Architecture

SharePoint Pod Show: 100,000 Downloads Later!

Rob Foster — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:59:59 GMT

ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX Unleashed Review for ASP.NET Pro Magazine

Rob Foster — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:10:51 GMT

So far, I have received some very warm comments and reviews on my book "ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX Unleashed" on the Amazon site (located here).

I was checking my email today and I had received an email from my publisher telling me to go check out this review of the book that was done for ASP.NET Pro Magazine.

Click here for the review.

I have been writing books for about 7 years now and this is one of the best reviews that I've ever received and just wanted to share it out to the world!

To Mike Riley (the reviewer), thank you so much for the kind words! You really made my day today!

The Big SharePoint Survey Results are In!

Rob Foster — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:00:20 GMT

In Episode 15 of the SharePoint Pod Show, we discussed the preliminary results from the Big SharePoint Survey that was conducted by Lightning Tools. The results are in and you can get them here:

SharePoint Survey

SharePoint Pod Show Episode 15 is Live!

Rob Foster — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:13:53 GMT

We had fun with this one and I hope that you enjoy it as well. In this episode, you will hear our cheeky humor as well as learn where to focus your SharePoint skills for 2009.

Get it here

Documenting Your SharePoint Application Design-Part 1

Rob Foster — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:50:37 GMT

Download the design template here.

In my role, I am lucky enough to get to design lots of very cool software to solve (sometimes difficult) business problems. Many times, these applications involve design solutions that leverage SharePoint technologies. In this series, I will be discussing some of the design patterns and documentation patterns that I have encountered in my applications.

Disclaimer: this documentation is given as-is, so please use it and modify it as needed to meet your needs. This is just something to help you (and me) get jump-started on building and designing better solutions for SharePoint. :-)

One of the production issues that I have encountered revolves around setting up and configuring security groups within SharePoint. If you give your users too much control, they sometimes go nuts and end up trashing the site’s security. On the other hand, if you don’t give them enough control, then they might not be able to do what they need to in the site. There is quite a delicate balance of architectural design and user control that you must manage through processes and documentation.

As the designer of the system, it is your job to review the application’s requirements and determine what security roles that users will need to accomplish their jobs in the application. Lucky for us, SharePoint has quite an extensive (if not overwhelming) security model that you can use to either grant or deny a user’s rights in your application. First, let’s take a look at the different user roles that SharePoint offers:

Permission Level	Description
Full Control	Has full control.
Design	Can view, add, update, delete, approve, and customize.
Manage Hierarchy	Can create sites and edit pages, list items, and documents.
Approve	Can edit and approve pages, list items, and documents.
Contribute	Can view, add, update, and delete.
Read	Can view only.
Restricted Read	Can view pages and documents, but cannot view historical versions or review user rights information.
Limited Access	Can view specific lists, document libraries, list items, folders, or documents when given permissions.
View Only	Members of this group can view pages, list items, and documents. If the document has a server-side file handler available, they can only view the document using the server-side file handler.

These user roles are completely out of the box and available to every site that you create in SharePoint. Many times, you can use these roles in your application as they map to the most common user roles and functions that are typically found in a SharePoint application. You should start with these to see if they will meet your needs and add users to these groups.

Now what happens if you need more specialized permissions? Lucky for us, you can also create custom SharePoint roles with very specific permissions. Below is a list of custom permissions that are available in SharePoint that you can use to create your custom groups. These permissions are separated into separate categories: List Permissions, Site Permissions, and Personal Permissions.

List Permissions
- Manage Lists - Create and delete lists, add or remove columns in a list, and add or remove public views of a list.
- Override Check Out - Discard or check in a document which is checked out to another user.
- Add Items - Add items to lists, add documents to document libraries, and add Web discussion comments.
- Edit Items - Edit items in lists, edit documents in document libraries, edit Web discussion comments in documents, and customize Web Part Pages in document libraries.
- Delete Items - Delete items from a list, documents from a document library, and Web discussion comments in documents.
- View Items - View items in lists, documents in document libraries, and view Web discussion comments.
- Approve Items - Approve a minor version of a list item or document.
- Open Items - View the source of documents with server-side file handlers.
- View Versions - View past versions of a list item or document.
- Delete Versions - Delete past versions of a list item or document.
- Create Alerts - Create e-mail alerts.
- View Application Pages - View forms, views, and application pages. Enumerate lists.
Site Permissions
- Manage Permissions - Create and change permission levels on the Web site and assign permissions to users and groups.
- View Usage Data - View reports on Web site usage.
- Create Sub-sites - Create sub-sites such as team sites, Meeting Workspace sites, and Document Workspace sites.
- Manage Web Site - Grants the ability to perform all administration tasks for the Web site as well as manage content.
- Add and Customize Pages - Add, change, or delete HTML pages or Web Part Pages, and edit the Web site using a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible editor.
- Apply Themes and Borders - Apply a theme or borders to the entire Web site.
- Apply Style Sheets - Apply a style sheet (.CSS file) to the Web site.
- Create Groups - Create a group of users that can be used anywhere within the site collection.
- Browse Directories - Enumerate files and folders in a Web site using SharePoint Designer and Web DAV interfaces.
- Use Self-Service Site Creation - Create a Web site using Self-Service Site Creation.
- View Pages - View pages in a Web site.
- Enumerate Permissions - Enumerate permissions on the Web site, list, folder, document, or list item.
- Browse User Information - View information about users of the Web site.
- Manage Alerts - Manage alerts for all users of the Web site.
- Use Remote Interfaces - Use SOAP, Web DAV, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the Web site.
- Use Client Integration Features - Use features which launch client applications. Without this permission, users will have to work on documents locally and upload their changes.
- Open - Allows users to open a Web site, list, or folder in order to access items inside that container.
- Edit Personal User Information - Allows a user to change his or her own user information, such as adding a picture.
Personal Permissions
- Manage Personal Views - Create, change, and delete personal views of lists.
- Add/Remove Personal Web Parts - Add or remove personal Web Parts on a Web Part Page.
- Update Personal Web Parts - Update Web Parts to display personalized information.

Note that I’m not going to dig into the details of creating custom roles and permissions here as there is A LOT of documentation and blogs on the topic. I would rather focus on documenting the process instead.

Each of the SharePoint roles (see the first table in this blog posting) are configured with these permissions and it is important for you to understand which role has which permission so you can decide on whether to use the out of the box roles or will need to create custom roles. I have created a design template (screenshot below) that helps you document the permissions that are assigned to each out of the box role (see figure below) as well as describe any new roles and any assigned Active Directory groups that will be assigned to each role (not this will be different if you are using Forms Based Authentication).

For the new roles that you need to create, you can simply name the role and then document (with an “X”) each permission that is assigned to that role. This will help you keep a document on file (or as part of your overall architecture documentation) of your site’s security roles and their permissions so that you can easily create (or recreate) the permissions for your site via a documented process.

Again, my point of this blog is not to document the "what and how" of permissions and roles, but rather provide a jumpstart template that you can use in your architectural and operations design documents. I hope that this is something that you can readily use as well as extend the idea to meet your needs.

UPDATE: I was just informed that there is a similar blog post here by Stephanie Grima that documents permissions similar to what I did in the first part of this blog. At the time that I wrote this post, I was unware of her blog post and am providing an architectural design template instead of a description of permissions and how to use them. :-)

I've Updated My RSS

Rob Foster — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 03:19:17 GMT

Please subscribe to my new feed here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/lespaulrob

Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint Announced

Rob Foster — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:20:07 GMT

Check it out on Paul Andrew's blog here!

This is HUGE news for SharePoint Developers!!!!

SharePoint Guidance from the Patterns and Practices Group

Rob Foster — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:19:56 GMT

I am absolutely thrilled with the new SharePoint Guidance that has been released from the Patterns and Practices group. It covers the following areas:

Creating a SharePoint Development Environment
Overview, walkthrough, deployment, and upgrading a sample application that is provided
Best Practices on development activities
Technical Guidance
Quickstarts

If you are getting ready to start a SharePoint project or have one (or many) going right now, you should stop what you're doing right now and go read over these patterns and practices.

Here is the link to the SharePoint Guidance Center.

SharePoint Pod Show get some link love from MS Governance site!

Rob Foster — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:41:21 GMT

We got our first link love from the Microsoft Governance Resource Center today.

Check out the link to the SharePoint Pod Show on there and thanks again to Rob Bogue for doing a great interview on SharePoint Governance!

Quick SQL 2008 DB Analysis Script

Rob Foster — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:40:46 GMT

I've been playing around with SQL 2008's Intellisense features and ran across a few of the "sys." ('sys dot') functions that are very useful.

Naturally, I cracked open one of the ambiguous SharePoint content database and started running some analysis queries about the database. I came up with a very high-level and then a more detailed level SQL script that you can use for some very quick database analysis. No this is not as robust as a tool that you can buy that does deep analysis, but it does give you a good high-level view of the database that you are analyzing.

Enjoy!

//begin script

--high-level database report
SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of Tables'
FROM sys.tables

SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of Triggers'
FROM sys.triggers

SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of Views'
FROM sys.views

SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of Sprocs'
FROM sys.procedures

SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of Indexes'
FROM sys.indexes

SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of Database files'
FROM sys.database_files

SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of SQL Logins'
FROM sys.sql_logins

SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of Assemblies'
FROM sys.assemblies

--Detailed Database Report
SELECT name as 'Table Name'
,create_date
,modify_date
FROM sys.tables
ORDER BY name

SELECT t.name AS 'Trigger Name', tbl.name as 'Associated Table'
FROM sys.triggers t
INNER JOIN sys.tables tbl
ON t.parent_id = tbl.object_id
ORDER BY t.name

SELECT name AS 'View Name'
FROM sys.views
ORDER BY name

SELECT name AS 'SProc Name', create_date, modify_date
FROM sys.procedures
ORDER BY name

SELECT tbl.name as 'Associated Table'
  , i.name as 'Index Name'
  , i.type_desc
  , i.is_unique
  , i.is_primary_key
  , i.is_unique_constraint
FROM sys.indexes i
INNER JOIN sys.tables tbl
ON i.object_id = tbl.object_id
ORDER BY tbl.name, i.name

SELECT name AS 'Database File Name'
  ,type_desc
  ,physical_name
  ,state_desc
  ,size
  ,growth
  ,is_read_only
  ,is_sparse
  ,is_percent_growth
FROM sys.database_files
ORDER BY name

SELECT name AS 'SQL Login Name'
,[sid]
,type_desc
,default_database_name
,default_language_name
FROM sys.sql_logins
ORDER BY name

SELECT name AS 'Assembly Name'
  ,clr_name,permission_set_desc
  ,create_date
  ,modify_date
FROM sys.assemblies
ORDER BY name

//end script