August 2006 - Posts

• Windows SharePoint Services, SQL 2005 FTS and PDF iFilter problem

  My company (OnSphere) has a Life Science product called PharmaReady and this product is built on Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and ASP.NET.  Whenever I am in the office (which is not often at all) I usually help the PharmaReady technical or development staff with solving WSS related problems and recently they ran into a problem with WSS search with PDF iFilters installed not working with SQL 2005. After working with them and doing a little research we were able to narrow down that problem had to do with SQL 2005 not accepting the installation changes from the PDF iFilter software.  I did some searching and discovered a article by Hilary Cotter called SQL Server Full Text Search Language that helped me solve the problem. In this article it advised how to query the SQL 2005 to show me the fulltext document types that were installed and how to load new resources and verify the signature.  After a little testing I was able load the PDF iFilter.  This was accomplished by loading the resource and stopping the SQL Server service to except the changes.  Below are the steps that I took to verify the PDF iFilter resources were not present, load the new resources and make them available. If you open up the SQL Server 2005 Management studio and open a new query window and type in the SQL statement select document_type, path from sys.fulltext_document_types and execute it you will get a list of all the resources that are currently being used for FTS.  Now comment out the “select” statement that we just created and type in the next two statements and execute them. exec sp_fulltext_service ‘load_os_resources’, 1; exec sp_fulltext_service ‘verify_signature’, 0; Once they have completed restart the SQL Server service through the studio, command prompt or by restarting the server.  Once the service has restarted re-execute only the “select” statement and you will notice that the PDF iFilter now appears and that the WSS search is retrieving PDF documents in the search results when looking for words inside the document. Please remember that this is what worked for my situation and it may not work in every situation. Posted Aug 06 2006, 03:53 AM by mlotter with no comments

• VPC image setup for MOSS Beta 2, SQL 2005, .NET 3.0, VS 2005 and Office Tools add-in for InfoPath 2007 Beta 2 and Office 2007 Beta 2 for temporary development environment

  I’m currently finishing up a project and the last 2 weeks will be creating a prototype environment for MOSS, InfoPath 2007, .NET 3.0 (Windows Communication Foundation specifically) and SQL 2005.  I will be converting 2 forms that I just built in InfoPath 2003 with a Web Service/manage code middle tier and SQL 2005 backend. Since most of the technology is still in beta I was very fearful on setting up my environment because I was betting on having a lot of problems.  Luckily I was wrong and I was successfully able to create the VPC image on the first try and I just wanted to share the high level steps that I took to get everything running on one machine. Started out with a base Windows 2003 R2 operating system that was fully patched.  Then installed and performed the following tasks in the order they are listed below.  Granted I made several back-up files during this process to insure that I would good restore points to  use. ·         SQL Server 2005 Standard with client tools ·         Launched SQL 2005 Management Studio to allow it to configure itself ·         Visual Studio 2005 Professional (VB, C# and no Crystal Reports add-on) ·         .Net Framework 3.0 (latest release) ·         Hotfix KB912818 (Windows Server 2003) ·         Office 2007 Professional PLUS Beta 2 ·         Activated Office 2007 Professional Beta 2 by launching one of the Office applications ·         Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation ·         Visual Studio 2005 Office Tools for InfoPath 2007 ·         Launched Visual Studio 2005 to check to make sure all add-ons got installed ·         Created local account and add it to Power User group (for MOSS and SQL 2005 communication) ·         Added new account to SQL2005 security as “dbcreator” and “securityadmin” ·         Installed MOSS with Advance/Complete options ·         Followed setup instructions for MOSS to complete setup ·         Created a Web Application ·         Created Site Collection ·         Applied Corporate Intranet Template ·         Installed SharePoint Designer Several times the system advised me to restart and I did so at each occurrence. I know that this is not much and it might not work for everyone but I thought it could help a few individuals out during are ramp up to all the new version of Microsoft products that deal with MOSS and InfoPath 2007 Beta 2 someway.   Posted Aug 03 2006, 02:56 AM by mlotter with no comments

• Introduction of sorts

  The purpose of this blog is to share the experiences that I encounter during my consulting career while using SharePoint, InfoPath and Workflow.  You'll see information about SharePoint 2003, 2007 and maybe a little about 2001 when migration time comes along.  You'll also see posts about InfoPath 2003 and 2007 and creating workflows in the new Windows Workflow Foundation technology.  The type of posts will focus on both technical and development because I got my experience working on both sides of the fence and most of the clients that I currently work with demand both. This is my first blog and I'm not a great writer but I hope to improve by sharing my experiences and getting feedback from the community. I'm currently working full time for a Microsoft Gold Partner company called OnSphere out of Raleigh, NC.  I'm currently one of several lead SharePoint solution experts for the company and travel all over the United States working with corporate clients wanting to implement SharePoint technology within there corporation.  The incorporation of InfoPath has started to increase over the year and I forsee that this will be a big part of SharePoint in the near future. While working at OnSphere I've tried to contribute to the community by answer news forms at MSD2D and creating short tips at the site.  While helping at MSD2D I met Jason Medero and he got me involved working with B&R Solutions part-time on SharePoint related work. Before working for OnSphere I worked for a global insurance broker out of Nashville, TN and got a lot of experience working in a enterprise environment and learning how to design global applications.  The experience that I picked up at the company has been a strong asset for me and I don't reget any of the time that I spent there. Posted Aug 02 2006, 05:42 AM by mlotter with no comments