In MOSS 2007, there was no possible way to browse unattached content database (excluding third party tools). SharePoint 2010 lets you browse a content database without attaching it to the farm. The following walkthrough will show you the steps to browse an unattached content database.

I will show you the steps to recover a list that was deleted from one of the site collections.

Here is my original list named “TKDemoList” consisting of 2 list items with attachments.

The list is deleted

Now, to recover the list. Go to Central Admin –> Backup and Restore –> Recover data from an unattached content database (under “Granular Backup”)

In the Unattached Content Database Recovery screen, fill in the information. WSSContentDemo is the backup copy of my original content database before the list was deleted.

In the Browse Content screen, pick the site collection, site and the List

You can also browse all sites by changing the site in the Site drop down list. The following shows the sites present in my site collection

In the Site or List Export, type in the filename (in the format of \\servername\sharename\filename.cmp)

Once the export is done, you can verify the job status. You can also browse to the folder where the cmp file is created to view the export log file.

The next step is importing the list into our site collection. We will use the mighty SharePoint Power Shell to do this. You have 2 options, you can either type in the Import-SPWeb command in the following format

Import-SPWeb -Identity <Site URL> -Path <Export file name> [-Force] [-NoFileCompression] [-Verbose]

(or) just Import-SPWeb and let it walk you through the steps

You can review the log file that is created and you will see all the list items and attachments restored. The screen shot shows the 2 documents that were imported.

Back to the site collection, you can view the TKDemoList that was restored.

I did notice that Import-SPWeb took a while to import 2 list items with a collective attachment size of 1.2 MB. It will be interesting to see the performance once the RTM product is out.

Time for Phillydotnet usergroup Code camp. We have a whole track dedicated to SharePoint. My session will cover sandboxed solutions development with SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Application Lifecycle management (ALM) using Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010.

As of this date, the registrations for Code camp is close to 500 participants. 12 different tracks.

Main Link: http://codecamp.phillydotnet.org/2010-1/default/

Session Details: http://codecamp.phillydotnet.org/2010-1/Lists/Sessions/By%20Track/

Join in and see you there!

I was setting up a demo to populate a Visio 2010 (Beta version) data diagram that reads data from a SQL Server table. I created the data connections in Visio, saved it as Web drawing and published to SharePoint 2010 successfully. But, when I go to view the Visio diagram on the web that is connected to SQL server table, the refresh did not work and an error cropped up "The server failed to process the request". It was baffling initially, since I had another Visio diagram talking to a SharePoint 2010 list working without any issues. Upon reviewing the event viewer, the following error message was logged "Credentials were not found for the current user within the target application 'VisioApplicationID'. Please set the credentials for the current user."

So, the fix is to navigate to Central Administration — Manage Service Applications —  Visio Graphics Services — Global Settings and check the Application ID

Go back to Manage Service Applications — Secure Store Services — select the visio application id — Set credentials 

Once you set the username and password credentials, save and exit. This will fix the refresh and the visio graphics services error logged in the event viewer.

It's time again for another community presentation on SP 2010. I will be presenting 2 sessions at New Horizons, King of Prussia on Feb 4, 2010 — SharePoint 2010 Preview and Business Intelligence (BI) with SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2010 will cover Administration, ALM, VS 2010, Visual Web Parts, Document Library integration with Office 2010, and SPD 2010.  I also have a BCS presentation that shows how to modify and integrate external LOB data.

On the BI session, it will be a combination of excel services, Performance point, Visio web services and BI controls in SP 2010.

There are plenty of resources on the web for VMware Virtual Disk expansion. Some of them offer detailed steps and very helpful. I am sharing with you the steps I followed. As always back up your entire machine before attempting this. This is applicable only for your non-production environment.

How many times do you end up creating a test lab and you finally figure that you are running low on virtual hard disk space because you started loading all possible applications for testing? Since, it is a test lab, you probably figured that I had one single virtual disk that hosts application and OS files. So, any standard hard disk expansion methods would naturally fail because of active OS files.

Environment:

Virtual Machine OS – Windows Server 2008 x64 Trial Edition

Host OS – Windows 7 x64 bit

Virtualization Technology: VMware Server 2 (yes, it is free). As of writing this blog, MS Virtual PC does not run on x64 bit.

Files Required: Windows Server 2008 x64 DVD and GParted Live ISO file/CD.

Open up VMware Infrastructure Web Access and login with the host machine administrator credentials

On the Inventory pane, select the machine that needs virtual disk expansion.

In the Hardware section, select the hard drive and click on the dropdown option to select “Edit”.

In the window that loads, select “Increase Capacity”

In the Hard disk properties window, type in the additional hard disk capacity needed in the “Increase By:” text box

You are done with increasing the hard disk space.  It is that easy, but if you login into your Virtual machine and review Disk management, you will see this new disk space showing up as unallocated disk and you will have options only to assign a new drive letter since the primary disk hosts the OS files and there is no easy way to expand the OS disk (which is really why you are following all the above steps). If you had logged into your VM, it is time to shut down the machine.

Okay, now you need to download GParted LiveCD. I used the gpparted-livecd-0.3.4.-11 version.

Once you download the iso file, you can use  MagicISO to mount the iso file and boot the VM from that drive.  You can always add another CD/DVD hardware and mount the iso file to it and boot from the newly added drive.

If you don’t have the VM to boot from CD, it becomes a pain to try to hit the function keys to get into the BIOS. VMware Server 2 has an easy option to load the BIOS on startup. Navigate to the “Commands” pane on the “Summary” tab and select “Configure VM”. Select the “Power” tab and under “BIOS Setup”, check the “Enter the BIOS setup” option

Once you boot from the CD, GParted configuration option loads. The directions are fairly straightforward. If you search, you will find tons of resources do it. You can always to the GParted home page and review the documentation

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php

Assuming, that you were successful to expand your primary hard disk, you will assume that everything is done and you will start up your VM. Yes, you will be greeted with windows OS error messages. Okay, now load up your windows 2008 server CD and reboot the machine. Hit any key on start up, to boot from the CD/DVD. Once the windows setup loads, select “Next” to language settings and select Recover windows option.

On the System Recovery Options window, select “Command Prompt”

In the command prompt, type in “cd recovery” and hit enter

In the recovery folder, type in “StartRep.exe” command

Let the process complete successfully, and you can restart the machine. You now have a VM machine with the expanded virtual disk.

If you are in Philadelphia area, you may want to consider attending a SharePoint 2010 Preview session at New Horizons Wayne office. I will presenting and showing you some of SP 2010 features. SP 2010 Administration, ALM, VS 2010, Visual Web Parts, Document Library integration with Office 2010, and SPD 2010.  I also have a BCS presentation that shows how to modify and integrate external LOB data.

See you there!

Just back after attending the SharePoint 2010 conference. Very impressive new features in SharePoint 2010 for developers This is definitely not the complete list, but some of my favorites.

Note: Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint projects will work only with SharePoint 2010. Hard luck, can't use the cool features for MOSS 2007 development.

Developer

• Finally, we can now use client OS (Windows 7/Vista SP1) for SharePoint development. Of course, x64 bit. No need for a separate VM.
• Integrated Debugging — Yep, you read that right. Debugging your web parts just got a lot easier. Dump your "attaching to worker process" headache. Developer Dashboard provides you with detailed debugging information and performance analysis which will help with problem isolation and fix.
• Deployment of web parts is integrated within VS 2010. Click F5 and watch build, package & deploy. Yes, you can customize the deployment process.
• VS 2010 has now in-built support for Visual Web part development. You can use the designer to control the look and feel of your web part.
• Cascading deletes with Lists — Handle with care — but powerful feature. Out of the box support for linking lists. Lists have been scaled to accommodate millions of rows.
• Client Object Model (OM): Tons of posts will invade the web, but for now remember — it is API on steroids with ability to select, add, manage and update data in SharePoint. Overcome current restrictions of MOSS web services and full support for JavaScript. Also, OM is very low on file size, so easy to redistribute.
• REST APIs support through ADO.NET Data Services — Yes, strongly typed and full support for REST protocols — ATOM, JSON, & ATOMPub. Use REST to pull data from Lists, Cloud and Excel sheets.  
• LINQ — If you have not learnt LINQ, I would urge you to do so… LINQ to SharePoint provider is slick for Entity based programming and can be used in event receivers, webparts etc.,
• Ribbon Framework — People who love the Ribbon, now you have a complete framework to go crazy and this stuff is very extensible.
• BCS – Business Connectivity Services (our good old BDC supercharged) — With ECT- External Content Types (imagine this as the structure of external systems — methods, fields, connections), BCS can pull in external data into SP 2010. There is a bunch of enhancements on business data connectivity like custom connections, batch operations, and read and write capabilities. Plus, now we have a GUI type interface to modify application definition files.
• Out of the box ALM (Application Life Cycle Management) support for SharePoint development with Team Foundation Server(TFS) 2010. Code versioning, Code Coverage, CI Builds, Batch builds, Code quality metrics, Work Item Tracking, Automated Load Testing are all integrated for SharePoint development.
• Sandboxed Solutions — Follows a iterative development and easy deployment model with a separate process for solutions. The good thing is that Sandbox solutions can be restricted by Code Access Security (CAS)  and exposes a subset of Microsoft.SharePoint API. As you may guessed by now, Sandbox solution can not be used to develop Visual web parts but Event/Feature receivers, List definitions, Site Pages, Content Types, Infopath Forms services and SharePoint online are all supported.
• Service Applications — Bye, bye SSP. SSP was all or nothing, but now, each web apps can determine what type of service applications it needs.  Service applications can now be shared between farms. Developers who have good WCF experience can now go crazy and develop their own service applications (core service app, app proxy, app end point) enable service apps for discovery and write consumers (web parts, Power Shell cmdlets). You would definitely want to consider writing your own service apps when you want a scalable solution that can share data between site collections.
• Plus,  Visio Services (No problem if you don't have visio client, real time data can be shared to a SharePoint Site. Visio diagrams can have different data sources like SharePoint Lists, SQL Database and Excel sheets) is a welcome addition. Excel Services is all beefed up. Not to mention that BI integration with SharePoint is whole lot easier now. Tons of enhancements to Analytic reports. KPIs can be easily deployed from Performance Point to SharePoint sites. Feed Performance Point with data from lists and document libraries.

More to come…..

I was in the process of configuring TFS 2010 Beta 1 and the configuration wizard was failing on Reporting Services with error message TF255275: SQL Reporting Services could be accessed…..

Server: Win 2008 x64

Database: SQL Server 2008 x64  

The issue was my existing Reporting Services database was configured for SharePoint mode. So, use SQL 2008 Reporting Services Configuration — Database — Change Database to create a new database for Reporting Services. This should take care of the problem. To understand RS Configuration in SQL 2008 for TFS 2010, refer to "Configure Reporting Server Manually" section in Beta1 Install Guide.