Migrating SharePoint Objects
April 27, 2009
I like the notion of federating; that is, leaving information where it is and then pulling what’s needed without crating a duplicated source store. I was interested in this Web log post “Migrating SharePoint Content between Different Site Templates and Preserving all the Necessary Metadata” because the approach ran counter to my method. Migration is sometimes necessary; for instance, a merger requires that the acquired firm’s information be placed under the control of the purchaser’s information technology department. If you need a method to migrate SharePoint, you will want to navigate to Boris Gomiunik’s article here and download the steps. There are eight steps, and I did not see a quick and easy way to automate this set of procedures. Like much in the SharePoint environment, a human must enter values and make decisions. The approach is great for the billable SharePoint consultant and makes a SharePoint administrator a must-have headcount. But for the senior manager, the costs associated with this somewhat tedious procedures are likely to be an issue. In my experience, the more manual intervention in a method, the greater the chance for mistakes. SharePoint may be a candidate for the cloud because in today’s financial climate eliminating headaches, errors, and expenses may reduce on premises software installations magnetic appeal. There was no reference to what fixes had to be made to get the SharePoint search system to rebuild its index and point to the correct instance of the migrated and potentially duplicate content. I wonder if that requires another multi step process involving lots of human fiddling?
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
SharePoint SDK Updates
April 26, 2009
Andrew Connell informed me here that Microsoft released Microsoft has released “the April 2009 refresh (v1.5) of the downloadable version (CHM files) of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 & Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDKs.” You read his write up here. A happy quack to Mr. Connell for the download links as well.
The WSS SDK includes:
- Expanded documentation of backup and restore features This release contains greatly expanded documentation of backup and restore features, including a new top-level node, “Backing Up and Restoring.” The node includes twelve articles, including “Overview of Backing Up and Restoring Data in Windows SharePoint Services,” and four new How To topics.
- Complete documentation of Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup Object model reference documentation in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup namespace is complete, and code samples are provided for all critical types and members.
New documentation of the administrative object model A new section, “The Administrative Object Model of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0,” contains six new articles, and the “Administration” section has a new, extended code sample. - Revised Web Part documentation The section that provides conceptual documentation of Web Parts has been completely restructured, and two walkthrough topics have been significantly revised and rewritten.
More migration support A new section, “Selective Content Migration,” contains three articles to support selective migration strategies. Additionally, additions and revisions have been made to existing topics in the “Content Migration Overview” section, and a large number of API reference topics that support migration and deployment scenarios have been completed in the SharePoint.Deployment namespace. - Expanded and updated reference documentation You can find enhanced documentation of types and members in the SharePoint.Workflow and SharePoint.WorkflowActions namespaces, the People Web service, and three ActiveX controls.
I did not write this golden prose. Credit MSFT here.
Stephen Arnold, April 27, 2009
Google’s Growing Interest in Content Management
April 24, 2009
Content management is, like enterprise search, quite a pain point. Organizations tackled the Web as brochureware. Now the Web is more than a brochure. The Web makes the difference between success and failure for many organizations. Content shifts from a sideline to the quarterback’s job. Google is following Autonomy’s path through the woods but not following Autonomy’s footsteps. Autonomy spent $700 million on an aging CMS. Google, according to Mike Johnson at CMS Headlines here is piping money into Drupal, an open source CMS that has the attention of some working on IT for the Obama White House Web presences. Google will fund 18 Drupal “stipends” in Google’s Summer of Code. Why the sudden love affairs in CMS. Organizations have to have training wheels to create and manage content. Autonomy bought a commercial product and customers. Google is going the open source route and appears to be patie3nt. Autonomy needs traction more qui9ckly. My bet is on this open source play, particularly if Google permits the summer coders to play with Google’s data management systems. Data management is a Google competency. Data management is a challenge for most CMS vendors. Consider SharePoint. Now imagine seamless support for Drupal with the Google services a click away. Change may be coming to an already floundering CMS market. What about ad supported or Google monetization for Drupal information objects? The hefty CMS price tags become garlic to the IT folks who push CMS that are an ongoing money pit.
Stephen Arnold, April 24, 2009
Microsoft and Alleged Anti Competitive Actions
April 23, 2009
Slashdot pointed to this European Commission document that contains some interesting information about Microsoft’s alleged anti competitive behavior. You can download the PDF file here. The Slashdot item is here. I don’t know much about anti competitive behavior, but I do know about anti goose behavior. Download the document. Read it. Make up your own mind. A group invested significant time to assemble this 33 page document with some blistering prose.
Stephen Arnold, April 23, 2009
A Microsoft MOSS Search Fix
April 22, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “Fixing MOSS Search”. You can read the article in the SharePoint Farmer’s Almanac here. You probably think that SharePoint is easy to learn, easy to deploy, and just plain comfy as a findability partner. If you have these thoughts in mind, scurry over to one of the azure chip consultants who are SharePoint cheerleaders. You don’t want to read the Farmer’s Almanac article and you won’t find much utility in this Web log item.
The “fix” is singular, but you will learn when you download, print out, and read the article that you are dealing with multiple “fixes” and there a lots of steps. I mean lots and lots of steps.
I can’t summarize the method. You will find dozens of steps with explanations like this:
If that checked out ok then the next thing I would check is to make sure your web application is set to integrated authentication and not basic authentication. MOSS will not pass basic authentication by default. So if you changed your web application from integrated to basic, so people users don’t have to enter their domain for example, then you need to setup a custom crawl rule to pass basic authentication.
I read the procedure twice and even then I am not sure I was able to keep the dependencies straight. The most interesting comment in the write up was this statement:
I am guessing since I didn’t realize this is an option (or more probably I knew and forgot) you probably didn’t either. So run stsadm –o help like below and take a look at the output.
Note this is from the last three or four sentences of the method.
Let’s step back. The method is not complex. The method is series of hacks. Enterprise search is complex. The MOSS implementation takes complexity into hyperspace. Keep that in mind when you estimate on going maintenance fees.
Stephen Arnold, April 22, 2009
Fast Search ESP 2009: Some Soft Information about a Hard Problem
April 20, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to this interesting and suggestive article “One Year with Microsoft – A Fast Perspective”. The write up appeared on April 17, 2009, on the Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog. You must read the posting here. The author is Nate, which does not tell me much. In such circumstances, I remind myself that the posting may be a spoof. For my purposes, the snippets of text below are intended as aides de memoire for myself. I have added some preliminary, informal comments to capture the excitement I experienced when I read the post. (The original Microsoft intent to buy Fast Search announcement is here.)
Now to work:
Nate, the author, has worked in “the industry” for 13 years with six years in the Fast Search & Transfer business. Keep in mind that search has been around for more than 40 years and six years is a good start. I assume the author’s experience in search has been shaped by what I call “the Google era”. The sale of Fast Search was precipitated because Fast Search was struggling with money. Fast Search and Google came out of the gate at about the same time in the late 1990s. Google ended up with $20 billion in revenue in the same interval that Fast Search & Transfer approach $80 million (estimated after the 2007 revenues were revisited), a police action, and a a hugely complicated search system that was tough to install. I heard that Google’s “search is simple” campaign was partly in response to the complexity of the installation process for Fast Search ESP and similar old style systems.
The author explained where Fast Search fits in the giant Microsoft Corporation. I did not understand the acronyms, but there were enough units involved to tell me that search is not at the top of the tech pyramid at Microsoft.
Nate presented the acquisition as a pat on the back for a job well done. I respectfully suggest that a financial restatement and a police action are not meritorious.
Nate referenced the Fastforward 2009 conference (which I believe I heard will be merged into another Microsoft conference) as the place where the vision for Fast Search was set forth. He provided a link to a SharePoint unit manager, Kirk Koenigsbauer. The bulk of the Web log write up is a restatement of information presented at the Fast conference earlier in 2009. The key points in my opinion were:
First, commitment. Nate reminded me that Oslo is where the search action is. The discussion of commitment puzzled me. A passage that I noted was:
To be honest, search is such a generally valued concept and the possibilities are so compelling when it’s combined with other Microsoft products and technology that it’s all we can do to stay focused on our main priorities. It’s a good problem.
The word “honest” snagged me. Was the earlier part of the write “not honest”? The statement “it’s all we can do to stay focused on our main priorities” underscored the likelihood that Microsoft is still not sure what’s important in behind the firewall search.
Second, vision. Nate asserted that Microsoft’s vision for search and Fast Search’s vision for search “matched”. I stopped and got out my yellow highlighter and worked through this statement. Microsoft’s vision has been to catch Google and deliver “findability” that keeps SharePoint users and administrators happy. In my descriptions of Fast Search, I use the word “complex” quite a bit. Nate’s vision was, if I read the “visioin” paragraph correctly is to think about Microsoft Surface, which is a touch screen interface. The idea I surmise is to change the interface to search, not the plumbing of search. I received an award from a government agency that included a picture of “lipstick on a pig”. The idea was to remind me that the work I had done would not change the outcome of a government policy, just make it pretty. I thought of that award’s snapshot of a pig when I read about the push to interface.
Third, product plans. Nate references the roadmap. I love roadmaps. I asked myself, “When will there be specific product details?”
Nate concluded by revealing that:
There you have it, my first post for the Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog. Look for more posts from me in this general category of enterprise search vision and strategy. I welcome all comments on this and future entries. Next up – Search plus Natural User Interfaces.
I crave write ups about:
- Information about on going support for Linux and Solaris installations of Fast Search
- Detail about the migration plans to Windows servers
- Return on investment analyses comparing Linux versus Windows servers
- Documentation about the interaction of Fast ESP subsystems with one another
- Index updating cycles
- Scaling best practices
- A reference architecture for processing terabyte flows of unstructured information in a 24 hour refresh cycle
- Version upgrade roll backs methods when a point upgrade goes off the rails.
Those topics would hold my interest more than comments about commitment, vision, and plans. The addled goose honks, “Detail, please.”
Stephen Arnold, April 20, 2009
SharePoint 2010
April 16, 2009
Short honk: If you have a SharePoint tattoo on your arm, you will want to click here to read “SharePoint 2010: What’s in a Name? Not an Acronym.” The title is silly but there are some useful comments about what we might expect in the next point release of SharePoint. One interesting comment was:0
According to a SharePoint Buzz blog, posted in November, some of the features people are expecting include SharePoint Web Parts for FAST ESP, backup/restore/rollback and snapshot backups with virtual load balancing, support for JQuery and native support for ODF and PDF. The blog also wonders if SharePoint 2010 will only be available in 64-bit versions.
I think it will be interesting to see how a tool box such as Fast ESP will be hooked into SharePoint, which is an interesting collection of components. Lots of combinations for the SharePoint and Fast ESP wizards to sort out on billable time.
Stephen Arnold, April 16, 2009
New Beyond Search Report about BA Insight
April 15, 2009
Whither Microsoft Enterprise Search?
Microsoft’s aggressive moves in the Enterprise Search space may be likened by some to a bull in china shop, but to my associate Paul Korzeniowski, Microsoft’s moves are based on a coherent strategy. Mr. Korzeniowski has written a white paper designed to clear up some of the fog surrounding this strategy and provide those users thinking of deploying Microsoft’s search products a clearer sense of some of the things to consider. You can download a copy here. You will need to register.
Stephen Arnold, April 15, 2009
SharePoint Round Up
April 13, 2009
Here in Harrod’s Creek, the annual spring festival includes bunny hunting. I am floating in the pond, listening to the rat tat tat of small arms fire. Nothing beats a rabbit hunt in the spring. I am not into pumping lead in fuzzy bunnies so I am engaging in what is now a Sunday ritual: A romp through the SharePoint information that clogs my newsreader. I prefer to write about search in SharePoint, but a number of interesting, content related items caught my attention.
The Budget Black Hole
SharePoint Reviews ran a story called “How Long Is a SharePoint Project.” You can read it here. The author said: “Of course, a SharePoint Project is never complete as it keeps growing and changing…” Ah, a never ending project. But in today’s lousy economic climate I wonder what the appetite of the CFO will be for a techie who sucks money with no end point in sight. Sort of a problem, perhaps? The author includes the 14 stages in a SharePoint project. I would insert a 15th. Seek a new job.
Azure Portal
Gunnar Peipman wrote “Azure Developer Portal: Some Screenshots” here. I find much about the Azure project confusing, but the screenshots shows two application instances which then become one application instance. This is not an error. Azure allowed Mr. Peipman was allowed one instance. Bug? Feature? Conservation of energy? The screenshots are a bit confusing and I don’t know if Azure caused the problem. I appreciated his comment: “Sorry for the mess.” I can’t wait to see how search runs from Azure in a high demand environment. Will that one instance haul the water?
Third Party Tools in SharePoint
Quite a few SharePoint clients use third party tools to find information in SharePoint. The solutions I find work pretty well include but are not limited to Coveo, Exalead, and ISYS Search Software, among others. There are some useful facts that can make life with these third party systems happier for the SharePoint administrator who wants to leave early and have free weekends. First, click here and read “Using Third Party Tools in SharePoint”. Second, save the file and keep in handy for future reference. Among the useful tips is this one: “Understand in detail what it will take to provide an evaluation & test of the third party tool(s) assuming you will set up an separate environment to do it.” Good round up of what most system pros learn in training.
Product Wackiness
Finally, I want to call your attention to “SharePoint Designer and Expression Web – Separated at Birth” here. I have seen copies of Expression Web in the local Office Depot. The SharePoint designer is a freebie. This article takes a run at explaining the “difference” between the two products. These bastard spawn of the aging FrontPage have one big difference when it comes to SharePoint. Expression Web can’t edit SharePoint sites. Pretty wacky to me. Oh, don’t forget VisualStudio. We have needed that tool to go where the SharePoint Designer fears to tread. Nice.
Microsoft Fast
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to a news item here pointing out that Microsoft Fast Norway wants to hire some “Live Search” type people. Must be the same manager who cooked up Expression and Designer.
Stephen Arnold, April 13, 2009
SharePoint Success Now Ensured
April 12, 2009
his headline grabbed my attention: “Information Architected Inc. Releases New Methodology to Ensure SharePoint Success” here. The item is a news release from Information Architected Inc., a “consultancy focused on the intelligent use of content, knowledge and processes to drive innovation and thrive in a digital world.” Here’s what the news release said about the methodology:
The methodology is executed in three stages. It begins with an assessment of overall business goals and objectives. It identifies and ranks the business issues associated with the SharePoint implementation, expected outcomes and benefits targeted. The assessment includes a rationalization of the needs for collaboration and knowledge sharing versus the needs for compliance and security. It also examines user work habits, the need to collaborate, search and navigation habits and needs, related processes and overall business goals and objectives.
The second step looks at current and planned technology strategies. This includes everything from network capacity, to existing and planned tools and techniques for collaboration. This can include existing portals, document and content management systems, enterprise 2.0 technologies, and any existing SharePoint sites.
The third step aligns the findings of the first two steps, resulting in an implementation strategy that balances technology capabilities with business requirements. Alternatives are presented that highlight alternative cost and change management issues associated with the SharePoint implementation. For each targeted goal or benefit, alternatives regarding deployment in SharePoint “out of the box integration of SharePoint with existing systems, customization of SharePoint and/or simple tweaks of SharePoint are compared. The solution is positioned within an information architecture, ensuring easier and wider scale adoption and alignment with corporate governance. The result is a well thought out business-technology strategy that maximizes the value derived from SharePoint and minimizes any risks of shortcomings in the short and long-term.
That’s fine but the buzzword density is a bit high for this addled goose’s taste.
What stopped me was the implication that whatever methodology existed prior to the release of Information Architected’s method must be flawed. I pondered the implications of 100 million SharePoint installations less successful than their users originally anticipated. I have been baffled by SharePoint, which is a snowball type of server from Microsoft. Each year SharePoint picks up more functions which are often mashed into the server product, but not fully integrated. What began life as a content management system, now operates like a Universal home gym. One big, heavy structure that can be used like a gymful of exercise equipment. I hope the new method that “ensures” success gets traction. Mud wrestling with SharePoint can be hazardous to one’s standing in the eyes of colleagues. And search? Make friends with the chief financial officer too.
Stephen Arnold, April 12, 2009
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