First day of the month oracle SQL Query

pretty much simple way get the First day of any month using SQL Query is

select trunc(sysdate,'MONTH') from dual

Trunc Function of PL/SQL when passed with a 'Month' parameter will return the first date of a month.

instead of sysdate use the date value you want

sysdate trunc(my_birth_day,'MONTH') from My_Details

The Sharepoint Developer Introduction for .NET Developers

A good resource for dotnet developers for a hands on Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 Development.

There are not much developers who are experts in MOSS 2007 Developments. This is the Microsoft's step for the .net communities to gain momentum in sharepoint development.

Video Tutorials and hands on Sessions are included and are really informative.

The Sharepoint Developer Introduction for .NET Developers

Architect Webcast Series

Aspiring Architect Series 2008 - A Web Cast series for aspiring architects.
Checkout the following link

Architect Webcast series

Software Patterns

Architectural Patterns

• Highest level patterns
• Determines overall system architecture and provides the skeleton for the system
• Determines and specifies the relationship, roles and responsibilities of each subsystem
• It organizes the relationship between the sub systems
Eg.. SOA, Layered Architecture

Design Patterns

Used to fine tune the overall architecture and solve problems specific to the subsystem
It does structuring components, delegating and distributing workloads and organizing the communication and creation of components

Three Categories
• Creational Pattern
• Structural Pattern
• Behavioral Pattern

Implementation Patterns or Idioms

Defines solutions specific to a language
Even if I know the syntax in a language, to do efficient implementation one should use some specific styles that the language provides.

Yet Another reason why Properties should be used instead of Fields

Today, I did a little experiments on Properties VS Fields. It is better to use properties especially when that property is to interact with the other DLLs or external Assemblies.

Scenario: library.library.Name is a field in my library which I refer in my winapp. I executed it worked fine. I wanted to validate Name field for special characters so I decided to change “Name” (At present a Field in library) to a property so that I could validate it in the set property.

As the member name and the return type (string) did not change I did not recompile my winapp. But I got the following exception “Field not found” as it’s a property now.

Conclusion: When you need a member to interact with the external assemblies or DLLs or EXEs make it a property instead of field. This enables you to add validators later within your class.

want to use Session Variables in Sharepoint?

SharePoint by default does not use session state. You need to explicitly change it in the Web.Config file of your sharepoint web application
<httpmodules>
<clear>
<add type="System.Web.Caching.OutputCacheModule" name="OutputCache">
<add type="System.Web.Security.WindowsAuthenticationModule" name="WindowsAuthentication">
<add type="System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule" name="Session">
</httpmodules>

and also

<pages enablesessionstate="true" enableviewstate="true" enableviewstatemac="true" validaterequest="false">

LINQ, .NET 3.5, Visual Studio 2008

Sick of unexpected error in sharepoint? Want to see asp.net like error page with stack trace?

In the web.config of the sharepoint web application set the following settings
"<"SafeMode MaxControls=“200“ CallStack=“true">"
"<"customErrors mode=“Off“/">"

Steps for creating features

1. create a directory structure in visual studio as follows
Featues / "<"featuesname">" / feature.xml
Add schema to feature.xml from loc -">" web server xtn\12\template\xml\wss12.xsd
"<"feature ID=”” Title=”” Description= “” Scope = “” Hidden=”false”
"<"feature id="””" title="””" description="“”" scope="“”" hidden="”false”"">" "<"!-Note users cant activate or deactivate the feature only admin can-">"
"<"elementmanifests">"
"<"elementmanifest location="”Elements.xml”"">"
"<"elementmanifests">""<"elementmanifest location="”Elements.xml”"">"
2. Add new file Elements.xml
"<"elements">""<"elements">"
"<"module name="””" path="”url”"">"
"<"file url="””" type="”Ghostable”"">"

3. Inherit from SPFeatureReceiver class
Override the events FeatureInstalled, FeatureActivated,
Featureuninstalled, Featuredeactivated, Featureuninstalling, Featuredeactivating
4. put the DLL in GAC
5. In feature.xml ad these tags
"<"Feature ID=””
ReceiverClass=
ReciverAssembly=

Steps for Creating Item Event Handlers

1. Open VS 2005 -> Select a class Library project -> Name it ____Handlers.
2. Inherit the class from SPItemEventReceiver.
3. override ItemAdded, ItemUpdated (Asynchronous Events)
   Item Adding, ItemUpdating (Synchronous Events)
4. Install the DLL in GAC
5. There are Two ways to register an Event Handler a. Install Features b. Through code
6. To Register through code -> Open new console project
   Open site -> web -> get the list through code use the following method to register
7. List.EventReceivers.Add(, , );

Tables for one day prayer times (Chennai India)

This Code Creates Document Library, Creates Group and users and assigns it to Sharepoint Document Library

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace DocLibCreator
{
public class DocLibCreator
{
private SPWeb web;
private SPMember _Owner;
public SPGroup Group;
private string _utCode;
public Guid ListID;

public string utCode
{
get { return _utCode; }
set {
try
{
_utCode = value;
SPUser user;
if (Group != null)
{
user = web.Site.RootWeb.EnsureUser(_utCode);
AddUsersToGroup(user);
}
}
catch (SPException e)
{
//System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(e.Message);
}
}
}



public MercureSiteCreator(SPWeb web)
{
this.web = web;

}

private SPUser GetExistingUser(string _userString)
{
//parse the string after the delimiter '#'
int delimIndex = _userString.IndexOf("#");
string userStr = _userString.Substring(delimIndex + 1);
SPUser user = null;
foreach (SPUser thisUser in web.Users)
{ //if this is current user
if (thisUser.Name.ToLower().IndexOf(userStr.ToLower()) > -1)
{
user = thisUser;
break;
}
}
return user;
}

public SPMember owner
{
get { return web.CurrentUser; }
}

private string _groupName;

public string GroupName
{
get { return _groupName; }
set
{
_groupName = value;
Group = GetSiteGroup(_groupName);

}
}

private bool AddUsersToGroup(SPUser User)
{
if (!IsUserInGroup(User, Group.Name))
{
Group.AddUser(User);
web.AssociatedVisitorGroup.AddUser(User);
web.Site.RootWeb.AssociatedVisitorGroup.AddUser(User);
return true;
}

return false;
}

private bool IsUserInGroup(SPUser user, string grpName)
{
foreach (SPGroup group in user.Groups)
if (group.Name.ToLower().Trim() == grpName.ToLower().Trim())
return true;

return false;
}
public Guid createDocLibrary( string title)
{
Nullable id = GetExistingList(web, title);
if (!id.HasValue)
id = web.Lists.Add(title, "This was created Programatically", SPListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary);
ListID = id.Value;
return id.Value;
}

private Guid? GetExistingList(SPWeb myWeb, string title)
{
foreach (SPList list in myWeb.Lists)
{
if (list.Title.ToLower().Trim() == title.ToLower().Trim())
return list.ID;
}
return null;
}

private SPGroup GetSiteGroup(string groupName)
{
SPGroup group = null;
group = GetExistingSiteGroup(web.Site.RootWeb, groupName);
if (group == null)
{
web.Site.RootWeb.SiteGroups.Add(groupName, owner, null, "");
group = GetExistingSiteGroup(web.Site.RootWeb, groupName);
}




return group;
}

private SPGroup GetExistingSiteGroup(SPWeb webs, string name)
{
foreach (SPGroup group in webs.SiteGroups)
if (group.Name.ToLower().Trim() == name.ToLower().Trim())
return group;
return null;
}


public void CreatePermissions()
{
SPRoleAssignment roleAssignment = new SPRoleAssignment(Group);
SPRoleDefinition role = web.Site.RootWeb.RoleDefinitions["Read"];

if (!roleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Contains(role))
roleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add(role);

SPList list = web.Lists[ListID];
//Check inheritance
if (!list.HasUniqueRoleAssignments)
{
list.BreakRoleInheritance(false);
}
list.RoleAssignments.Add(roleAssignment);
list.Update();
}
}
}

Custom Search

Assigning Lookup Field's value

SPFieldLookup lkupField = listItemHelp.Fields[field.name] as SPFieldLookup;

if (lkupField != null)
{
System.Guid g = new Guid(lkupField.LookupList);
SPList lookupList = webTestSite.Lists[g];
SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
query.Query = ""
+ " " + field.value + "";

SPListItemCollection Items = lookupList.GetItems(query);
if (Items != null && Items.Count > 0)
{
string Value = Items[0].ID + ";#" + Items[0][lkupField.LookupField];
listItemHelp[field.name] = Value;
}
}

How to initiate the stsadmin from .Net

Process p= new process();
ProcessStartInfo pi = newProcessStartInfo("stsadmin.exe");
pi.Arguments = "-o arguments"
pi.Windowstyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
p.startInfo = pi;
p.start();

Google has increased the storage pool by 33%

Today when i tried to check my mails in gmail i noticed my storage size, it was over 4341.443086 megabytes (and Counting) of free storage. Its enourmous i could sense the future of online storage services. I still remember using 4 MB free mail storage service of another mail service provider but now i am using more than 4Gb of gmail services.

New Features in Visual Studio 2008

• .NET Framework multi targeting.
• Setting breakpoints and Debugging through the script code and Jscript intellisense support.
• LINQ designers and LINQDataSource Control is added.
• Split window with Design and Source page combined.
• Visual studio tools for office 2007 is fully integrated
• ASP.NET AJAX controls have been added
• Supports XAML for presentation
• You can build applications that target Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
• RAD tools to easily consume WCF Services (Added Workflow Activity in WF to consume a WCF service)
  
• Login/Logout, Role management and profile services for windows applications
• WF Designer and Debugger integration
• Added IronPython Programming Language.
• Windows Vista Look & Feel

Introduction to LINQ (Language Integrated Query)

What is LINQ?

LINQ is a new feature to be released as a language enhancement in VB 9.0 and C# 3.0. it is an Object relational mapper which enables an unified approach to query databases, XML files and text files.
LINQ bridge between data domain (Database and XML Files) and programming domain (Objects). it brings together the power of SQL or Query language into the programming languages like C# 3.0 and VB 9.0.

Different flavors of LINQ exists and they are

LINQ to SQL
LINQ to XML
LINQ to XSD (a wrapper around LINQ to XML)
LINQ to Dataset
PLINQ (for Parallel processing)
LINQ to Objects
LINQ to Entities (Included in ADO.NET VNext)

LINQ is not a compiler feature its a language feature any one can extend LINQ and customize them, Some of them are

LINQ to Sharepoint (Can be found in CODEPLEX open source community)
LINQ to Active directory

List of Feature .NET Framework

Features in .net 2.0

1. Webparts
2. Profile services
3. membership services & membership controls
4. Role management services
5. Master Pages
6. Sitemaps
7. Dataset designer (Enables to easily create strongly typed dataset and Data access layer)
8. Caching
SQL Cache dependency
SQL Cache dependency(with broker service)
Partial page caching
9. Annonymous delegates
10. Partial class
11. Generics
12. Personalization
13. Data controls (sqldatasource, xmldatasource, object datasource, etc)
14. New Provider Model
15. ASP.Net configuration tool
16. Reporting services
17. Type Forwarding

Note: There are even more features in .net 2.0

Features in .Net 3.0

1. Windows Communication Foundation ( The Unified Framework For Rapidly Building
Service-Oriented Applications )
2. Windows Presentation Foundation
3. Windows Cardspace
4. Windows Workflow Foundation (Tools and engine for building workflow-enabled apps )

Features in .Net 3.5

1. Ajax enabled controls
2. LINQ, DLINQ, BLINQ, PLINQ, XLINQ
3. LINQ to SQL, Linq to XML, Linq to datasets
4. Extension methods
5. Lambda expressions
6. Query expressions
7. Expression trees
8. Anonymous types
9. collection and object initializers
10. Typed local variables and arrays
11. LinqSqlDataSource control added
12. Enables debugging of javascript and intellisense for javascript

Scrum (Software Engineering Process)

Scrum is a process for building software. scrum is not a methodology.
scrum enables the members not to disturbed often by the management, To know where they are. Members are given the freedom to do what they want, they dont need approvals and other stuffs from the management for what they are doing because all my members are already experts.

So the management believes what ever they do will most probably give a good results. Members are assigned tasks and at every iterration all the management needs is result or the product. Each iterations in scrum is called as scrum sprint (Time Box).

Scrum assumes the team involved in the process are
- highly performing
- intelligient in their functional areas
- cross functional domain and business experts are involved
- self managing team with more responsibilities
- Project duration is small

Frequent scrum meeting among the team members (not with the management) happens to discuss what they have done and they have to do next.
Done here means Documented, implemented, tested Quality assured and Complete.

One of the member in the team is considered as Scrum master, who is responsible for ensuring quality assurance.