Time Capsule 2006 to 2009 - The Technologies of a technical consultant

I was sitting on the train today, thinking about the technologies I have worked with in the last three years. And you know what? I have to say web technologies have developed extremely quickly (Well of course it is!). Being a consultant allows me to indulge myself into the latest technologies, and most of the time, take the latest technologies for granted.

Sometimes I think it is actually quiet an effort to keep up (yet I have to for my passion and profession). What I mean for example is say, you install an SDK for Silverlight 2.0, work with it a little while, then you will find yourself installing the SDK for Silverlight 3.0 (And of course with that Visual Studio 2010)! It is hard work to keep up, but it is worth it!

I've worked with SharePoint 2003, I'm working with SharePoint 2007 technologies and now with the sneak peak at the exciting SharePoint 2010, I have to say being a techy guy is the best job in the world! It is very rewarding to see Microsoft listening to customers, giving them what they want. I dig the new BCS, I dig the new ribbon within the web browser, I dig multi-item checkouts, I dig the new developer tools, I dig the new backup and restore tools, I dig the new central admin.....I dig it, I dig it, I dig it! Then again, it is hard work to keep up, but it is worth it!

Anyways, the purpose of this is to keep a time capsule of the (non beta) technologies I have played within the 3 yr period. Who knows how many of these technologies will stay in my list? Here goes...

2006-2009:
Microsoft Technologies

• C#/VB
• ASP.NET
  
• .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5
• SQL 2000, SQL 2005, SQL 2008
• Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
  
• Microsoft CRM 3.0
• Microsoft CRM 4.0
• WSS 2
• SharePoint Portal 2003
• WSS 3
• MOSS 2007
• MS Office 2003/2007
  
• Microsoft Search Server 2008 and FAST
  
• Silverlight 1.0
• Silverlight 2.0
• Internet Explorer 6.0/7.0/8.0
  

Third Party

• Javascript and AJAX
  
• JQuery
• Flash
  
• DotNetNuke
• SugarCRM
• Meridio
• HP Trim
  
  

Silverlight 2.0 – Silverlight Apps calling asmx web services

A while back I worked on a Silverlight application that was hosted in SharePoint. The Silverlight application was to call a web service written by a third party vendor in .NET 2.0.

Problem
As what we all normally would do in a Silverlight app is to call this web service. However, I got the following error when my application tries to call the asmx web service:

“An error occurred while trying to make a request to URI 'http://localhost:1000/webservice.asmx'. This could be due to attempting to access a service in a cross-domain way without a proper cross-domain policy in place, or a policy that is unsuitable for SOAP services. You may need to contact the owner of the service to publish a cross-domain policy file and to ensure it allows SOAP-related HTTP headers to be sent. Please see the inner exception for more details.”

Solution

After some research, I found a recipe to get it going again:

1. Create a new file within the web service application (at the root of the requesting domain), called clientaccesspolicy.xml with the following contents:
   
   
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <access-policy>
   <cross-domain-access>
   <policy>
   <allow-from http-request-headers="*">
   <domain uri="*"/>
   </allow-from>
   <grant-to>
   <resource path="/" include-subpaths="true"/>
   </grant-to>
   </policy>
   </cross-domain-access>
   </access-policy>
   
   
   
2. Create another file within the web service application(at the root of the requesting domain), called crossdomain.xml with the following contents:
   
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <cross-domain-access>
   <allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="*"/>
   </cross-domain-access>

After adding these policy files, my app started working. Hope this helps.

References

http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/04/06/silverlight-cross-domain-policy-file-snippet-intellisense.aspx

http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/06/10/silverlight-services-cross-domain-404-not-found.aspx

Microsoft SharePoint 2007 – Renaming a MOSS Server

This is the N-the time I’ve had to rename a SharePoint server, and every time I keep on forgetting the exact steps… so these are notes for the (Technical) me.

1. Change each alternate access mapping for MOSS 2007/WSSv3 deployment in Central Admin reflecting new server name
2. Register the change with SharePoint, using:
   
   stsadm -o renameserver -newservername <newname> -oldservername <oldname>
   
   
3. Rename server in Windows
4. Restart server
5. Post restart, update SharePoint farm credentials using:
   
   stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin <domain\domainuser> -password <password>
   
   
6. Run an iisreset
7. Check the accounts used in application pools within IIS, update to reflect new machine name accounts
8. Rebuild the search index (remove and recreate)
9. Operation Complete!

Source: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mirjam/archive/2007/08/06/renaming-a-moss-server.aspx (Thank you Mirjam)