the rasx() context

Finally, some kind of big pictures emerge—some kind of expression of what I’ve been doing with most my adult life. This unimpressive rendition of a table started with the far left column as a list of data formats in decreasing disk space:

So, Apache log files are my largest set of data—then comes the Blog post data (you are reading now) in MySQL/WordPress. Notice how I still avoid storing my crap in “the cloud.”

The next column lists the technologies I use/built with the data forms in the first column. Here is where the organizational lousiness comes in because the order of items in this column has nothing to do with that in any of the columns. My struggle to compensate for this is through arrows going all over the place.

The arrows pointing to the third column intend to show me where the solutions in the first column will end up technologically. For example, DAR will use the Entity Framework, support WCF and maybe WF (Windows Workflow Foundation).

Another Tabular Attempt

My last VMware-related post was “Ubuntu 7.10 and VMware” and I thought for sure there are Windows Server 2003 VM entries in my journal. I suppose I was too embarrassed to admit that I was still using 2003 over one year after Windows Server 2008 was released. (Actually, the 2008 entry, “In Word 2007!,” spills the beans.)

So, now I am using Windows Server 2008 Standard x86 as a VM. I tried to install the 64-bit version twice—because I assumed that my Windows 7 64-bit OS host was all VMware needs. It turns out that VMware needs to work with a special set of 64-bit chips and my Pentium Dual Core T3400 is not enough apparently.

Since my readers usually stumble upon these things through Google, I remind you that I use my Windows Server VM as a development box and an Office desktop (it’s a VSTO thing). So this journal entry is coming to you from my new VM straight out of a 174-page Word 2007 file via my Word Add-in (still under development), CleanXHTML (the Word 2003 version of CleanXHTML is still out there…).

Influenced by recent events, I’m taking SharePoint links off of my active TODO list. My strategy is pathetically simple: don’t do a thing with SharePoint until the next version comes out based on the forlorn hope that the next version will come with a big apology for all previous versions in the form of new, pronounced levels of usability and elegance. Meanwhile, these:

• “Imtech Fields Explorer Visual Studio 2008 plugin”—from Waldek Mastykarz: “Imtech Fields Explorer is one of the tools we really use a lot. It all started with the inability of exploring properties of Site Columns and Content Types and the Internal Names in particular. We needed a simple tool which would allow us to quickly find the field names we need to enter in CAML queries and controls.”
• “SummaryLinkFieldControl Members (Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls)”
• “The MossyBlog Times: Controlling your Silverlight Installation Experience”
• “Development Hole: Move or Copy SharePoint Document Library Files Programmatically”
• “Five Simple But Powerful PowerShell Functions/Filters for SharePoint”
• “Getting Intellisense in your SharePoint XML for Visual Studio”
• “Access Microsoft Access Database From Java Using JDBC-ODBC Bridge”—not really SharePoint but any Office application is related to SharePoint.
• “Other SharePoint Development Tools”
• “Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 & Search Server 2008 Express”
• “SharePoint Links out of the TODO List”

This shot shows something new to me. Apparently my  Windows Server 2008 virtual machine can send SMTP essages to some host name, a mixture of Chinese and Korean characters. My guess is that by the end of this week, it will be clear to me what I’m seeing here.

In the mean time, a few more SharePoint links have come into my life:

• “Site Features vs Site Templates vs Site Definitions“
• “Chapter 3: Programming SharePoint Lists and Libraries“
• “SharePoint Lists“
• “Adding a list item programmatically using the object model“
• “Accessing List Items using SPDataSource using the object model“
• “Reading the XML from an InfoPath Form instance in a Form Library“
• “InfoPath Form Services Development“
• “Guide to making SharePoint XHTML Compliant“
• “Somasegar’s WebLog : Sharepoint tools support in Visual Studio 2010“

This last announcement listed here about Visual Studio 2010 explains to me why SharePoint Designer will be given away for “free”… This actually makes Visual Studio 2010 ‘eagerly awaited’ by me—a feeling that comes to me more to get rid of SharePoint Designer than to welcome even more great changes to catch up with…

This is my SharePoint turning point. It’s 4pm on a W2-labor-camp holiday and I have not eaten a thing. This is what I’ve learned so far:

• Master Pages do not allow code blocks. So showing something as simple as the current date on every page is not possible directly in the master page.
• This attribute __designer="" is actually used by SharePoint Designer to render design-time previews and has nothing to so with your code—but these things (at times) show up in your code. From a Visual Studio point of view, this “feature” is outrageous crap.
• It has been said that Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) “will not accept” relative URLs. Specifically, the $SPUrl syntax does not work in WSS—this depends on Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing which is a part of MOSS—not WSS.
• Without $SPUrl, the only relative URLs you have at your disposal in SharePoint are: /_vti_bin, /_controltemplates, /_layouts, /_admin, /_vti_adm. It’s the /_layouts path (or with the ASP.NET tilde syntax to ensure parent-level access: ~/_layouts) that’s most important for WSS UI designers. For more information, see “Figure 8 Common File Locations Accessible from WSPs” in “10 Best Practices For Building SharePoint Solutions.”
• There must be other relative-URL conventions in SharePoint because I see that some ASP.NET controls use ~site/ to obtain a relative path—but this, it seems, is not a global convention.
• SharePoint slang: “the 12” or “the 12 hive” refers to %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12. In my earlier (failed) forays into SharePoint “branding” I refused to take this raggedy folder seriously. But the Microsoft documentation clearly compels me to reconsider (or buy into MOSS).
• ASP.NET Expressions in SharePoint page files, like $Resources:wss,navigation_accesskey, use files, like wss.resx, in the App_GlobalResources folder of your SharePoint Site Collection.
• The great and powerful Heather Solomon’s “Minimal or Base Master Pages” are invaluable. WSS users only need to worry about HeathersBaseCollaborationMasterPage.master because the other file refers to Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing which is a part of MOSS—not WSS.
• The asp:ContentPlaceHolder with id="PlaceHolderNavSpacer" uses a spacer image (/_layouts/images/blank.gif) to ensure “proper” layout of columns. I have failed to prevent this control from inserting an image even when it is supposedly hidden. I haven’t taken the use of spacers in Web page layout seriously for almost a decade. I can excuse the semantically- and accessibility-hostile use of table elements for layout but this is ridiculous! (But I hear tell that SharePoint cash-cow herding is a profitable business.)

So scrawling all those ragged notes above is actually a celebration with mixed feelings of being able to customize pages in SharePoint (WSS especially) using Master Pages. Yeah. Wow. Literally, an entire day was taken from my wretched life… This better pay off later! But it would be a welcome (and hurtful) surprise to hear a Microsoft announcement about how Scott Guthrie finally got his capable technological hands on a future version of SharePoint that dog foods all of the modern Web development technologies from Microsoft. SharePoint should be a showcase of cutting-edge Microsoft technologies… ASP.NET MVC should be in SharePoint, ADO.NET Data Services should be in SharePoint, ASP.NET Dynamic Data forms, ASP.NET AJAX (featuring jQuery) should be in SharePoint, etc. Microsoft has the technology to actually make SharePoint elegant and exceptional… like in most large organizations, the issues are most likely political, logistical and administrative…