Finding List of all Installed KB on your windows server or pc

To get all the KB installed on your machine / box / pc / server, your best bet is to simply run the following command from the command prompt:

reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall >> C:\list_of_kbs.log

Using Add Remove Program from control panel or any other method doesn't give you all the KB's on your box.

SharePoint Large List Performance and Views Performance on Large List

SharePoint is a Collaboration and Content Management tool, although more often gets over boarded with a feel of a true Document Repository tool. SharePoint List/View customization can facilitate storing large number of documents efficiently and behave in line with repository tools, to take this further we can integrate archiving tools with SharePoint and reduce the SQL database load/cost.

Sooner or Later the number of items in most of the out of box lists will outgrow the logical performance threshold of 2000 items per container; this will directly impact the performance of the list and views. SharePoint List design and customization can optimize the list / views performance and efficiently manage the large number of items in the list,

List / Document Library

       · Custom List Design / Provisioning

Instead of having one large list or list with folders, where possible create as many lists as possible based on: Content Type, Logical Category, and so on

o No more than 2000 lists per site (soft limit)

o List is not a RDBMS

o Lookup columns should be used sporadically

· Active List and Archive List

One model, which can be used to have performance intact for list is to have a separate list for archived items. In other words, Items should be archived to another list when the list size approaches 2000-4000.

o Active/Custom List items (maximum 2k-4k items)

Items fall in the active list if

· used almost on daily basis

· in dynamic/transient state

· in draft mode

· recently created

· recently published

· versioning is enabled

o Archive List items (maximum 5 million)

Items based on a pre-configured logic, gets moved from Active List to Archive List

· Archive List should have folder implementation in place to organize the items. Where each folder has maximum of 2000 items and the list will contain total of 5 million items maximum.

· One level deep folder is being recommended, further folder nesting has same issue as file system

· Folder creation scan be based on a logical nomenclature (like year and week number) or a unique id (like guid or date time), so on.

· No versioning required as item is in its final state and archived.

 Views

o Views for Archive list

o It’s advisable to use “Search” feature to lookup an item or desired set of items. This would require SharePoint Search configuration and indexing.

o The other option, which can be leveraged is to view items in the folder by using the corresponding folder link

o Views for Active List i.e. Custom List

o Views created on Lists should be displaying items in batches of 10, 20, not more than 100 items.

o Views filtering should be designed carefully

o Usage of indexed columns

· Each column index consumes disk space and resources in the database. Add indexes only to columns that will be used actively in the views.

· Only one indexed column can be used in a view filter and it’s important that the first column that you use to filter the view has an index

o Filtering by an indexed column is more efficient then defining an item limit in a view.

o Complex filtering should be avoided instead design document library as separate entities

o Indexed column is not utilized in Views that use an OR filter condition.

o View should use a filter that will not touch more than 2000-4000 items during its processing.

o Views designed using SharePoint Designer

o The page size (i.e. downloaded data by the browser to render the page), where views is being designed should be of reasonable size (300-500 KB)

o Data View web part uses web services to fetch data from the list

o Content Query web part is the fastest means of pulling data from list.

 Page

Before making a customized page live in production performance should be analyzed using tools like

o Http watch

o Page speed

 Browser

IE 8.0 is recommended for better performance as compared to IE 6.0 / IE 7.0

IE 8.0 allows more TCP connections at a time compared to IE 6/7

Archiving

o Tools or BLOB storage can be used to reduce the data base load / cost and further enhance the list performance and also bring the archiving capability to its best.

o Records Management can be used to distribute the database Load

Does the Current or Logged in SharePoint User belongs to a certain Distribution Group of the Active Directory

Use the following to determine if the Logged in SharePoint User belongs to a certain Distribution Group of the Active Directory :

Page.User.IsInRole("domain//groupname")

Since the SharePoint site runs on IIS. We can call Page.User.IsInRole("domain\groupname") to determine if the user is a member of the Active Directory group.

NOTE: For C#, use two backslashes instead of just one.


Understanding the difference between distibution List and Security Group is important.

In Microsoft Active Directory, what are security and distribution groups?

In Microsoft Active Directory, when you create a new group, you must select a group type.
The two group types, security and distribution, are described below:

Security: Security groups allow you to manage user and computer access to shared resources. You can also control who receives group policy settings. This simplifies administration by allowing you to set permissions once on multiple computers, then to change the membership of the group as your needs change. The change in group membership automatically takes effect everywhere. You can also use these groups as email distribution lists.
Distribution: Distribution groups are intended to be used solely as email distribution lists. These lists are for use with email applications such as Microsoft Exchange or Outlook. You can add and remove contacts from the list so that they will or will not receive email sent to the distribution group. You can't use distribution groups to assign permissions on any objects, and you can't use them to filter group policy settings.

Refrence: Active Directory

BTW, Admin of AD should create a Security Group not just the distribution list. :)

Infopath Form picking date time from the client machine instead from the SharePoint Server

When using date time in InfoPath Forms, make sure you are aware of the fact that InfoPath 2007 is picking up the date time from the machine on which it's running i.e. clientt machine.

If the usage of the Infopath Forms (i.e. application) is in a single time zone then this might work well until and unless the client machine has the incorrect value set for date time.

Your application at certain time instances won't work properly if you have validations like date time greater then or less then current time and is being accessed by client located in the different time zones around the world.

To mitigate this issue, you need to write code behind in the page load function of infopath form. The code will basically pick the server time and store it with infopath form so that validations can be performed seamlessely regardless of the timezone of the client machine.

DataView WebPart Sorting Across Pagination Issue

The Sorting in data view web part (when enabling the "basic list toolbar" checkbox in properties using SharePoint Designer) works for the rows which are currently displayed (i.e. displayed on the page)

To make this work properly, you need to do the following:    <ParameterBinding Name="dvt_sortfield" Location="Postback;Connection" DefaultValue="Modified"/> <ParameterBinding Name="dvt_sortdir" Location="Postback;Connection"  DefaultValue="descending"/> Above i have sorted on the "Modified" column in the descending order.   No need to modify the XSLT. Sorting will not work across pagination as this is to sort list which has huge amount of data and sorting the entire list might take long time. Although, If you would like to sort the entire list, please use the toolbar for sorting option in data view properties.