Before running the script it is important to consider the stability of the system and monitoring the performance and evaluation event logs to ensure the result of running this process is not going to potentially harm your SharePoint environment.

We recommend that you do not alter this script in any way since it could potentially cause an issue to your SharePoint database.

The suggestion from Microsoft is to shut-down your running instance of SharePoint so the database can be completely fragmented, since any locked pages will be ignored in the script.

The recommendation is that you execute this query weekly, monthly, whenever required depending on your environment.

Here is the script to fragment your SQL Server database, to enable this script please complete the following steps:

Step 1: Open SQL Server Management Studio

Step 2: Connect to the SharePoint instance SQL Server

Step 3:  Paste the following script into a new SQL Windows

Step 4:  Execute the script

Step 5: Create a New Query and type the following command: “exec [dbo].[proc_DefragmentIndices]”

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[proc_DefragmentIndices]

AS

    SET NOCOUNT ON

    DECLARE @objectid int

    DECLARE @indexid int

    DECLARE @command varchar(8000)

    DECLARE @baseCommand varchar(8000)

    DECLARE @schemaname sysname

    DECLARE @objectname sysname

    DECLARE @indexname sysname

    DECLARE @currentDdbId int

    SELECT @currentDdbId = DB_ID()

    PRINT CONVERT(nvarchar, GETDATE(), 126) + ‘: Starting’

    — Loop over each of the indices

    DECLARE indexesToDefrag CURSOR FOR

    SELECT

        i.object_id,

        i.index_id,

        i.name

    FROM

        sys.indexes AS i

    INNER JOIN

        sys.objects AS o

    ON

        i.object_id = o.object_id

    WHERE

        i.index_id > 0 AND

        o.type = ‘U’

    OPEN indexesToDefrag

    — Loop through the partitions.

    FETCH NEXT

    FROM

        indexesToDefrag

    INTO

        @objectid,

        @indexid,

        @indexname

    WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

    BEGIN

        — Lookup the name of the index

        SELECT

            @schemaname = s.name

        FROM

            sys.objects AS o

        JOIN

            sys.schemas AS s

        ON

            s.schema_id = o.schema_id

        WHERE

            o.object_id = @objectid

        PRINT CONVERT(nvarchar, GETDATE(), 126) + ‘: ‘ + @schemaname + ‘.’ + @indexname + ‘ is now being rebuilt.’

        — Fragmentation is bad enough that it will be more efficient to rebuild the index

        SELECT @baseCommand =

            ‘ ALTER INDEX ‘ +

                @indexname +

            ‘ ON ‘ +

                @schemaname + ‘.’ + object_name(@objectid) +

            ‘ REBUILD WITH (FILLFACTOR = 80, ONLINE = ‘

        — Use dynamic sql so this compiles in SQL 2000

        SELECT @command =

            ‘ BEGIN TRY ‘ +

               @baseCommand + ‘ON) ‘ +

            ‘ END TRY ‘ +

            ‘ BEGIN CATCH ‘ +

               — Indices with image-like columns can’t be rebuild online, so go offline

               @baseCommand + ‘OFF) ‘ +

            ‘ END CATCH ‘

        PRINT CONVERT(nvarchar, GETDATE(), 126) + ‘: Rebuilding’

        EXEC (@command)

        PRINT CONVERT(nvarchar, GETDATE(), 126) + ‘: Done’

        FETCH NEXT FROM indexesToDefrag INTO @objectid, @indexid, @indexname

    END

    CLOSE indexesToDefrag

    DEALLOCATE indexesToDefrag

    RETURN 0

GO

For advice how to configure or maintain SharePoint deployment instance please contact Click IT Solutions.  We have specialised consultants who have experience with development, configuring and maintaining an instance of SharePoint.  We can assist with performance tuning, infrastructure planning and extending the scalability of the SharePoint application.  You can contact Click IT Solutions at (02)  9029 5194 or alternatively email us at info@clickitsolutions.com.au.

The advantages of moving toward IIS 7 would be for the purpose of SEO, a plug-in can be downloaded from Microsoft which provides the ability for URL rewrites.

The advantage of this plug-in is Canonicalization, and Site Reorganization which can be performed with no code rewrites.

To continue now will discuss how to setup IIS 7 to work with your Vevocart e-commerce hosting.  These steps assume that you have already configured your Vevocart website and assigned a dedicated application pool for your Vevocart e-commerce site.

1. Open Internet Information Services MMC
2. Click on the dedicated application pool and click “Advanced Settings…”
3. Change “Managed Pipeline Mode” to classic.
4. Click OK to save these settings
5. Click on the Vevocart site to enable the settings
6. Click on the “Handler Mappings”
7. On the actions menu now click on “Revert To Inherited”.
8. Now you will see all the ASP.NET handlers now exists for this site

This is how simple it is to setup IIS 7 to work with your Vevocart installation.

I suggest if you need any additional help how to host or configure your Vevocart installation contact us at Click IT Solutions and we can provide our IT Consultancy services, our experience lies with development, deployment, and hosting of Vevocart and other ASP.NET solutions.  Contact us at (02) 9029 5194 or you can email us at: info@clickitsolutions.com.au.

Pre-requisites

Before you start it is important that you have a copy of either Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 with the following extension Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint version 1.2.  Once you have downloaded this and installed this extension you are ready to commence this tutorial and create the following webpart.

Start Developing Custom Webpart with Visual Studio

Now we can start to develop this webpart using Visual Studio, so this is a quick guide to creating a webpart and deploying this onto your web-server.

Step 1: Open Visual Studio

Step 2: Create a new Project -> Visual C# -> SharePoint -> Web Part

Step 3: Name this Web Part whatever you desire

Step 4: Select FULL TRUST (Deploy to GAC) on the dialog box “Select Trust Level”

Step 5: Now open up Webpart1.cs file and inside you should see a section of code resembling the following:

using System;

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

using System.Xml.Serialization;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;

namespace TestWebpart

{

[Guid("876ffbbe-6196-47d4-b77a-12b69c07be45")]

public class WebPart1 : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart

{

public WebPart1()

{

}

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

base.CreateChildControls();

// TODO: add custom rendering code here.

// Label label = new Label();

// label.Text = “Hello World”;

// this.Controls.Add(label);

}

}

}

Step 6: We are going to use the following object inside our code “ListViewByQuery”.  The will provide the output for our query as this is a SharePoint component which will render a list view which will resemble what we see inside SharePoint.

Now add this “ListViewByQuery” into the following section of code:

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

base.CreateChildControls();

ListViewByQuery view = new ListViewByQuery();

this.Controls.Add(view);

}

Step 7: Now we need to include the query which is what performs the lookup of your SharePoint list to retrieve the relevant data.  The following line of code is required to perform this:

query = new SPQuery(list.DefaultView);

query.ViewFields = “<FieldRef Name=’Created’/><FieldRef Name=’LinkTitleNoMenu’/><FieldRef Name=’FirstName’/><FieldRef Name=’Current_x0020_Company’/><FieldRef Name=’Community_x0020_Group’/><FieldRef Name=’Skill_x0020_1′/><FieldRef Name=’Skill_x0020_2′/><FieldRef Name=’Skill_x0020_3′/>”;

query.Query = “<Where></Where><Orderby><FieldRef Name=’Created’ Ascending=’false’ /></OrderBy>”;

query.RecurrenceOrderBy = true;

The “ViewFields” is used to assign the columns to be displayed inside the list view on your rendered SharePoint webpart.  It is a requirement that you supply some values here otherwise you will find that your webpart will not execute inside your SharePoint site.

A typical value you might provide for your “ViewFields” would be:

Query.ViewFields = “<FieldRefName=’Created’/><FiedRefName=’LinkTitleNoMenu’/>”

This would display a list consisting of two columns which will display a hyperlink title to display the List details and Created will display the date when the list item was created.

Now the Query string provides you with the flexibility to define your own query on what list items you want retrieved.   Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) is an XML based query language which is used here to help you build custom SQL like queries to run on SharePoint Lists. There is a utility written which can assist you with writing a query.  I suggest you download the following utility CAML Query Builder for SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007.

Here is a sample CAML query for searching data on a Customer List:

<WHERE>

<CONTAINS>

<FIELDREF NAM=’Title’ /><VALUE TYPE=’TEXT’>John</VALUE>

</CONTAINS>

</WHERE>

Step 8: Putting it all together

Now is the time to finally put this off these components inside the webpart together so it can perform the filtered search correctly.  Below is the required code for you to build your Custom Filtered Webpart to be compiled in Visual Studio:

public class WebPart1 : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart

{

public WebPart1()

{

}

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

base.CreateChildControls();

ListViewByQuery view = new ListViewByQuery();

SPWeb currentweb = SPContext.Current.Web;

SPList list = currentweb.Lists["Customers"];

view.List = list;

SPQuery query = new SPQuery(list.DefaultView);

query.ViewFields = “<FieldRef Name=’Created’/><FieldRef Name=’LinkTitleNoMenu’/>”;

query.Query = “<Where><CONTAINS>

<FIELDREF NAM=’Title’ /><VALUE TYPE=’TEXT’>John</VALUE>

</CONTAINS>

</Where><Orderby><FieldRef Name=’Created’ Ascending=’false’ /></OrderBy>”;

query.RecurrenceOrderBy = true;

view.Query = query;

this.Controls.Add(view);

}

}

So this is a quick reference of how you can build a Filtered Web Part in SharePoint which used a ListViewByQuery component to render the searched contents into a SharePoint list view.   The SPQuery class is used to perform a CAML XML based query to extract the specific List Items from the desired SharePoint List you have selected.

This custom webpart can be included in either Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) or SharePoint Office Server 2007.

 At Click IT Solutions we specialise in developing custom Web Parts for SharePoint.  If you would like to customise your SharePoint portal contact us to speak with a consultant who can provide advice regarding this.  You can contact us at (02) 9029 5194 or alternatively email us at info@clickitsolutions.com.au.

The recommendation for configuring SharePoint is to configure a farm consisting of 2 servers one server for the web-front end and another server for the database.  We would suggest that you have 64bit hardware and Windows 2008 operating systems.  Especially for the web-front end using Windows 2008 will give you best performance when you configure IIS 7 caching to optimise the performance of loading your site content.   Using IIS 7 as the underlying structure for running the website will give you much better performance using the enhanced operating system.   It is also important to ensure not to put too much network distance between these two servers.  The recommendation is too ensure that the web-front end server doesn’t have more than 1ms network latency too the database server.

Another issue of important is for you to ensure that your SharePoint lists do not exceed 2000 items.  If any of your lists do contain items with more than 2000 items the suggestion would be to split these list items into folders so that each folder contains no more than 2000 items.   You can run a data-fix to iterate through all the list items in the list and generate a folder then physically move these list-items into the folder you generated.

The final suggestion is to ensure that all queries performed on lists throughout your SharePoint portal are completely optimised.  The recommendation is the use of views to reduce the amount of data retrieved from lists and even making your queries more intelligent.   Writing customised queries inside of Webparts to extract data from a particular folder inside a list will limit the number of items sequentially searched each time and will ensure that your SharePoint site performs quicker.

This is just a brief overview about what you can do with SharePoint to modify your environment to ensure the application performs as quickly as possible.   If you would like to find out more information about how Click IT Solutions can assist you with your existing SharePoint solution and help to optimise this for you please contact us at (02) 9029 5194 to speak with one of our consultants.  We have experience with performing upgrades, making modifications to the application, database changes and server deployment changes to ensure that you SharePoint system always efficiently optimised.   You can also reach us via email at info@clickitsolutions.com.au.

You will notice that the database configured is an internal version of SQL Server which can be accessed if you install client database access software.

The recommendation from Microsoft is that you should never access this database and manipulate any data which is perhaps why in WSS 3.0 they have configured a typical installation as an internal database.   Their advice is to use the SharePoint API framework to perform any data access or manipulation through using Visual Studio.

This article hopes to show you how you can access the internal database to see the way in which SharePoint is configured to access lists / libraries through non-normalised table structures.

Once you understand how tables and data are configured in the system you will then appreciate how important it is to optimise a SharePoint application.

The steps for accessing WSS 3.0 Internal Database are as follows:

Step 1: Download and install SQL Server Management Studio Express 2005

Step 2: Open SQL Server Management Studio Express and type the following Server name into the text-field:  “\\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query”

That is it quiet simple really, now some tables you will find of interest here are:

AllUserData

This table contains a number of fields which is generic for all lists, you will see nvarchar1 .. nvarchar64, int1..int16, float1..float12, etc.   All the columns which you generate depending on the field type of these columns the data will be assigned to be stored in one of these cells.   If you want to know where a column from a list is stored in the AllUserData table you can find this information out by running the following query:

“select tp_Fields from AllLists where tp_id = (select tp_id from AllUserData where tp_ListId like ‘%Your-List%’)”

The field “tp_fields” is a long string which details the columns in a list and how they are mapped to the respective SQL Server table AllUserData.

I advise that you take care when making any modifications here since any change you can make could potentially destroy your SharePoint installation.

Once you have had a look inside the SharePoint internal database you should have a pretty good idea about how you can access and manipulate records and an understanding of the architecture used inside SharePoint.

If you would like help with setting up or configuring your SharePoint 2007 or WSS 3.0 installation please contact us at Click IT Solutions.  We have consultants with experience working with SharePoint technology and provide advice for configuration, development or deployment / hosting options.   Contact us now at (02) 9029 5194 or alternatively you can email us at info@clickitsolutions.com.au.

This is advantageous when using Wordpress since SEO is critical to leverage the use of your Blog.   Now the next section I will describe in detailed steps to setup your Wordpress blog to take advantage of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Step 1: Download the Microsoft URL Rewrite Module 2.0 for IIS 7 – Click here to download the file

Step 2: Run through the wizard to configure this on your web server

Step 3: Create a web.config generic file in your Wordpress blog directory

Step 4: Add the following URL rewrite rule into your web.config file:

  <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule stopProcessing=”true”>
            <match url=”.*” />
            <conditions logicalGrouping=”MatchAll”>
                <add input=”{REQUEST_FILENAME}” matchType=”IsFile” negate=”true” />
                <add input=”{REQUEST_FILENAME}” matchType=”IsDirectory” negate=”true” />
            </conditions>
            <action url=”index.php/{R:0}” />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>
</system.webServer>

Step 5: Open your Wordpress blog and goto Settings -> Permalinks

Step 6: On the custom textbox enter the following value: /%category%/%postname%/

Step 7: Click update to amend your changes and now you will notice that your blog posts will have a URL rewritten to “yourdomain/Investment/Is-2009-right-time-to-invest” instead of the generic URL of “yourdomain.com/blog/?p=30”.

Well that is it you can see it is quite simple to take advantage of using IIS 7 URL rewrites to gain SEO benefits on your Wordpress blog.  With previous versions of IIS 6 it would require you to purchase an additional ISAPI DLL and install this onto your IIS server.  With IIS 7 Microsoft have capitalised and made this feature easily integrate in with the web-server which was once of the selling points for me to abandon from using Windows 2003 IIS 6 and move towards web hosting utilising Windows 2008 IIS 7.

If you are interested in web hosting or are considering moving your website onto Windows 2008 IIS 7, then perhaps we can help.  Contact Click IT Solutions now and speak with a consultant who can assist you with the migration process.  You can contact us at (02) 9029 5194 or alternatively contact us via email at info@clickitsolutions.com.au.

If you have any comments or questions please don’t hesitate to contact us via email at info@clickitsolutions.com.au.

If you are a small business or wanting to start your own first e-commerce website then look no further because Vevocart could be the shopping cart solution for you.

We decided to choose Vevocart for our clients because it was easy to use, completely free to customise solution because Vevocart provides all the source code for the shopping cart solution.  Hence we were able listen to what our clients wanted us to deliver to them and achieve this by integrating custom business logic into various components of the shopping cart.  Additional Vevocart provides comprehensive support for it product and updates which is downloadable from the Vevocart website.

Vevocart is built of ASP.NET C# technology and makes use the Microsoft SQL Server database or alternatively you can use Microsoft Access Database if you want to avoid additional hosting costs.  From my experience if you are considering high volume usage I would recommend that you invest a little more on your hosting and host your website to make use of a SQL Server database.   SQL Server platform has the advantage to handle a high number of concurrent users who are simultaneously accessing and modifying data, whilst an Access Database can potentially lock-up which could result in your website being unavailable and a horrible consequence of lost data.

Originally we started using Vevocart 2.5.1 for Tres Beau – Wedding Invitations, Accessories and Bridal Jewellery.  In the last year Vevocart brought our version 3 of their shopping cart software which introduced a lot more functionality into their product which was the motivation to update the client’s e-commerce website to now use Vevocart 3.0.2.   Since then the product has been reliable and provide a high degree of flexibility in making customisations to the front end, checkout process and making customisations for the sale of Wedding Invitations on the website.

I would highly recommend this product if you are looking for a cost-effective solution which contains functionality targeted towards your business.  Many competitors’ products offer a lot of functionality which is more targeted towards large business or enterprise customers which would not be recommended if you are a small to medium size business, and this is built into the licensing cost.  On the other hand Vevocart is cost-effective because of this it is offering a cut-down solution targeted towards small to medium businesses.

Contact Click IT Solutions now if you are interested in upgrading, or getting your business selling on the web.  We can provide support and development of Vevocart and Microsoft ASP.NET Framework / SQL Server database.  Alternatively if you require assistance with installation, configuration or deployment, our technical consultants can listen to your needs and provide help to get you up and running.   Our data centre provides cutting edge servers for hosting your Vevocart ecommerce website using Windows 2008, IIS 7, ASP.NET and SQL Server 2005.

You can contact Click IT Solutions on (02) 9029 5194 or alternatively email us at info@clickitsolutions.com.au.   Click IT Solutions is based in Sydney Australia and provides Web Design and Custom Software Solutions for its clients.

Front-End Web Server
The Front-End Web Server is where SharePoint 2007 is going to be installed and will be responsible for running the following services: Index, Query Server and Web Front End.

Hardware Requirements
• Dual-processor computer with processor clock speeds of 2.5-gigahertz (GHz) and a minimum of 4 gigabytes (GB) of RAM

Software Requirements
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Standard, Enterprise, DataCenter, or Web Edition) with Service Pack 1 (SP1) 64bit release
• Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0
• Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0
• Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) in IIS 6.0 worker process isolation mode.
• Microsoft SharePoint Office Server 2007

Database Server
The database server will be running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 which will be configured to have 2 disks isolated for the tasks of accessing ‘Data Files’ and ‘Log Files’.

Hardware Requirements
• Dual-processor computer with processor clock speeds of 2.5-gigahertz (GHz) and a minimum of 16 gigabytes (GB) of RAM
• 3-disk Raid 5 – SAS 15k

Software Requirements
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Standard, Enterprise, DataCenter, or Web Edition) with Service Pack 1 (SP1) 64bit release
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (Standard, Enterprise)

So this is an overall hardware configuration which I would recommend for you to deploy SharePoint onto.  SharePoint is quick intensive on disk access so ensure that you have a raid-5 disk configuration so prevent any bottlenecks occurring.  It is critical to ensure that the database server has separate disks for storing data and log files.

I recommend that you download Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2007 is an analysis solution for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Server 3.0 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 as it allows infrastructure planning and optimisation.  You can configure a prototype hardware specific to your needs and allows you to access performance analysis and predictive reporting.  This will report performance trends and bottlenecks, and allow you to isolate these issues so you can determine exact hardware requirements specific to your needs.

Since Windows 2003 Server includes Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) it is most likely you have already come into contact with SharePoint before.  

If you would like support with installing or deploying a release of SharePoint into your existing infrastructure, Click IT Solutions is a Sydney based software consultancy firm specialising in SharePoint.  Give us a call on (02) 9029 5194 if you would like to speak with a consultant who can provide some advice.  Alternatively Click IT Solutions also offers SharePoint hosting and custom development of SharePoint through web-parts, business workflow and InfoPath development. 

You can contact us via email at info@clickitsolutions.com.au.  We look forward to speaking with you.