Atlanta .NET Regular Guys

I don't know why this cracks me up so much, but it does

Screen Cleaner

Job posting

I don't normally post job openings from recruiters, but since this opportunity was just so broad, I thought I might be able to help some potential job seeker

<job posting>

As the world's largest healthcare services company with more than $90 billion in annual sales, McKesson Corporation (McKesson) is a Fortune 18 Corporation that provides pharmaceutical supply management and information technologies across the entire continuum of healthcare

We are currently seeking qualified applicants for the following positions

(more than 50 positions available):
Software Engineers (Java, C#)
Quality Assurance Analysts
Oracle Database Administrators
Configuration Engineers
Software Development Managers

To pre-register, email your resume to
OpenHouse@McKesson.com
Open House is February 9^, 11AM to 3PM
5995 Windward Parkway
Alpharetta, GA 30005
www.McKesson.com

</job posting>

Reading a DateTime value from a SharePoint list

When working with list data in SharePoint code, what's the difference between these two calls?

// read method 1

string sDateTimeValue = listRow["SampleDateTime"].ToString();

// -------------------------------------------

// read method 2

DateTime dDateTimeValue = new DateTime();
DateTime.TryParse(listRow.GetFormattedValue("SampleDateTime"), out dDateTimeValue );

Well, in my experience, the difference is about 5 hours.

Yup - if, at 4:50pm, you put DateTime.Now into listRow["SampleDateTime"] then try to read it out using the two lines above, the value of sDateTimeValue will be 4:50pm and the value of dDateTimeValue will be 11:50am. I'm deliberately leaving off the date portion - don't e-mail me about that.

Before you ask, yes - my web application's time zone had been set correctly to the Eastern time zone and the individual user was set to follow the web application.

I have no idea why this happened, but I thought I should document that it did happen.

Windows 2008, SQL 2008, Visual Studio 2008 Launch Event in Atlanta on April 29th

Check out the Microsoft Heroes Launch Event site

Shake and Bake baby!

Atlanta represented well in the Sleepless SharePoint Washington DC social activity.  We went go-kart racing and randomly broke 20 people into 10 teams of 2.  Brendon and Keith were miraculously paired, and they took the gold medal 1st place trophy.  Finishing two laps back was the combination of John (?) from RSUI (another Atlanta guy) and Eric, one of the guys from Infusion New York.  I was paired up with a Amit, guy from DC and my team took the bronze.  In 4th place was Tom from RDA in Atlanta and a consultant from DC.  Atlanta made up 5 of the top 8 spaces. 

It's worth mentioning that Dan finished in last place.  His team was more than 9 laps back from Brendon and Keith's leading pace.

The race was fun - a grueling endurance relay where every 15 or so laps the teammates swapped places driving.  We drove about an hour to complete 120 laps.

In DC for the weekend

I was signed up to participate in the Atlanta Sleepless Office Dev Weekend sponsored by Infusion and Microsoft, but due to participant withdrawal Infusion has decided to combine the Atlanta and DC events.  So Brendon, Keith, Dan, and I are all up here in DC, along with three other folks from Atlanta.  We're currently sitting here listening to Sahil Malik present an overview of the SharePoint BDC.

Coming up soon are deep dives into other aspects of SharePoint.  We've already covered Excel Services.  Later tonight is a fancy dinner (the entire Atlanta crew is eating prime rib) followed by an all night coding marathon.  The output of the programming competition is going to be judged for prizes.  I think there might also be a prize given away for winning a some sort of quiz gameshow.

I forgot my camera at home.  Oh well...

Adding Web Front Ends? Be at the same code base!

If you are adding web front ends to a farm, be sure your app server and web front ends are at the same code base or you may experience failures trying to run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard.  Our farm had hotfixes 313243 and 316200 applied to the application server.  After some significant testing of the app server to make sure the sites we were migrating to the new server farm worked, Nelson and I attempted to add a pair of web front servers to what was supposed to be the standard 5 server SharePoint farm.  However, we kept getting the following errors:

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    104
Description:
Failed to connect to the configuration database.
An exception of type System.Security.SecurityException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Access denied.
System.Security.SecurityException: Access denied.
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServer.Update()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Join()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()
The Zone of the assembly that failed was:
MyComputer

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

After a little testing to make sure that the service account we were attempting to use was correct and had access to the configuration database, we realized that the problem must not be that the user did not have access to the database, but that the database structure was different from what the config tool was expecting.  After running the hotfixes on our new WFE servers, everything seemed to work as originally expected.

SQL Server UG - new location alert

Join us Monday, Jan. 14 from 6:30PM to 9:00PM.

LOCATION: FusionLink
   Suite 210, Building 4,
   Glenridge 400 Business Complex,
   5825 Glenridge Drive 
   Atlanta, GA  30328
http://www.affug.com/katapult/index.cfm?page=aboutaffug/directions

PLEASE REGISTER so we know how much food and beverages to prepare:
http://www.atlantamdf.com

Refreshments and networking start at 6:30PM, speaking starts at 7:00PM.
TOPIC:   SQL Server 2005 Disk IO Performance
SPEAKER: Bryan Oliver – SQL Server Domain Expert, Quest Software
SPONSOR: Quest Software -  Application, Database, & Windows Management
http://www.quest.com/

Attend the First Ever SharePoint Jam Session

Here are the details from the web site (http://www.sharepointjams.com)

Want to know what a SharePoint Jam Session is? http://www.sharepointjams.com/what-is-a-jam-session/

==============================================================

First Ever SharePoint Jam Session
Get ready for the first ever SharePoint Jam Session in Atlanta!

Bring in the new year with some fun, learning, and new challenges with SharePoint 2007.
To get location information make sure and email the leader of the Atlanta Jam Sessions.

January 17th, 2008 / 6:00PM - 9:00PM
Topic: Using the CKS projects

To join the session contact Brendon Schwartz atlanta@sharepointjams.com

Add Forms Based Authentication users into your Shared Service Providers User Profiles

When you setup a SharePoint 2007 site with Forms Based Authentication (FBA) you have multiple options of where to store your user profiles.  The two most common places to store the profiles are the User Information List located in each site collection or the User Profile store of a Shared Service Provider (SSP).

Here are the steps to be able to add your forms based authentication users to your Shared Service Provider.  After you complete these steps the Shared Service Provider will look for those users when using the Add User Profile functionality.  The reason you must perform these steps is because the SharePoint Web Applications only look in a single authentication type per Web Application Zone.

1. Create a web application for your site that uses Windows Based Authentication
2. Extend the web application to also have a zone for forms based authentication
   
   Here is a great link for steps 1 and 2: Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Forms Based Authentication (FBA) Walk-through - Part 1 by Dan Attis
   
3. Create a Shared Service Provider for that application.
4. Extend the Shared Service Provider with the same settings as the web application
   
   NOTE: To do this step just follow the same steps you used above for extending a web application.  The Shared Service Provider is just in a web application.
   
    
   
   
The following mappings were used for the example:
http://<machinename>:1111 - Windows Based Authentication Shared Service Provider
http://fbassp.devcow.com - Forms Based Authentication Shared Service Provider



5. Add a forms based authentication user to the Full Control Policy for that Zone in order to log into the site
   
   
   
6. Log into the site and add the forms based authentication users that are required for the site.
   
   NOTE: Make sure when you log into the site you use the SSP link such as http://fbassp.devcow.com/ssp/admin
   
7. Add a user using the right provider name and user name such as
   
   AspNetMembershipProvider:bschwartz
   
8. Once the users are entered in the system they will show up in the people picker on the Windows Based Authentication site.
   
   

Win a free seat to the Atlanta edition of the Silverlight tour

Shawn Wildermuth, Atlanta based consultant and training maven, is about to go on tour with his Silverlight workshop.  Since he's got a soft spot in his heart for Atlanta, he is giving away a free spot for the January 15th to 17th workshop.  All you have to do is provide him with a good chuckle by providing him a caption to his photograph.  Visit Shawn Wildermuth's blog to enter the caption.

Baby update - 20 weeks in

After a critical mass of complaints about lack of updates, here is the baby update for the second trimester.

Kim and I are going to have a boy!  Now we need to come up with a name.  We've discovered that much like furniture and decorations in general, Kim and I can't agree on anything!

At the time of the above sonigraph, the baby weighed 13 oz and looked much more like a tiny person and less like a Gummi bear.  You could see arms, feet, and even a face.  Now, looking at the baby's face in the ultrasound at 20 weeks is nothing like seeing a real baby's face.  In fact, my comment to Kim was that the baby's face in the ultrasound bore a striking resemblance to Jack Skellington from Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas:

Kim laughed then hit me.  Or maybe she hit me then laughed.  The details are fuzzy.

I've also got a New Year's Eve photo of Kim proudly wearing her maternity clothes.  We had a calm New Year's Eve and day - home relatively early and we never got out of our pajamas the next day.  Nice!

We did manage to get out and pick some of the baby furniture out.  Apparently it takes up to 12 weeks to get furniture delivered, and we figured a baby bed would be something we don't want to be forced to wait for delivery on.  So we picked out the crib, double dresser and bookcase from the Toscana collection from Capretti.  Nice construction, cherry finish, and the bed converts into a twin or full sized bed and a toddler bed.  I think this furniture is nicer than what Kim and I have in our bedroom!