http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2013/05/07/guest-post-distributed-cache-service-in-sharepoint-2013.aspx

A little article about the Distributed Cache Service in SharePoint 2013.

Has anybody else noticed something’s changed with the schema of the Content Database in SharePoint 2013? The AllUserData table has changed.

Look, but don’t touch!

Try a SELECT * FROM AllUserData and see what you get:

First of all, what’s happened to columns [nvarchar1], [nvarchar2] (skip a few) [nvarchar64]? How about [int1] to [int16]?

They’ve all been combined into a fragment of Xml, and stored in a single column [tp_ColumnSet].

Let’s zoom in and have a look at one of those Column Sets:

That’s interesting.

Wide List Issues

Firstly, this means “wide lists” are going to be potentially faster than under 2010. A “wide list” in SharePoint 2010 was one that had so many columns that it would cause an INSERT or UPDATE statement to affect more than 8000 bytes of row data.

To work around the problem, when SP2010 works out the column you’re about to add to a list could cause more than 8000 bytes to be written, it would instead create an additional row to hold the new columns. SharePoint used the [tp_RowOrdinal] column to number each of the rows accordingly for a wide list.

We expect SQL Server to start table locking the AllUserData table as the number of row locks approaches 5000. Wide list behaviour would potentially cause SQL Server to have locky behaviour at one-half as many rows (or one-third, or one-quarter – depending upon how many list columns and therefore SQL rows).

Now it’s all stored in one big column, that particular problem is going to go away.

I was bored, so I added 66 text columns to a list. It was all stored in one row, in that one column.

However, the [tp_RowOrdinal] column still exists in the SharePoint 2013 content database, and I’m not sure why.

SharePoint 2013 Content Databases and Sparse Columns

SQL 2008, 2008R2 and SQL 2012 all support “sparse columns” and “column sets“. These are SQL technologies that allows a row to grow beyond the usual 8K-per-row limit (up to 2GB of data when expressed as Xml). Under the hood, the AllUserData table still has [nvarchar1] through to [nvarchar64] and beyond! In fact there are 262 nvarchars, 100 bits, 550 datetimes, 550 floats, 750 ints, 262 ntexts, 262 sql_variants, 350 uniqueidentifiers and 2 geographies (in a pear tree). (Thank you to Lior Gal for pointing me in the right direction!)

See the MSDN reference article on SharePoint 2013 AllUserData table design here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh625524.aspx.

But why didn’t these show up in SQL Management Studio? This is behaviour by designer to prevent poor performance when selecting form wide tables.

AllUserData Performance Issues in SharePoint 2013

Three general observations:

1. For list sizes below 5000 SQL rows, lists that don’t use SharePoint indexed columns will probably be slower.
2. For lists greater than 5000 SQL rows, unless we’re using SharePoint column indices in our query, SharePoint list throttling should kick in, and terminate the query before it gets started.
3. For most list use cases, it is still massively important to use SharePoint column indices. But if you do decide to switch off throttling for a list, performance should be faster than under SharePoint 2007.

So, in summary: even in SharePoint 2013, make sure you have suitable indexed columns.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2013, SharePoint Architecture

And, of course, (at the risk of great hubris) if anyone thinks mine deserves a nomination or a +1 I wouldn’t object. :o)

Technorati Tags: Certification, MCP, MCSA, MCSE, SharePoint 2013

In an ASP.NET Web Part for SharePoint, when I override CreateChildControls(), do I need to invoke the base?

You will see many examples on the Internet of code that does invoke the base, and many counter examples. Some of these contradictory examples are on the Microsoft MSDN site!

I decided to take ILSpy to the System.Web.dll assembly and find out once and for all.

First of all, System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart does not override CreateChildControls() itself.

So, we must take a look at it’s ancestor: Part.

Once again, there is no implementation for CreateChildControls() here, so we go further up the chain to System.Web.UI.WebControls.Panel:

Still no definition of CreateChildControls(). Further up, we get System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebControl.

But it is not until we get to System.Web.UI.Control that we have an implementation:

Hang on a moment! That’s empty!

// System.Web.UI.Control
/// <summary>Called by the ASP.NET page framework to 
/// notify server controls that use composition-based 
/// implementation to create any child controls they contain
/// in preparation for posting back or rendering.</summary>
protected internal virtual void CreateChildControls()
{
}

So, the simple answer appears to be:

No, you don’t need to invoke base.ControlChildControls() in an ASP.NET WebPart”

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET, Development, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Development

If you’re a SharePoint Administrator, and you need help with installing or configuring SharePoint…

If you’re a SharePoint Developer, and you want SharePoint Development help to know the best way to code a particular SharePoint solution…

If you’re a SharePoint Power Information Worker, and you’re stuck for help with SharePoint Designer, workflows, Excel Services, Access Services or InfoPath…

…then you might just need the SharePoint Doctors!

We are certified SharePoint subject matter experts with real world SharePoint experience, and we’re Microsoft Certified Trainers.

We’re on call for live SharePoint support through video chat and desktop sharing, Monday to Friday, these hours:

GMT: 8am – 8pm

CET: 9am – 9pm

EST: 5am – 5pm

PST: 1am – 1pm

EDT: 6pm – 6am

By prior arrangement, we can also take bookings outside these hours.

Help is available from $100 for a 30 minute consultation, with video chat based live assistance and screen sharing. You can also book us for 30 minute, 1 hour, half and full-day appointments.

Visit sharepointdoctors.com for more information, and check out our credentials!

We’ve fixed a bug with multi-line labels. :o)

Works on-premise, in the Sandbox and in Office 365.

Technorati Tags: Development, Office 365, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Development, Solution Sandbox

Farm Password Recovery in SharePoint 2010

The other day I was asked by a customer, “hey, would you happen to have a copy of our Farm password anywhere?”

No, I didn’t. And it would kind of be bad if I did!

However, I could recover SPFarm passwords and recover other Application Pool account passwords for them, once Remote Desktopped in to one of the SharePoint servers.

If you want to recover the Farm password, you need to sign in with a Local Administrator account on a server running Central Admin.

If you want to recover one of the Web Application or Service Application passwords, then you need to log in to one of those servers instead.

IIS 7.x runs Central Admin in the context of an Application Pool running under the Farm Account credentials. Similarly, Web Applications and Service Applications run in App Pools with their own credentials.

To recover any of these, start up an Administrative command prompt or PowerShell window, and IIS Manager 7.x.

In IIS Manager, you need to find out the name of the Application Pool.

For Central Admin, that would be:

SharePoint Central Administration v4

But we can also uncover the passwords for other Application Pools, e.g.:

SharePoint – 80

SharePoint Web Applications

e4b4b94050634ad2863ad7d7d17c3a17

Next, at the command prompt (or PowerShell) you can use the IIS appcmd.exe to request the Password field from the ProcessModel section of the applicationHost.config file. For example, in PowerShell (on ONE LINE!):

&$env:windir\\system32\\inetsrv\\appcmd.exe list apppool 
 "SharePoint Central Administration v4" /text:ProcessModel.Password

An example run is shown below:

Hope this helps someone!

Technorati Tags: PowerShell, SharePoint, SharePoint Administration

SharePoint Documentation Kit – SPDocKit Review

I’ve been using SPDocKit from Acceleratio for about 6 months now, on and off. One of the services we offer at JFDI Phoenix is our SharePoint 2010 Farm Health Check, and this involves a lot of boring navigation through Central Admin and some gnarly PowerShell to gather farm insight. Collecting settings information by hand is tough and time consuming.

The value-add for customers comes from what I can deduce from their configuration – what problems they’ll see; whether their platform will scale; whether it will be secure enough.

SPDocKit helps me gather the vast majority of the information I need, and formats it into a very detailed, very useful report in Word format.

Here’s just a snippet from the table of contents:

It goes on to produce a detailed inventory of each server in the farm:

It even builds a Visio-style diagram showing the farm topology. OK, I know it looks daft when I run it on a one-server farm, but it is vastly more impressive on a multi-server farm!

It also identifies and lists:

• Services on server, per server
• Site topology (site collections per web application)
• Web applications

• Self-service site creation settings
• Alternate access mappings
• IIS settings
• Site collection usage
• Quota templates
• Service applications

• Detailed settings for each application
• Databases used
• Permissions
• Associations to web applications and proxy groups
• Content databases, usage and quotas
• System settings, including email and SMS settings
• Features and solutions
• Sandbox configuration
• Monitoring and reporting
• Security

• Administrators
• Managed accounts
• Service accounts
• Products and versions
• Scheduled tasks
• Server information

• Hardware / cores
• Installed programs and hotfixes
• Drives and free space

If this wasn’t enough, it also lets you record all this information and monitor changes over time.

More Features!

And there’s more! The SPDocKit application itself has a pretty useful UI. You can browse the web application and site structure without needing to generate documentation:

It also lets you walk the permissions of your sites. Very useful if you’ve been breaking inheritance and you want to know who has access to what. Having said that, SharePoint’s built-in “Check Effective Permissions” button is still invaluable to debugging permissions problems.

There’s also a Detailed Permissions report, but this is still a very interactive tool:

There’s even best practices analysis built in:

Although obviously not exhaustive, it does give a very good start for a more detailed analysis of a farm.

There’s also a Scheduled Tasks viewer:

Conclusion

Whilst SPDocKit is not magic, it certainly saves me a great deal of time on SharePoint farm health checks. The licensing is pretty cool also. You can either buy it for an individual farm, of have a yearly subscription as a consultant. If you’re using the latter, the setup exe lets you run it on a server without leaving it installed afterwards.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Administration, SharePoint Architecture

Just a quick announcement.

I’m delivering 3 week-long SharePoint 2010 Developer courses based on Microsoft Official Course 10175. It’s all on-line, so delivery is over the web and live!

To attend, you’ll need:

• a web cam and a headset
• a Windows PC
• an Internet connection
• the free Microsoft Lync Attendee client – or the full Lync client if you have it

There are three dates available:

   24 September 2012 -£1570.00 inc VAT.

   1 October 2012 -£1570.00 inc VAT.

   26 November 2012 -£1570.00 inc VAT.

The courses run from 9:30 to 5:30 UK time, 5 days (Mon-Fri). Attendance is via web cam, over Microsoft Lync/LiveMeeting.

Over the five days, we cover:

• SharePoint Object Hierarchy
• Application Pages
• Development with SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio
• Declaring List Definitions, List Instances and Fields
• Packaging SharePoint Solutions
• Web Parts (Server, Visual and Connected)
• Server Object Model
• Creating and Securing Lists and Sites Programmatically
• Event Receivers – List, Site and Feature Receivers
• Application Configuration (Editing Web.Config Programmatically)
• Business Connectivity Service for SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio
• Declarative SharePoint Workflows
• Workflow Foundation SharePoint Workflows
• Client Object Model for JavaScript, .NET and Silverlight
• Custom Actions and Ribbon Bar Customisations
• Sandbox Solutions and the User Code Service
• User Profiles and Taxonomy
• Pages, Master Pages and Themes

…and more!

Places are limited, so book while there’s space!

Prices include digital Official Curriculum (as PDF files), and access to our online lab environments.

Please feel free to call us on +44 1273 358282 or email us at contact@jfdiphoenix.co.uk.for more information.

Happy SharePointing!

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010 Training, SharePoint Development, Training