Monday, June 07, 2010
Issue:
A client was experiencing very strange behavior following an upgrade from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010 Server. In a nutshell some documents such as Word (.doc and .docx) would open while others such as Excel (.xls and xlsx) and PDF documents would not open.
Note: By open I mean when clicking on an Excel document, stored within a document library, it would not open in Excel installed on Windows 7, Vista, XP, etc.
Furthermore, the file type icons that normally display next to familiar documents such as Excel were missing and a missing image red x was displayed.
Thoughts:
The behavior of unrecognized File Types and missing document icons seemed to indicate an issue with the docIcon.xml configuration which is commonly located here: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML.
However, after inspecting this file on each server I could find nothing apparently wrong. Finally, one last tedious inspection revealed the issue. Following the upgrade we had to reconfigure the Adobe PDF IFilter which meant adding the following key to the docIcon.xml file:
<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon_small.gif" />
After looking at this entry more closely I noticed that the double quotations marks looked italicized “. This meant the configuration contain extra characters and was most likely edit with an editor like word pad instead of note pad.
Tip: Never use Word Pad to edit configuration files because it will add additional characters and likely corrupt the configuration file.
Solution:
I removed the unsupported double quotes and replaced them with unformatted double quotes. Viola, we could now open Excel and PDF Files again! Even better the cute little document type icons came back! :)
Further Explanation:
The reason the Excel Documents types became unavailable is because these document type mappings were located after the pdf file mapping within the docIcon.xml. Essential the invalid PDF entry broke all entries below it.
Hope this helps someone else!!!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Besides surviving countless beatings from my favorite two year old and a two hour crying fit from my 4 month old son I’ve attended several great community events. Thanks wifey :).
May 3rd: Oklahoma City Developers Group: Stop Drowning In Technical Debt! As the INETA Membership Mentor of Oklahoma I set a goal this year to try and encourage more collaboration between the strong communities existing in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. To accomplish this I have presented three times so far in OKC. On May 3rd I presented to a crowd of about 50 for the lunch meeting and 20 for the evening meeting. Both meetings were great.
May 4th: MSDN Events Launch 2010 Highlights – This event was well attend and provided overview demos of Windows 7, SharePoint 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, etc.
May 13th: Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group: SharePoint 2010 Launch Event – For our May meeting we wanted to do something extra special. May 12th was the official launch of SharePoint 2010 and as a result we wanted to organize a Launch Event of our own. We held the event at Dave and Busters thanks to several general sponsors (K2, GDH Consulting, Metalogix, TEKSystems, The Rowland Group,
High Tech Resources). The event exceeded our expectations with about 50 people in attendance. We are also very thankful for Eric Shupps being our special guest speaker.
May 22nd: SQL Saturday 35 (Dallas) – I left Tulsa, OK at 3:30 in the morning to Drive down to Dallas where I met up with some friends including Shawn Weisfeld. I have never presented at a SQL Saturday before but the event is similar to other events such as code camps or SharePoint Saturdays which I regularly present at. I resented “SharePoint, A DBA’s Nightmare!” to a room of about 40 people. The session was very conversational with some great questions. The goal of the presentation was to help the audience understand SharePoint’s architecture a little better and know the pro/cons of certain decisions. We discussed such topics as database naming conventions, performance tips, and database maintenance.
Monday, April 12, 2010
The Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group is having it’s monthly meeting tonight Monday April 12th @6:00 PM.
Come see Corey Roth’s presentation on SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services.
GREAT Prizes:
XBox 360 – Halo 3 ODST
Telerik Premium Collection ($1,300.00 value)
ReSharper ($199.00 value)
SQL Sets ($149.00 value)
64 Bit Windows 7
Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET Platform ($1,195.00 value)
You can click here for more information.
You can click here to RSVP for the meeting.
Tuesday May 04, 2010
Renaissance Tulsa Hotel and Convention Center
Seville II and III
6808 South 107th East Avenue
Tulsa Oklahoma 74133
For the Developer
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Event Overview
MSDN Events Present: Launch 2010 Highlights
Join your local Microsoft Developer Evangelism team to find out first-hand about how the latest features in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 can help boost your development creativity and performance. Learn how to improve the process of refactoring your existing code base and drive tighter collaboration with testers. Explore innovative web technologies and frameworks that can help you build dynamic web applications and scale them to the cloud. And, learn about the wide variety of rich application platforms that Visual Studio 2010 supports, including Windows 7, the Web, Windows Azure, SQL Server, and Windows Phone 7 Series.
Click here to register.
For the IT Professional
8:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Event Overview
TechNet Events Present: Launch 2010 Highlights
Join your local Microsoft IT Pro Evangelism team to find out first-hand what Microsoft® Office® 2010 and SharePoint® 2010 mean for the productivity of you and your people—across PC, phone, and browser. Learn how this latest wave of technologies provides revolutionary user experience and how it takes us into a future of greater productivity. Come and explore the tools that will help you optimize desktop deployment.
Click here to register.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Last month Cory Roth spoke at the first meeting of the Oklahoma City SharePoint User Group. On Monday April 26th I will be presenting at the second meeting.
| What: | Oklahoma City SharePoint User Group
OKCSUG is excited to host Dennis Bottjer as our April speaker presenting “SharePoint, A DBA’s Nightmare!” For many organizations the question is not if SharePoint but when. SharePoint requires SQL Server to function and stores everything from content to configuration with SQL Server Database. Yes, this means Word, Excel documents, and even images are stored within a SQL Server Database. Perhaps, even more frightening is the way SharePoint often grows like a weed within an organization. A healthy and well-tuned SQL Server Environment is crucial to successful operation of a SharePoint farm. This talk will begin by providing an overview of how exactly SharePoint uses SQL Server. It will then detail SQL Server best practices as pertaining to SharePoint. Finally, the talk will provide performance-tuning tips for SharePoint that will reduce the load placed on the database. |
| When: | Monday, April 26, 2010 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM |
| Where: | okcCoCo 723 N. Hudson Ave
Oklahoma City, OK 73102 |
| What: | NWA TechFest
Tulsa TechFest has been a growing success year over year for the last four years. We are PROUD to be bring this successful event to NWA! |
| When: | Thursday, July 8, 2010 (all day) |
| Where: | Center for Non Profits @ St Mary's 1200 West Walnut Street
Rogers, AR 72756 |
The Tulsa Tech Fest has been an annual event for several years. Northwest Arkansas is a short drive from Tulsa and is very scenic. The NWA Techfest is a great opportunity for the Oklahoma User Group Community to support the Northwest Arkansas User Group Community.
Action Items
1) NWA Techfest is excepting speaker submissions. If you have expertise in areas such as C#, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, SharePoint, Agile Development, Hyper-V, Silverlight, WCF, WF, please consider submitting a session.
2) Mark your calendar and commit to attending.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Oklahoma City now has two SharePoint User Groups. The group may eventually merge to form a single group but that is still being discussed. For more information visit www.OKCSUG.org and www.OKSUG.org.
Corey Roth, Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group, VP will be presenting at the next www.OKCSUG.org meeting on March
Meeting Info:
Introduction to SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search
Corey Roth, Stonebridge Consulting
This intro level talk will teach you the basics of Enterprise Search in SharePoint. Here you will learn about the basic building blocks such as content sources, crawled properties, managed properties, and scopes. We will also cover what types of data can be indexed. We’ll use demo search using SharePoint 2010, but all of the topics apply to MOSS 2007 as well.
Corey Roth is a consultant at Stonebridge specializing in SharePoint solutions in the Oil & Gas Industry. He has ten plus years of experience delivering solutions in the energy, travel, advertising and consumer electronics verticals. Corey has always focused on rapid adoption of new Microsoft technologies including Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, LINQ, and Silverlight. He also contributed greatly to the beta phases of Visual Studio 2005. For his contributions, he was awarded the Microsoft Award for Customer Excellence (ACE). Corey is a graduate of Oklahoma State University. Corey is a member of the .NET Mafia (www.dotnetmafia.com) where he blogs about the latest technology and SharePoint.
COME JOIN US ON MARCH 29! All meetings are FREE to attend! We meet from 6pm to 8pm at the Oklahoma City Coworking Collaborative. Pizza and drinks will be provided.
Thanks to Accelebrate for sponsoring the door prize for the March OKCSUG meeting! Accelebrate is a national and international provider of SharePoint training, as well as ASP.NET training, C# training, and VB.NET training.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Microsoft announced today the future release of Windows 2008 R2 / Windows 7 Service Pack One. This Service Pack will include two major enhancements for Hyper-V including Dynamic Memory and Remote FX.
References: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/
Dynamic Memory will allow Hyper-V to achieve greater virtual machine density.
Additional Thoughts:
Dynamic Memory will have an obvious impact on datacenters trying to reduce costs and increase operating efficiency. However, Dynamic Memory will also help small business and / or development shops do more with less physical hardware.
Remote FX allows virtual machine users to watch full-motion video and Silverlight animations, run 3D animations, and use the Windows Aero Desktop.
Additional Thoughts:
Remote FX goes a long way to improving the user experience within the virtual environment. This feature combine with Direct Access could really improve the remote worker experience.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tomorrow I begin teaching an 8 week Configuring MOSS 2007 Certification Preparation Class at Tulsa Community College. The class will be every Thursday night at the northeast campus.
Details:
| Course: |
CSCI 2993-24212 |
| Title: |
SharePoint Administration in MOSS 2007 |
| Delivery: |
Blended (Class / Online) |
| Meeting: |
Thursday |
| Times: |
6:00p – 8:50p |
| Dates: |
03/11/2010 – 05/06/2010 |
| Campus: |
Northeast |
| Room: |
Academic Building, RM 2421 |
| Book: |
Click To Buy (Amazon)
|
| Fee: |
Free |
| Certification Exam: |
Free (First Attempt) |
TCC Sponsor
(Please contact for enrollment assistance)
|
Brian Hall
(918) 595-7444
Tulsa Community College
bhall@tulsacc.edu
|
Monday, March 08, 2010
Do you live in the South? Are you a developer or do you generally consider yourself a geek? Then you should consider joining this group: http://southerndevs.groups.live.com.
The group was started by Keith Elder as a way to connect developers across the south. The group is a way to share event information, share knowledge and stay connected.
Call to Action:
1) Please join this group after reading this post.
2) Please spread word of this group.