Microsoft SharePoint Developer Documentation Team Blog

Official Blog of the SharePoint Developer Documentation Team

How We Address Developer Documentation CommentsJune 9 2008

One of the things I've wanted to do on this blog is give people a clearer view into how we actually produce developer documentation for SharePoint; the processes we use, the decisions we make, and what factors influence those decisions. (The Office client developer docs team have done several great posts over on the Office Client Developer Content blog around similar topics.) With that in mind, when someone asked me the other day what we actually do with those comments people enter for our content on MSDN, I figured it was worth answering here.

 

The short answer is: we collect, classify, and prioritize them for action, pretty much like a software product team would triage bugs entered against their product.

 

And here's the long answer:

 

For each comment, when we initially receive it we assign a status, which is further broken down by a sub-status value as well. This enables us to separate out a

Add Virtual Earth Interactive Maps to your Search Server SiteApril 1 2008

(cross-posted from Enterprise Search Blog) 

Are you trying to think of ways to make your Search Server site more interactive and graphical? You can use Federation as a way to enhance the functionality of your search result pages.

The Federated Search Web Part makes it possible to display more than results from OpenSearch (1.0/1.1) sites on your search results page. The Search Server 2008 SDK explains how to include results from SQL Server database queries and search sites that do not expose XML feeds (such as Atom or RSS). In both scenarios, you do this by means of a "connector," a light-weight interface that sends queries to a given location or database, places the results into a structured XML document, and sends that XML to a Federated Search Web Part.

This sample demonstrates how you can extend the connector concept to Web service requests other than basic search queries. It shows how to use a connector to pass an address string to Microsoft's MapPoint Web service in order to obtain the latitude and longitude coordinates for that address. Once you have those coordinates, displaying a Microsoft Virtual Earth map requir

How to: Create a Content Class That Can Be Backed Up and RestoredFebruary 7 2008

Introduction

If you have a custom content component that you want to be included in Windows SharePoint Server 3.0 backups and restores, you must represent the component with a class that implements the IBackupRestore interface. This post explains how to do that. There is a complete example following the procedures. This post assumes that you are familiar with my earlier post: Programming with the Windows SharePoint Services Backup/Restore Object Model.

Note: Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all classes and interfaces referred to in this post are in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup namespace. Classes that you will create are in bold pink. Also, this post refers at times to the “reference topic” for this or that method/property for supplementary information. As of the date of this posting these reference topics in the most recent versions of the WSS SDK (1.3), in either download or MSDN form, did not yet contain this new material. Look for another update soon. The additional information is not necessary for using this post as a learning exercise or implementing the example it contains.

You

How to: Programmatically Back Up and Restore a Single Site CollectionFebruary 7 2008

Introduction

This post describes how to back up and restore individual site collections programmatically.

Note: Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all classes referred to in this post are in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration or Microsoft.SharePoint namespaces (not Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup).

Procedures                         

 

To Back Up or Restore a Site Collection

1.    Add to your Visual Studio project a reference to Windows SharePoint Services.

2.    Add using statements for Microsoft.SharePoint and Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.   

3.    Add the following lines to obtain a reference to the farm and its collection of services.

[C#]

SPFarm myFarm = SPFarm.Local;

SPServiceCollection myServices = myFarm.Services;

4.    Obtain a reference to the Web service that publishes the Web application that hosts your site collection by using the service's System.Guid which is the value of its SPWebService.Id property.

[C#]

How to: Programmatically Restore ContentFebruary 7 2008

 

Introduction

This post explains how to create an application that restores from a backup a content component, including a custom content component, of a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 farm. The post assumes that you are familiar with my previous posts Overview of Backing Up and Restoring Data in Windows SharePoint Services and Programming with the Windows SharePoint Services Backup/Restore Object Model.

Note: Unless specified otherwise, all classes referred to in this post are in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup namespace. Classes that you create are in bold pink.

Procedures

 

To Restore a Content Component

1.    Add a reference to Windows SharePoint Services to your Visual Studio project and add