the feature (the description attribute of feature.xml).  Mine looks like this "| AssemblyFileVersion: 1.0.62223.1901   Built: 10/23/2007 7:01:03 PM".  It's pretty easy to see where the variable assemblyInfo is being create and modify as you meet your needs.

' VBScript source code
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'--- UpdateFeatureDescriptionVersion.vbs
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'--- Author - Stacy Draper
'--- Date   - 2007.10.23
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'--- This updates the description attribute of the feature node found in 
'--- feature.xml with the information found in AssebmlyInfo.cs.
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Option Explicit

Dim fileHeader
fileHeader = "UpdateAssemblyFileVersion.vbs :: "

EnsureCommandLineArgumentExists
EnsureFileExists WScript.Arguments(0), "Feature.xml"
EnsureFileExists WScript.Arguments(1), "AssemblyInfo.cs"
UpdateFeatureXml WScript.Arguments(0), WScript.Arguments(1)

Private Sub EnsureCommandLineArgumentExists()
    If WScript.Arguments.Count <> 2 Then
        WScript.Echo fileHeader & "You must supply the path to the AssemblyInfo.cs and feature.xml files as arguments."
        WScript.Quit 1
    End If
End Sub

Private Sub EnsureFileExists(path, fileName)
    Dim fso

    Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    If Not fso.FileExists(path) Then
        WScript.Echo fileHeader & fileName & " does not exist at the path provided -> " & path
        WScript.Quit 1
    End If

    Set fso = Nothing
End Sub

Function UpdateFeatureXml(featurePath, assemblyInfoPath)
    Dim node, xmlDoc, description, newDescription, descParts, assemblyInfo, posPipe, i

    Set xmlDoc = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument.3.0")
    xmlDoc.async = False
    xmlDoc.Load featurePath
    If (xmlDoc.parseError.errorCode <> 0) Then
        Dim myErr
        Set myErr = xmlDoc.parseError
        errQuit "An error occured -> " & myErr.reason
    Else
        Set node = xmlDoc.selectSingleNode("//Feature")
        if isNull(node) or (node is nothing) then
            errQuit "Missing Feature node in feature.xml "
        end if
        description = node.getAttribute("Description")
        if isNull(description) or (len(trim(description)) = 0) then
            errQuit "Missing description attribute of Feature node in feature.xml "
        end if

        assemblyInfo =  ""
        assemblyInfo =  assemblyInfo & "AssemblyFileVersion: " & getAttribValue(assemblyInfoPath, "AssemblyFileVersion")
        assemblyInfo =  assemblyInfo & "   Built: " & Now()

        posPipe = inStr(description, "|")
        if isNull(posPipe) or posPipe = 0  then
            newDescription = description & " | " &  assemblyInfo
        else
            descParts = Split(description, "|")

            if uBound(descParts) > 1 then
               newDescription = descParts(0)
               for i = 1 to uBound(descParts) - 1 
                    newDescription = newDescription & "|" & descParts(i)
               next
            else
                newDescription = descParts(0)
            end if

            newDescription = newDescription & "| " & assemblyInfo        

        end if

        node.setAttribute "Description", newDescription
        xmlDoc.save(featurePath)
    End If
End Function 

function getAttribValue(path, attrib)

    Dim fso, f1, ts, s
    Dim startAttrib, startAttribValue, endAttribValue, strAttribValue

    Const ForReading = 1

    Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    Set ts = fso.OpenTextFile(path, ForReading)

    s = ts.ReadAll

    startAttrib = inStr (s, attrib)

    if (isNull(startAttrib) or startAttrib = 0) then 
        errQuit attrib & " doesn't exist in AssemblyInfo.cs "
    end if

    startAttribValue = startAttrib + len(attrib) + 2
    endAttribValue = inStr(startAttribValue, s, ")") -1

    if (isNull(endAttribValue) or endAttribValue = 0) then
        errQuit attrib & " didn't end as expected in AssemblyInfo.cs "
    end if


    strAttribValue = mid(s, startAttribValue, endAttribValue - startAttribValue)

    getAttribValue = strAttribValue

    ts.Close
    Set ts = nothing
    Set fso = nothing

end function 

function errQuit(message)
    WScript.Echo fileHeader & message
    WScript.Echo
    WScript.Quit 1
end function

Nick Swan and crew has just hit a home run with the newest release of the BDC Meta Man.  Now you can create, read and update data that resides outside of SharePoint.  This request comes to me all the time, "How can we use SharePoint to maintain data in our _______ system?".  The thinking is they want to have the same functionality that a list has but be able to point to their own data store.  Well, now with the new BDC Meta Man, you can do even better.  Because the BDC Meta Man generates all of the code, you get a nice foundation from wich to start adding your own validation etc. 

So you can't delete records in the third party system yet, but I'll bet it's not far behind.

Something that I've been thinking about lately is could you use the bdc to overcome the short comming of the lookup fields in a SharePoint list.  What you would do is write a wrapper around the getListItems of the lists web service to be used with teh BDC.  Now you could have a robust lookup for your custom list.

What might even be cooler is that the BDC Meta Man has a special tab for lists?  Just like it does for webservices and databases, but the SharePoint tab would let you set the server and drill down through the sites and into the lists, then the views and perhaps even write the where clause.  Maybe the thinking is that wouldn't be useful?

My pal Pirooz just showed me http://www.justsharepointjobs.com/

This is a pretty interesting site not only does it have jobs but it seems to have some pretty good references.  They list some blogs and sites, but they also listed conferences.  I thought that was cool.  You can't even get a list of all up coming conferences from the Microsoft site.

They have a great start I hope they keep up the good work.

Patrick Tisseghem has just written a couple of articles for MSDN on building Windows SharePoint Services solution with Visual Studio 2005 Extensions.  Well a couple of articles is putting it lightly it's 58 pages of printed material that is more than a starting point it's everything you need to know to build solutions on WSS.

Part 1: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530302.aspx 
Part 2: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530301.aspx

On the surface this seems like it's only for WSS but it also applies to MOSS as well. 

Adam Buenz has gone over the edge with Forms Based Authentication by creating a provider for finger print authentication.

http://www.sharepointsecurity.com/blog/sharepoint/sharepoint-2007-development/biometric-authentication-for-sharepoint/

I just read "12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know" (I can't figure out who wrote it), it's about laws that affect bloggers.  A few of these points have been debated for a while amongst fellow bloggers.  The article details appropriate behaviour to keep us out of trouble, but the thing that I liked most is that it had examples in some places where the law is very confusing.  Some interesting topics include linking to images and what to do if someone totally rips off your content.

Stacy Draper

On my birthday, Glen Block, blogged about a new developer course geared to SharePoint AND developers, what a gift!  Now when people ask me how to get started with SharePoint development I can send them to https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=119608  Well he didn't really do it for me but it's a very nice coincidence!

I just got back from devConnections.  It's actually still going on, but I had to come home and forage.  I'm not going to make the mistake of writing a blog post like I did for the MVP summit again, but suffice it to say I met a lot of people and cemented more relationships.

Lawrence Liu was to do the key note presentation and he was stuck in Chicago, on his birthday no less, so I ended up having 2 hour to prepare for it.  I literally had 15 minutes of fame, it was a lot of fun and the best part was when attendees told me how much they appreciated it.

It was a great event and I'm glad I went.

A KB article came out March 8th 2007 indicating that the /3gb switch is no longer available.  This is because on x32 we only have 4GB to work with, now on an x64 we have much more addressable memory.  The /3gb switch actually choked the kernel by moving a gig to the user mode from the kernel.  This actually caused more problems than it solved so the switch was removed in SP2.  This is a classic example of software desperately trying to make up for hardware shortcomings.  The solution - buy 64 bit hardware with the appropriate amount of ram.

MVP Summit Opening video

By way of Sean O'Driscoll's blog

I was able to pick out Heather Solomon and Michael Noel.

I just got back from the MVP summit 2007 and as with all conferences I tried to meet as many folks as I could.  I met Sean O’Driscoll who, as it turns out, is the person ultimately responsible for the MVP award program.  I must say Sean has a great sense of humor.  Met Jason Medero for the first time, we are working on the same Wrox book.  We discussed everything from balance of life issues to crazy clients.  Because of our conversation I’m getting a kayak, canoe or something and paddle up and down the intracoastal in the morning and making some time for me. 

When it comes to balance of life we all decided to take Monday off and shoot each other with paintballs.   Besides doing the Macarena, I think paintball is the most fun I’ve ever had.  Dan Larson has some video of paintball, but I think Conelius van Dyk’s blog post was first.  Andrew Connell shared his thoughts on the day as well. 

I’d like to thank Robert Bougue for carting our butts around and now, officially and publicly, apologize to him for shooting him when I was out of bounds. . . . I didn’t know.  Honest. 

Paintball was a ton of fun, 23 of us shot off 24,000 rounds.  Someone calculated that it was 67 paintballs in the air in any given minute, but you really have to think about that.  From the time we shot our first paintball to the last was 6 hours.  But we weren’t playing that entire time.  You have to consider we took a break to catch our breath, drink some water, get air and of course buy more paintballs.  So when there was a paintball in the air there were a lot of paint balls in the air.

It was my first time ever playing, one game was called attack defend.  The defenders have to keep a bell from getting run and the attackers have to ring a bell.  Brad Smith came up with an amazing strategy, “We’ll surround them and shoot everybody we see.”  So we did.  We met in the middle so quickly we started shooting at each other and the referees were laughing.  We all thought they were laughing because we were such aggressive bad asses, as it turns out they’ve never seen a team so aggressively cannibalize itself.  I was shooting at Brad from what I thought was the safest place in the world.  I was sheltered, uphill, with only a 10 inch opening.  He actually shot me right in the eye.  Good shootin’ Brad, even if we are on the same team, I’m still really very impressed.  I’m sure there is a lesson in here somewhere about communication. 

In another game I ran out of air in my gun, so I resorted to throwing paintballs by hand.  Loke Kit Kai shot me.  He said he felt bad because I was so close.  I had to be close because I throw like I use a mouse for a living.  His wife though, Stephanie, she's quite the stealthy one and I, like many of my teammates, was so glad she was on my team. 

Lawrence  really showed us a great time.  He took us to a couple of dinners one at Elliott’s Oyster House where I had a spearfish, it was yummy.  What a great team building day!  Thanks for everything LL, you’re the best!

Of course we all talked a lot of technology the other days, but that’s all under NDA.  The MVP Summit was basically Microsoft employees who were in charge of various products telling us what they had in mind and we told them what we thought and what we thought they should have in mind.  I learned that Shane Young has a long career ahead of him with his upgrade training, because there’s not a lot of automation in that space beyond what the SharePoint team blog's post on the upgrade toolkit points out. 

Adam Buenz, as I found out, is a good guy to have your side of an argument.  He spontaneously created a list of gripes and everyone was impressed with the roll he was on.  He became somewhat of an ambassador for the rest of us.  You could hear other people in the background whispering through him Adam would effectively communicate it to the folks at the podium as if he were some walking talking megaphone.

Who knows what they do with the information but they did seem to cherish it, which made me feel special.  They probably take that information and compare it with their other channels of information.   Somehow digest it all and figure out what the next versions of the products are going to be.  All I can say is that I’m totally impressed with the new stuff they are thinking about while still being enamored with the current stuff.

As with most conferences networking is golden.  I got to see many folks that I met in Berlin like Michael Gerth, Daniel Wessels, and Renaud Comte who represented France and Americans like Woody, Michael Noel, Mike Ammerlan, Fitz, and John Paul.  Michael Noel is always interesting to talk to, because we came into SharePoint from exactly opposite directions.  He entered from administration and I from development and we both know the product really well and overlap in skills so much it’s somewhat amazing to realize that we have such different backgrounds.  He’s obviously progressed a lot further in his career than I have, but I think it’s only because he’s smarter.  It’s always a pleasure to talk to him about anything.   Never forgetting the fellas from the UK who are turning out to be great pals of mine Spencer Harbar, Steve Smith, Nick Swan and Stephen Cummins (in no particular order of course J ).

Stephen brought his wife but I didn’t get a chance to meet her.  Todd Klindt did get to meet his wife and daughter on the plane and he shared with us that their daughter is just the cutest little thing. 

I’m excited for Nick Swan and Todd Baginski.  They are selling a tool called the BDC  meta man if you haven’t heard of it and you have to do anything with BDC you should go look at their product.  Compared to the number of sales they had when I was in Berlin to the number of sale they had when I was in Seattle they had a 50% growth in sales.  That was just 2 weeks apart.  Amazing growth you guys, keep up the good work! 

Of course Florida was well represented!  Andrew Connell, John Holliday who are both going to the code camp next week, March 24 and I’m defiantly going to try to make it.

I really want to make it to an Australian conference some time.  I had the privilege of meeting Ivan Wilson and Gayan Peiris a couple of really cool and smart guys.  Maybe some day I can go, I’m just spread so thin trying to get my arms around Europe.  I did get a chance to practice my Spanish with Carlos Segura Sanz, as it turned out he’s from Pamplona, where they have the running of the bulls.  I’ve always wanted to go there.  As most people know, my wife Macarena is from Spain, so I’m always trying to figure out how to learn the culture well enough to work there. 

Dustin Miller had to have come up with one of the best lines that I heard on the trip.  Dan Larson kept hanging up on Brad Smith because Brad was trying talk Dan out of going for sushi or at least waiting until we got there so we could all go.  Apparently there’s no getting between Dan and his sushi.  I can hardly blame Dan, I’ve eaten there before (with him as a matter of fact) and it was great.  At one point a frustrated Brad bulldogged up and stammered out, “Stop hanging up on me . . . or I’m going to . . . rip out your throat . . . and choke you with it!”  Immediately after saying so you can see the frustration in Brad’s face as he lets out a deep sigh, tilts his head down, hangs up the phone and Bob Fox asked, “Did he hang up on you again?”  Dustin looks up at Bob asking, “10 thousand sperm and you were the fastest, huh?” In the end Adam, Eli, Brad and I had a great time shooting pool at belltown billiards. 

Mathew McDermott caught me having breakfast one morning, what an interesting guy who really knows his stuff.  One day while taking a bus we talked about some nice additions to SharePoint along the lines of user management and I think I’m going to try to build some of them.  I ran some ideas past Mike Ammerlan and he gave me a much better approach than what I had in mind so I really can’t wait to try it out.

Cornelius Van Dyk and I had the same flight back to Chicago.  We talked about our individual community projects we have our sights set on and are going to try to help each other out.  He got me all excited about a SharePoint wiki idea I had a while back.  I brought it up to Lawrence back in October but I set it aside because Dustin was doing something similar really soon.  I need to follow up and see what’s going on there.  Corne created some blogs as he went.  It’s amazing that Bill Gates even let’s people ask questions as this one about lotus notes was a classic, and I thought this one on world hunger was great response as well.  Corne also got some nice photo’s from the key note as well. 

I think it’s a real privilege to hear Bill Gates speak.  I’ve heard he’s so rich that if he were to throw 10 grand out the window while driving down the road at 60 miles an hour would cost him more to turn around and pick it up.  There was a huge line forming before breakfast.  I thought people were going to throw their wives panties on the stage!  It turns out that the forum was nicely sized, I still got breakfast and was only 3 rows back and one group of seats off center.

Bob Mixon has a nice assortment of photos too. 

By the way I purposefully left Gary Bushey out, just kidding Gary.   Dan has another great video of Kells from Thursday night.  This was a really great trip and that’s all I can say without damaging careers (namely my own). 

I’ve been at this blog post for nearly 5 hours and seem to have run out of transitional sentences.  Believe it or not it’s a lot of work to name drop, never mind all the links!  Suffice it to say I met a lot of interesting people from all parts of the world some are new friends while some are old friends and I feel privileged for it all.  Now it's time to firm up those connections and chase down those ambitious dreams!

UPDATED: March 20, 2007

Ivan Wilson just posted his photos

UPDATED: March 23, 2007

Renaud Comte just posted his photos

A freind of mine recently asked me about email lists.  The great thing about social networking is that I didn't know how to do it, but a Friend of mine did and another friend told me that friend knew and even wrote a pdf on the subject. 

http://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads/How%20to%20configure%20Email%20Enabled%20Lists%20in%20Moss2007%20RTM%20using%20Exchange%202003.pdf This is an extreamly detailed 14 page article oh now to set up a librariy "to recieve incoming e-mail using standard e-mail address that can be used both internall and externally" quote from document.

I met Steve Smith in Berlin (did I mention what an awesome conference that was) he's part owner of Combined-Knowledge, really a great guy and I can certainly understand how he's become so successful.  If you ever get a chance to see any of his presentations I would strongly recommend it.

So the European SharePoint conference was outstanding.  The beer was especially good and the people were great.  I had opportunity to meet a lot of people who work with and around SharePoint.  A lot of folks that I already knew of but hadn't had opportunity to meet yet.

I stayed at the Estrel Berlin hotel, where the conference was held.  I bought a wireless lan internet access coupon for 8 hours.   The username is EST0085587 and the password is 38127656.  I didn't use much of it so there should be close to 8 hours left.

The was the largest SharePoint focused conference to date.  There was quite an exhibit hall, many sessions and just an all around great experience.  I think  the most surprising thing was that everyone spoke great english.  It was freezing cold so I decided to see germany from the inside out only going out 3 nights while I was there.  I'll definatly go to another european conference again.   

Dan Attis has written down the steps to have Forms Based Authentication (FBA) for SharePoint while maintaining all of the bells and whistles.  Bells and whistles?  Things like My Site and My Links.  I think it's the most complete and detailed blog on the subject to date.

Part One is the basics.  It details how to get FBA working with a site in the first place.  But that doesn't give us My Site functionality which is as allusive as a good night sleep, whilst trying to figure it out.  Dan asked me to go through the steps in step one just to make sure there weren't any errors.  It was perfect.  I think it's a model example of what a tutorial should be like.  Afterwards, I begged him to help me get My Site working. I already had the basics and needed My Site to work.  I gave a talk a few months ago on FBA at our local users group.  I did all my modifications in the machine.config and that's a pretty bad idea.  Here's the slide deck for what I've done.  I strongly recommend Dan's approach

Part Two explains what you have to do to get MySite working.  While wrestling through it I discovered a new interface element that I hadn't seen before.  I couldn't figure out why I could get to my root site and why I could get to my ssp site, via FBA, but I couldn't get into My Site - or domain/MySite/.  I opened up the Site Collection Administrator trying to add my FBA account and checked and rechecked the site administrators for where my My Site resides.  Staring at the interface below I said to myself, "I wish there was a radio button on '/MySite' " and clicked on the words as I was deliriously talking to myself.  Viola, it highlighted in yellow.  I was able to then set the site collection administrators for MySite.  I was overwhelmed by a strange set of emotions I was happy that I could now get the focus on that particular site collection and at the same time I was a little worried that they had run out of radio buttons or didn't even have a spare drop down list in Redmond.  I know I don't like the new interface design, but I do know that I like the fact that I can get FBA works now. 

This approach should work with Adam's Universal Provider Framework as well, though neither of us has tried it.  I'd also like to recognize Nick Swan and his post on Forms Based Authentication for helping me several months ago in just getting the basics down.  I think Dan has done a great job in refining the instructions into very basic steps that produce 100% of the out of box experience and forms authentication.  Great Job Dan!

Well I say 100% there is a known issue with  SharePoint Designer and Forms Authentication.  Basically you either have to log in with IE first or just use your windows authentication site to make your changes.  The later of course would be preferred unless your designer is not part of your domain.  In which case you'll have to log in with IE first.  All of the office products will have this kind of functionality.  For whatever reason Microsoft didn't build in login functionality into any of their office client products.

I was just chatting with a friend of mine Glenn and he pointed out a couple of really cool resources.

There is a 2 hour course on AJAX.  Don't get me started - I was doing this a long time ago, when it didn't have a cool name like AJAX, now it's the next big thing.  AJAX is great, but like all technologies there's a time and place for everything.  I'll leave that for another post.

http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2007/02/23/free-asp-net-ajax-e-learning-just-shipped.aspx

Back in October they released 6 hours on .NET 3.0.  It's 3 courses, 2 hours each, on Windows Presentation Foundation (wpf), Windows Communication Foundation (wcf) and Work Flow (wf).  The e-learning has had over 60,000 activations since its release

http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2006/10/24/net-3-0-e-learning.aspx

Alex Funkhouser just emailed me to let me know that there are over 600 people registered for the Code Camp.  Makes me almost want to cancel my trip to Europe, but I'm not gonna.  I asked Andrew Connell if there was going to be a SharePoint track he suggested that I check out the agenda.  There are 12 sessions in all and one is even in Spanish and yes there is a SharePoint track.  The SharePoint speakers all rock!  If you want to talk about SharePoint and the mob of people are too think around John Holliday then find Mark Kruger, he's local to South Florida and knows a ton of stuff.  He won't be speaking, just wearing a regular attendee badge.

I love code camps!  I normally pay a lot of money to attend conferences and Code Camps are like a gathering for free.  It's a beatiful thing to see everyone work together to produce a really cool thing.

Thursday of this week I'll be co-presentating with Joe Homnick at the Gold Coast User Group on Business Intelegence.  It looks like it's going to be a pretty good event with the Vista and Office launch also included.  This Saturday I leave for SharePoint Europe that should be a lot of fun, I've always wanted to go to a Microsofte centric conference in another country.  Hopefully it will be a good opportyunity to network.  My flight leaves Saturday afternoon which is the same day as the Code Camp  I always like going to Code Camps.  You meet a lot of smart local people and the local connections usually prove to be more fruitful.  But I'm not going to let that stop me,  I'm still going to Berlin.

It looks like Office System is comming soon.  According to this press release http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-062007OfficeRTMPR.mspx evaluation copies will be available December first.  But I think, according to what I've heard through the grape vine on Andrews blog, we'll all be able to get the bits around November 16th.

Dan Attis got all fired up about Event Handlers.  Then he blogged about it http://devcow.com/blogs/jdattis/archive/2006/10/23/1797.aspx 

A freind of mine Glenn Block has just started blogging.

http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock

Glen is a Dev Product Planner for e-learning at Microsoft.  He's pretty smart, check out his stuff.