Kopš SQL server 2008 ir pieejama vēl viena kolāciju saime – tādas, kas sākas ar Latvian_100, piemēram, Latvian_100_CI_AS. Šajās kolācijās gan viss ir salabots un kārtošana tiešām strādā pareizi:

select VARDS from (
        select 'Bērziņš' as VARDS union
        select 'Āboliņš' as VARDS union
        select 'Avotiņš' as VARDS) as SAMPLES
order by VARDS collate Latvian_100_CI_AS

rezultāts ir

VARDS
-------
Avotiņš
Āboliņš
Bērziņš

Papildus informāciju var pasmelties MSDN dokumentācijā.

Users complained that form load times are quite long. It seemed that by every version they are getting even worse. The initial thought was that the delay was due to loading of SharePoint data (through secondary data sources). However, profiling showed that it takes less than a second to load them.

Recently, we found out that by each build the manifest.xsf file becomes larger and larger. The initial version was less than 100K, while the current one is 500K. The reason for such growth was – automatically generated “InfoPath variables” in the form. Something like this:

 <xsf:xmlToEdit name="SomeFieldName_3721" item="/my:SomeContainer/my:SomeSubNode/my:SubSubNode">
    <xsf:editWith autoComplete="no" component="xField"></xsf:editWith>
 </xsf:xmlToEdit>

The variables can be later referenced in InfoPath’s own XSLT views as well as in context menu definitions in the manifest.xsf. However, these variables are never cleaned up. The list is growing each time you save your form using form designer.

It seems that Infopath initializes each variable upon form load. The more variables you have, the longer it takes to load the form.

When there are thousands of such variables, cleanup is not very easy. Hence, I wrote a PowerShell script to do the job. It enumerates all the variables and looks for references to this variable in manifest.xsf and in all .xsd views of your InfoPath form.

Download the InfoPath manifest.xsf clean-up script here.

• How to host Microsoft InfoPath forms in SharePoint pages
• Infopath – Get the current user without writing code (the current user from SharePoint site, of course)

You can, of course, modify the “All Items” view and add the “Title” column, but it never has a link to the document, nor has it the fancy drop-down for editing (see the column “Title” in the picture).

So, I decided to dig into CAML schemas and to create a field which would display the title of the document and have the dropdown menu. To achieve that, one can use “computed fields” – fields which do not actually represent data editable by the user, but are only used for presentational purposes. Hence, one only has to define the DisplayPattern of that field.
There are two fields already built into SharePoint – the _EditMenuTableStart and _EditMenuTableEnd, which build the dropdown menu contents. What I had to add, was generation of the readable content. The most important part of the display pattern is this:

<IfEqual>
  <Expr1><LookupColumn Name="Title" /></Expr1>
 <Expr2></Expr2>
<Then>
     <Field Name="FileLeafRef" />
 </Then>
 <Else>
     <Column HTMLEncode="FALSE" Name="Title" Default="(no title)" />
  </Else>
</IfEqual>

It compares the value of the Title column to an empty string. If this is the case (you have uploaded a document with no title or created a folder using Explorer view), it just shows FileLeafRef – the filename. Otherwise, it displays the value of the title field.

In my case I had an existing document library which I wanted to “fix”. Hence, I created a PowerShell script, which adds my field to the library. I used “AddFieldAsXML()” method of SPList object to inject my CAML code into sharepoint.

Now it looks like this:

You can dowload the whole script here: http://tips.naivist.net/wp-content/CreateTitleField1033.ps1_.txt Rename it to .ps1 and run it .\CreateTitleField1033.ps1 -url http://yourserver/sites/somesite/someweb -ListName "Your list". Then modify the view settings to display the field.

If you are developing your own list defintion, you can use the particular fragment in schema.xml and have your field defined in a regular fashion.

param(
  [string] $url      =  "",
  [string] $ListName = ""
)

$sharepoint = [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")
$site=[Microsoft.Sharepoint.SPSite]($url);
$web=$site.openweb();
$list= $web.lists[$ListName];

$schema =@"
    <Field ID="{E2ABF8D3-6435-4773-A3D6-67508FEB7CF5}" ReadOnly="TRUE" 
             Type="Computed" 
             Name="KRItemLinkTitleDropdown" 
             DisplayName="Title" 
             DisplayNameSrcField="Title"
             AuthoringInfo="(dropdown displaying the title field)"
             EnableLookup="TRUE" 
             SourceID="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3"
             StaticName="KRItemLinkTitleDropdown" FromBaseType="TRUE" ClassInfo="Menu">
         <FieldRefs>
          <FieldRef Name="Title" />
          <FieldRef Name="LinkTitleNoMenu" />
          <FieldRef Name="FSObjType" />
        </FieldRefs>
        <DisplayPattern>
           <Field Name="_EditMenuTableStart" />
           <HTML>
           <![CDATA[<A onfocus="OnLink(this)" HREF="]]></HTML>
       <IfEqual>
            <Expr1>
              <LookupColumn Name="FSObjType" />
            </Expr1>
            <Expr2>1</Expr2>
            <Then>
                <FieldSwitch>
                <Expr>
                  <GetVar Name="RecursiveView" />
                </Expr>
                <Case Value="1">
                  <LookupColumn Name="FileLeafRef" HTMLEncode="TRUE" />
                </Case>
                <Default>
                  <SetVar Name="UnencodedFilterLink">
                    <SetVar Name="RootFolder"><HTML>/</HTML>
                      <LookupColumn Name="FileRef" />
                    </SetVar>
                    <SetVar Name="FolderCTID">
                      <FieldSwitch>
                        <Expr>
                          <ListProperty Select="EnableContentTypes" />
                        </Expr>
                        <Case Value="1">
                          <Column Name="ContentTypeId" />
                        </Case>
                      </FieldSwitch>
                    </SetVar>
                    <FilterLink Default="" Paged="FALSE" />
                  </SetVar>
                  <GetVar Name="UnencodedFilterLink" HTMLEncode="TRUE" />
                </Default>
              </FieldSwitch>     
             </Then>
            <Else>
                <Field Name="ServerUrl" URLEncodeAsURL="TRUE" />
            </Else>
            </IfEqual>


       <HTML><![CDATA[" onclick="return DispEx(this,event,']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <ServerProperty Select="HtmlTransform" />
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <ServerProperty Select="HtmlTrAcceptType">
                      <Column Name="File_x0020_Type" />
                    </ServerProperty>
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <ServerProperty Select="HtmlTrHandleUrl">
                      <Column Name="File_x0020_Type" />
                    </ServerProperty>
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <ServerProperty Select="HtmlTrProgId">
                      <Column Name="File_x0020_Type" />
                    </ServerProperty>
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <ListProperty Select="DefaultItemOpen" />
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <MapToControl>
                      <Column Name="HTML_x0020_File_x0020_Type" /><HTML>|</HTML>
                      <Column Name="File_x0020_Type" />
                    </MapToControl>
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <Column Name="HTML_x0020_File_x0020_Type" />
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <ServerProperty Select="GetServerFileRedirect">
                      <Field Name="ServerUrl" /><HTML>|</HTML>
                      <Column Name="HTML_x0020_File_x0020_Type" />
                    </ServerProperty>
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <Column Name="CheckoutUser" />
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <UserID AllowAnonymous="TRUE" />
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <ListProperty Select="ForceCheckout" />
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <Field Name="IsCheckedoutToLocal" />
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[',']]></HTML>
                  <ScriptQuote NotAddingQuote="TRUE">
                    <Field Name="PermMask" />
                  </ScriptQuote><HTML><![CDATA[')">]]></HTML>
                  <UrlBaseName HTMLEncode="TRUE">
                  </UrlBaseName>
                    <IfEqual>
                    <Expr1>
                      <LookupColumn Name="Title" />
                    </Expr1>
                    <Expr2></Expr2>
                    <Then>
                        <Field Name="FileLeafRef" />
                     </Then>
                    <Else>
                        <Column HTMLEncode="FALSE" Name="Title" Default="(no title)" />
                    </Else>
                    </IfEqual>
                  <IfEqual>
                    <Expr1>
                      <GetVar Name="ShowAccessibleIcon" />
                    </Expr1>
                    <Expr2>1</Expr2>
                    <Then><HTML><![CDATA[<img src="/_layouts/images/blank.gif" class="ms-hidden" border=0 width=1 height=1>]]></HTML>
                    </Then>
                  </IfEqual><HTML><![CDATA[</A>]]></HTML>
                  <IfNew Name="Created_x0020_Date"><HTML><![CDATA[<IMG SRC="/_layouts/1033/images/new.gif" alt="New!">]]></HTML>
                  </IfNew>
                  <Field Name="_EditMenuTableEnd" />
        </DisplayPattern>
      </Field>
"@
$fieldname = $list.fields.AddFieldAsXml($schema);
$list.update();

So, I compared the speed of str1+str2 concatenation and array.push(str1, str2).join() methods. The code I used was quite simple:

var iIterations =800000;
var d1 = (new Date()).valueOf();
str1 = "";
for (var i = 0; i<iIterations; i++) str1 = str1 + Math.random().toString();
var d2 = (new Date()).valueOf();
log("Time (strings): " + (d2-d1));

var d3 = (new Date()).valueOf();
arr1 = [];
for (var i = 0; i<iIterations; i++)arr1.push(Math.random().toString());
var str2 = arr1.join("");
var d4 = (new Date()).valueOf();
log("Time (arrays): " + (d4-d3));

I tested it in IE8 and FireFox 3.5.5, both on a Windows 7 x64.

In the beginning I tested on small number of iterations (some hundred, some thousand items). The results were unpredictable (sometimes string concatenation took 0 milliseconds, sometimes it took 16 milliseconds, the same for array joining).

When I increased the count to 50’000, the results were different in different browsers – in IE the string concatenation was faster (94 milliseconds) and join was slower(125 milliseconds), while in Firefox the array join was faster (113 milliseconds) than string joining (117 milliseconds).

Then I increased the count to 500’000. Now the array.join() was slower than string concatenation in both browsers: string concat 937ms in IE, 1155 ms in Firefox, array join 1265 in IE, 1207 in Firefox.

Maximum iteration count I could test in IE without having “the script is taking too long to execute” was 850’000. Then IE was 1593 for string concatenation and 2046 for array join, Firefox had 2101 for string concatenation and 2249 for array join.

Results – if the number of iterations is small, you can try to use array.join(), as it might be faster in Firefox. When the number increases, the string1+string2 method is faster.

UPDATE
I performed the test on IE6 (WindowsXP). The process stopped to respond immediately and never ended, if I tried the test on more than 100’000 iterations. On 40’000 iterations the results were

Time (strings): 59175 ms
Time (arrays): 220 ms

This means – if you need to support IE6, choose array.join() which is way faster than string concatenation.

The code below solves the problem programmatically (and yes, it changes the database directly). Of course, it’s an unsupported solution – if you use it, you may get in trouble with Microsoft official support.

string sSiteUrl = "http://moss/sites/yoursite/";
//after the code gets executed, we have to dispose the 
//spweb object, since the Navigation object of the current SPWeb instance will contain wrong information
using (SPSite oSite = new SPSite(sSiteUrl))
{
    using (SPWeb oWeb = oSite.RootWeb)
    {
        //check if the top navigation bar is already there
        SPNavigationNode oTopnav = null;
        try
        {
            oTopnav = oWeb.Navigation.GetNodeById(1002);
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
            oTopnav = null;
        }


    if (oTopnav == null)
    {
        //we've found out there is no top navigation bar. Let's create one;

        //we create a temporary navigation node pointing back to web site root
        Microsoft.SharePoint.Navigation.SPNavigationNode oTempNode = new Microsoft.SharePoint.Navigation.SPNavigationNode("Navigation", oWeb.ServerRelativeUrl);
        //we add this node to the "global" collection (where quick launch and top nav bar normally live)
        oWeb.Navigation.GlobalNodes.AddAsLast(oTempNode);

        //now the dirty work - go to the database and change the ID of the navigation node
        System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection oConn = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection(oSite.ContentDatabase.DatabaseConnectionString);
        System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand oCmd = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand();
        oCmd.Connection = oConn;
        oCmd.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.Text;
        //we only update the node which has the same ID as the one we just created, but, to be completely sure that 
        //nothing else gets changed, we add a requirement to have the same siteid and webid
        oCmd.CommandText = @"UPDATE NavNodes SET Eid=1002 WHERE (Eid=" + oTempNode.Id.ToString() + 
             @") AND (SiteId='" + oSite.ID.ToString("D") + "') AND (WebId='" + oWeb.ID.ToString("D") + "')"; ;
        oConn.Open();
        oCmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
        //closing the connection
        oConn.Dispose();
    }
}


}    //the oSite object is disposed here

This is actually not the only place where you can see the magic _vti_something. I remember myself deleting such directories from “wwwroot” quite often back in the days “everyone” used MS FrontPage. FrontPage used to create the folders “_vti_bin”, “_vti_cnf” on your computer locally as you developed a website .. and also on the server, if you used “Frontpage Extensions” for publishing. The _bin folder would normally contain executables required for FP server components (as far as I understand, something like cgi_bin).

So, even though FP is announced dead, guys from the SharePoint team apparently like the idea of puting executables in the _vti_bin folder which was used by FrontPage Extensions.

Anyway, the question is, what does the acronym “VTI” mean. Apparently, Microsoft did not develop MS FrontPage from scratch, they acquired “Vermeer Technologies Inc”. Thus the name of “bin” folder in FrontPage. Thus the URL for lists.asmx in SharePoint.

• C: You shoot yourself in the foot
• PHP: You shoot yourself in the foot with a gun made from pieces taken from 300 other guns
• Ruby on Rails: You want to shoot yourself in the foot, but the convention is to shoot yourself in the head

(pievienošu no sevis)

• SharePoint: You want to shoot yourself in the foot, but first you have to “IISRESET /noforce”

We swiped out all of the built-in styles and layouts to achieve maximum flexibility and stylability of MOSS infrastructure. I believe this is the best choice when you have to adapt your portal to custom tailored design layout.

Well, the result was, the portal worked fine with our master page, BUT the content query web part failed. It failed every time we enabled the RSS feed feature. Instead of seeing the actual content, it showed only an error message (in Latvian, since we’re using the latvian language pack) “Šo Web daļu nevar parādīt. Lai novērstu problēmu, atveriet šo Web lapu ar Windows SharePoint Services saderīgā HTML redaktorā, piemēram, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer. Ja problēma netiek novērsta, sazinieties ar Web servera administratoru.”

No traces could be found in the ULS log nor in the event log of the server. After setting the diagnostic logging of all categories to verbose, finally an exception was written to the logfile:

 Error while executing web part: System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransformException: An error occurred during a
 call to extension function 'RegisterFeedUrl'. See InnerException for a complete description of the error. ---> 
 System.Web.HttpException: The control collection cannot be modified during DataBind, 
 Init, Load, PreRender or Unload phases.     at System.Web.UI.ControlCollection.Add(Control 
 child)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls.WebPartRuntime.RegisterFeedUrl(String url, String type)    
 --- End of inner exception stack trace ---     at ....

When looking at the RegisterFeedUrl in .Net Reflector, we found out that the code actually accesses the Header property of the Page object that is being rendered and adds HtmlLink control to the collection. It gave us a hint that probably there is something wrong with the page and header objects. And – yes, we had left out the runat="server" part of the HTML and HEAD tags. So, this is the absolute minimum you must have:

<HTML runat="server">
    <HEAD runat="server">
....

.. and, of course, the name space references and other stuff you usually put in the HTML element tag.