Clients love me so much they want to see me in their building everyday.  I wouldn't say that my clients have crappy equiptment they jsut don't buy the same stuff I would.  So I go to work.  Terminal services into my network from the clients office.  So I used to use mstc /v:myServer /f /console  v is for serVer f is for full screen and console . . . well that puts me on the console session.  It's nice this way becasue when I get local I can just log in and everything is the way I left it.  well as of recent mstc 6.1 I bleive console has been replaced with admin.  so instead of /console its now /admin.  /console doens't give you an error, it jsut doesn't do any thing.  I wonder why they couldn't have just reused the console switch to makE ADMIN DO WHAT IT DOES NOW!!!! 

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.

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.

MVP Summit Opening video

By way of Sean O'Driscoll'sblog

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