70-631 Passed!

Today I have passed the "Configuring Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" exam. In my opinion the most difficult section was "Configure Network Infrastructure" (about NLB configuration basically).

Next exam: 70-630 "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring"

“Failure Audit” in a SQL Server 2005

Today I have found this error in my event viewer:

Event Type:    Failure Audit
Event Source:    MSSQLSERVER
Event Category:    (4)
Event ID:    18456
Date:        03/01/2008
Time:        03:20:01
User:        DEMOSS2007\Admin
Computer:    DEMOSS2007
Description:
Login failed for user 'DEMOSS2007\Admin'. [CLIENT: <local machine>]

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 18 48 00 00 0e 00 00 00 .H......
0008: 0b 00 00 00 44 00 45 00 ....D.E.
0010: 4d 00 4f 00 53 00 53 00 M.O.S.S.
0018: 32 00 30 00 30 00 37 00 2.0.0.7.
0020: 00 00 07 00 00 00 6d 00 ......m.
0028: 61 00 73 00 74 00 65 00 a.s.t.e.
0030: 72 00 00 00 r...

I encountered this same issue after a MOSS uninstall. Thanks to this post I have discovered that the SQL Job associated to a deleted SSP is not deleted in the SQL Agent and it cause the event viewer error. Disabling or deleting this job will fix the issue. I have not checked if this issue is fixed in the SP1.

Related Links:
http://www.virtual-generations.com/2007/01/28/sharepoint-and-sql-server-error-18456/ (Read the Update 3)

SQL Server error updating WSS/MOSS

Exception: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: The configuration option 'min server memory' does not exist, or it may be an advanced option. Ad hoc update to system catalogs is not supported.

I have encountered this error during the step 2 in the wizard. It is due a configuration in the SQL Server 2005 and the solution is to execute the following script:

exec
sp_configure
'show advanced options', 1;

GO

RECONFIGURE
WITH
OVERRIDE;

GO

sp_configure
'allow updates', 0;

GO

RECONFIGURE
WITH
OVERRIDE;

GO

After that the wizard finishes successfully.

Related links:
http://www.webservertalk.com/archive132-2007-4-1871302.html (I found here the script)

Translatable content deployment using variations

Today I have read about content deployment and the variations while I was looking for a solution to translate the content in a site automatically. After read some blogs and specially this white paper I have reached the conclusion that MOSS does not offer a complete solution.

The existence of the translatable columns can confuse you (I had very expectations about it). This attribute of a site column only indicates whether must be traduced or not. But who has to translate it? The white paper says literally:

"… They (editors) can export the content, provide the exported content to translators, let translators translate the content, and, finally, re-import the translated content onto the sites. During the export process on a variation target site, all pages are exported and packaged; this can add up to a lot of content. A feature called Translatable columns can help translators to identify what needs to be translated. …"

So, there is not any translation process involved in the publishing process. A possible workaround is to create a custom workflow activity that checks for the translatable columns in the item and traduce it using a web service (babelfish or worldlingo for example) and then associate it to the page libraries in the variation sites.

Another important issue of the content deployment using variations is the fact that a little change in a root variation page implies a total deploy of this page in the dependant variations as a draft version. The proposed solution is to add a workflow to delete this draft version using a Boolean field:

"… One way to address this scenario would be to create a custom Boolean column for the Page content type that can be used by the content editors on the variation source site to mark new versions as "corrections" when necessary. Then, you could create a custom workflow and deploy it on only the target sites. This workflow would need to check every change to read the custom column's value: if the value were True, the workflow would simply delete the new version created by the variation process on the target site. If the value were False, the workflow would preserve the new page so content editors could translate it. ..."

This workaround could be complementary to the previous workaround and we would have a "complete" solution to the translatable content deployment using variations.

Please, feel free to add comments in order to get a "better solution".

Related Liks:
http://sjoere.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

SPQuery inside a foreach bucle

Today I have found a strange behavior of the SPQuery class. My code has the following structure:

…
SPList list = web.Lists["MyList"];
SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
foreach (DataRow row in table.Rows)
{
query.Query = "<Where>Some CAML Query with a row dependant condition</Where>";
SPListItemCollection items = list.GetItems(query);
…
}
…

After the first iteration, the SPListItemCollection items always contains the same items, although the Query property of the query has been changed in the bucle. To resolve it I have putted the initialization of the SPQuery inside the bucle:

…
SPList list = web.Lists["MyList"];
foreach (DataRow row in table.Rows)
{
SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
query.Query = "<Where>Some CAML Query with a row dependant condition</Where>";
SPListItemCollection items = list.GetItems(query);
…
}
…

And now all works normally.

A button to submit content to SharePointPedia

Try it on my page. With this simple code on your page you can add a button to submit the content to the SharePointPedia:

<input alt="Submit to SharePointPedia.com" name="Button1" type="image" src="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pedia/PublishingImages/SPP/topbar_logo_spd.gif" value="Submit to SharePointPedia.com" onclick="javascript:location.href='http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/pedia/pages/post.aspx?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&amp;title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)" />

Enjoy it!

An easy way to change the SharePoint index file’s location

This solution is valid for these scenarios where a full crawl is not a problem. In these cases you can move the index stopping the Office SharePoint Search Service and starting it again. In the form to start it you will find a textbox to indicate the new location of the index file. Then you will need to assign the index server for each SSP and start a full crawl for each content source. Remember that during the processes the search results will be incomplete.

After that I have some questions:

• How could we change the default index location without reinstalling SharePoint?
  
• In the default index location there are some folders with text files. Which is their function? I think they are related with the SQL Search, but I am not sure.
  

To understand the key concepts of the search infrastructure I have read the chapter 17 (specially the page Choosing a Search Implementation Topology Model) of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Administrator's Companion.

Related links:
https://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/robinson_will/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=21 (move the index without a full crawl)