WSS Development

Custom SharePoint Timer Job Stuck Initializing

Darrin Bishop — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:42:54 GMT

Simple enough, I was creating a timer job that got "stuck" initializing. After a few resets and reinstalls the custom timer job just would not exit from the initializing state. After a few IISResets and redeploys there was no change. The job would initialize but not complete. A check of the ULS showed errors associated with the new timer job:

"The previous instance of the timer job 'xyz', id '{Cf27333E-482D-47CC-B098-38B86167DBCF}' for service '{3eeee14-CEB0-450B-A6B8-AAB48549E6F8}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped. Consider increasing the interval between jobs"

Strange error since the timer job had no actual executing code, basically it was a simple shell of a timer job. Ultimately the ULS gave it up… The SharePoint Timer service was getting Login Errors for Timer jobs trying to execute. Stopping the SharePoint Timer Service, re-entering the User Id and password and a start up allowed the custom timer service to fire without issue.

Books - Many New SharePoint Books Have Hit My Shelf

Darrin Bishop — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:20 GMT

It used to be that you could count the number of SharePoint books on one hand. Now just the MOSS 2007 books are consuming a lot of space on my shelves. It seems that every few weeks a new MOSS book is released. I am currently reading Inside SharePoint 2007 Administration by Steve Caravajal, Todd Klindt, and Shane Young. I will post more books that made it to my bookshelves, I am quite behind on these posts to be honest.

Here is are a handful that recently made it to my office shelves:

The Last Pint - Remembering a Friend

Darrin Bishop — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:53:07 GMT

I almost did not check my emails before I left the house today… One cannot explain the grief I felt when I checked the mail on the phone and realized the SharePoint community lost a dear friend. Wading though way too many eamils this morning to my disbelief I leaned that Patrick Tisseghem passed away.

Patrick was practically a SharePoint icon, not only in the European community but world-wide. Many of us have had the pleasure of meeting Patrick at one of his training sessions, SharePoint conference or by reading one of his many books, articles or posts.

For myself, I distinctly remember the first time I met Patrick. We were both speaking at an Advisor Summit in Phoenix, Az. As the speakers made their way across the hot pavement quiet and soft spoken Patrick and I introduced ourselves and made our way with the pack to dinner. It was during that time that Patrick made some SharePoint fame with his famous Beer database.

Over the years we connected primarily on the conference circuits, in and out of the speaker room and the after hour events. Patrick was always there, pint in hand, quiet and on the edge of the crowd. Always willing to talk and listen. Strange quality for an instructor, Patrick was more of a listener than a speaker after hours.

I can easily recount the events and parties that we happened to be together at, many now are all a blur over the years. I can say that my parting memory of Patrick will be TechEd 2008 in Orlando. Heading back to the speaker hotel from an event, my Matt and I happened upon Patrick taking a break on the bench outside the hotel. We sat an talked for a few minutes and as usual headed to the hotel bar. Over pints we discussed his current book, watched some sports and just kicked back. For me personally I will be left with a fond Patrick memory of TechEd, Pints, Books and Friends.

AddSolution - Failed to extract the cab file

Darrin Bishop — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:40:17 GMT

Seems like I have been building and deploying features and solution for weeks. I have run into this error while attempting to add a solution to the solution store: Failed to extract the cab file in the solution.

Seems like there is more than a few reasons why you might see this return from your STSADM addsolution command but for myself each time was this error was associated with a duplicate entry in my .ddf file. I spent some time trying to determine what was causing this error and then happened upon Rob's post on the topic: STSADM strikes again, Failed to extract the cab file in the solution...

You can check your DDF files for duplicates. If you can't seem to located the offending duplicate then try renaming your web solution file to .CAB extension and open it. The cab file will open sorted by name and you might be able to more easily find the duplicate file.

Infrastructure Update Issues

Darrin Bishop — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:59:13 GMT

Microsoft's Infrastructure Updates have been out for about a week now. There does seem to be some potential big issues with the updates breaking third party products. Microsoft also has posted a KB article on Alternate Access Mappings issues associated with the Infrastructure updates.

Here are a few key posts you should be looking at if you have installed or are considering installing the Infrastructure Updates:

AAM issue with Infrastructure Update

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: July 15, 2008

KB: When is the SPContext.Current available ? (SharePoint dev)

Tech Ed 2008 - OFC07-TLC - Building Windows PowerShell Cmdlets for Microsoft SharePoint

Darrin Bishop — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 02:26:37 GMT

For those that attended OFC07-TLC - Thanks!

Here are the files and slide deck for OFC07-TLC Building Windows PowerShell Cmdlets for Microsoft SharePoint. The demo builds a simple Get-Web cmdlet and a Web Feature Provider. Remember this is "conference" code and not production code :) demo purposes only!

As always, I am interested in comments and feedback about the demo, slides, or session.

File: http://www.darrinbishop.com/files/OFC07_TLC.zip

Speaking at a Free Half Day SharePoint Seminar in Springfield, Il.

Darrin Bishop — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:53:05 GMT

For those of you located in or around Springfield, Illinois there will be a half day session on SharePoint at the Springfield Crowne Plaza on Tuesday, May 13, 2008.

Crowne Plaza Hotel
3000 S. Dirksen Parkway
Springfield Illinois 62703

There will be an opening session presented by Microsoft for everyone and followed by sessions in two tracks each with two break-out sessions.

Here is a breakdown of the sessions. I will be providing the content for the Technical Track breakouts.

8:30am - 9:15am Opening Session: Overview of Microsoft Office Capabilities and Solutions

9:30am – 10:30am: Breakout Session 1 (Business Track)

Learn why organizations are choosing the Microsoft platform to run their most critical business applications. This session will discuss how Microsoft solutions can provide innovative solutions to address business challenges around Collaboration and Enterprise Content Management. During this session we will look at several real world examples of using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the 2007 Office System to address real world business challenges and scenarios and we will be taking an in-depth look at one solution that exemplifies how Microsoft's Collaboration strategy within the context of a powerful strategic planning process created by the County of Los Angeles.

9:30am – 10:30am: Breakout Session 1 (Technical Track)

Looking at the SharePoint Development Landscape – An overview of WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 SDK. In this breakout we will take a high-level overview of the SDK and common SharePoint development tasks.

10:45am-11:45am: Breakout Session 2 (Business Track)

This session will address how the Microsoft platform can be leveraged to address Compliance, Enterprise Content Management and E Discovery business challenges within Government. This session will discuss how Microsoft solutions can provide innovative solutions to address Enterprise Content Management needs. During this session we will discuss Enterprise Content Management strategies. How to improve content controls and processes via while achieving regulatory, and operational standards with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the 2007 Office System.

10:45am-11:45am: Breakout Session 2 (Technical Track)

Setting the Stage for SharePoint Development – This session will discuss development environments. We will discuss common development environments including individual dev, integrated dev, test and production. Time permitting we will cover solution and feature deployment.

Updated WSS and MOSS SDK Ready for Download

Darrin Bishop — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:25:46 GMT

The newest version of the WSS and MOSS SDK has been posted to Microsoft Download. It is available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D94E307-67D9-41AC-B2D6-0074D6286FA9&displaylang=en

Dev Utilities and The New Dev Environment

Darrin Bishop — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:18:28 GMT

Here is a quick look at the current utilities I make sure I get on all my development servers:

Reflector - Unless you live under a rock you have heard of Reflector. Number one go to utility to view the object model ( and then some!) to better understand the underlying product.

PowerShell - Microsoft's newest "command-line" application is always on my dev machines. PowerShell is probably best known as a "scripting" tool and an administrator tool From the development side I frequently use PowerShell to create test harnesses, manipulate and dump .Net objects as well as a scriptable interface to manage SharePoint. If you have not gotten into PowerShell you really are overlooking a powerful development tool.

ClassMaster - This is the newest utility to make it on all my development machines. ClassMaster is a testing, learning and profiling tool from Certified Development. ClassMaster allows me to qucikly load one or more assemblies and easily create and test's its object. ClassMaster displays a user interface that lists an assembly's classes, methods and properties. From there I can create and store objects, set (and test) method parameters, view results and drill down into the resulting object's methods and properties. For SharePoint development I load the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly, create a SPSite via one of the many constructors. From there I can easily view the SPSite object's properties, run methods such as OpenWeb and view the resultant SPWeb object's properties. Did I mention you can save these objects off to a clipboard for use as parameters in other method calls? Want/need to understand how to use one or more SharePoint objects - grab ClassMaster, select a constructor, pick a method and try various parameters.

DbgView - This tool picks up trace and debug statements from running applications. This is a little gem of a tool that I run whenever I am start debugging an application. To use debug view all you need is to write in trace and debug statements which DbgView will pick up. This tool fills in the debugging gaps for those SharePoint assemblies that require GAC deployment. Yes I know you can debug from the GAC but a splash of Trace or Debug statements and DbgView for me is much quicker.

VCdControlTool - This is my "Go To" tool for mounting ISO images - particularly those large images > 2Gig which are not accessible via Virtual PC's Mount ISO. There appears to be no default location to downnload this tool. A search for VCdControlTool will return many download locations.

Fiddler - Fiddler is the tool I use to track down authentication issues with SharePoint. This utility will act as a HTTP proxy and dump all sorts of HTTP information to the screen for review.

Thats the basic list of utilities that make it on my machine. I would be curious what other utils should make it to my dev machines by default.

SPSiteDataQuery - Greater Than 10 Lists Issue

Darrin Bishop — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:19:29 GMT

The Good, Bad and the Ugly - well Ugly at least...

SPSiteDataQuery is used to query across multiple lists/libraries within a site collection. Apparently there is a confirmed issue when you query over 10 or more lists/libraries where columns and column order are not the same.

Read Steve's post on this issue at: SPSiteDataQuery limited to 10 document libraries or lists