Features

Creation and Consumption of Web Services with PowerBuilder

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST

PowerBuilder 12.5 introduced a number of significant enhancements to web services support, both for creation and consumption. We’re going to look at what those new features provide and how to use them. We’re also going to look at how we can package some of that functionality so that it can be used from PowerBuilder Classic applications as well. First though, some background. When support for a web service client was first introduced in PowerBuilder 9, it was done based on an open source library called EasySOAP. There were some limitations with that implementation, primarily because the EasySOAP library only supported SOAP 1.1, was limited to XML over HTTP transport, and provided no support for ancillary web services standards such as WS-Security.

Making Sense of Large and Growing Data Volumes

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:30:00 EDT

Is MapReduce the Holy Grail answer to the pressing problem of processing, analyzing and making sense of large and growing data volumes? Certainly it has potential in this arena, but there is a distressing gap between the amount of hype this technology – and its spinoffs – has received and the number of professionals who actually know how to integrate and make best use of it. Industry watchers say it’s just a matter of time before MapReduce sweeps through the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) market the same way open source technologies like Linux have done. In fact, in a recent blog post, Forrester’s James Kobielus proclaimed that most EDW vendors will incorporate support for MapReduce’s open source cousin Hadoop into the heart of their architectures to enable open, standards-based data analytics on massive amounts of data. So, no more databases, just MapReduce? I’m not so sure. But don’t misunderstand. It’s not that MapReduce isn’t an effective way to analyze data in some cases. The big names in Internet business are all using it – Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay et al – so it must be good, right? But it’s worth taking a more measured view based both on the technical and the practical business merits. I believe that the two technologies are not so mutually exclusive; that they will work hand-in-hand and, in some cases, MapReduce will be integrated into the relational database (RDBMS).

RESTful Web Services: A Quick-Start How-to Guide - Part 2

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EDT

Part 2 of "RESTful Web Services: A Quick-Start How-To Guide" explores foundational issues in coding RESTful operations, including Basic Authentication and Exception handling. Along the way I’ll share with you multiple real-world coding tips and workarounds. As a teenager, one of my favorite TV shows was “The Wild Wild West.” The show’s description goes like this, “… a 60 minute western action series on CBS that was like no other. Special Agents James West and Artemus Gordon were spies for President Ulysses S. Grant shortly after the civil war. In every other way, they could be easily confused with James Bond of the 20th century. They had a "high-tech" (for its day) railroad car stocked with a compliment of advanced weapons. James West especially seemed to woo every beautiful woman he encountered. The agents' typical mission involved saving the United States from some disaster or from being taken over by some evil genius.” Just in case you’re curious or are a fan like me, here’s a link to the first part of a full episode on YouTube: http://youtu.be/90FsuJjknV8

Communicate... Because in IT, If You Build It, They May Not Come

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 07:45:00 EDT

Finding the perfect balance of influence between IT and the Business Owners (I will resist the urge to refer to them as B.O.) is not easy. I usually find that most projects are influenced by one or the other in an unbalanced manner. The story is usually goes like this... The business feels that technology should not be a factor in making sound business decisions. In the business owner's eyes, whatever the solution is, the IT department should be able to support the technology that comes with that solution. This is bad when a custom software package is the solution. .NET/SQL Server shops may end up with a Java/Oracle product or visa versa. Although it is possible to support every technology in the world it makes absolutely no sense to attempt to.

RESTful Web Services: A Quick-Start How-to Guide - Part 1

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EDT

Among PowerBuilder 12.5 .NET’s new features comes the ability to use WCF to call RESTful web services. This article, the first in a two-part series, provides a PowerBuilder 12.5 .NET developer with the foundational knowledge and skills to rapidly get up and running building PowerBuilder RESTful Web Service clients. Along the way I’ll share with you a few tips and workarounds. PowerBuilder 12.0 .NET provided the ability to call SOAP-based web services using Microsoft’s .NET 3.5 WCF API. I encourage those of you not familiar with WCF and SOAP to view my PowerBuilder WCF primer and StockTrader reference application overview hosted on Sybase.com. You can get to all my free tutorials from http://yakovwerde.ulitzer.com/node/1551687. New with version 12.5, along with an upgrade to WCF 4.0, is the ability to call RESTful web services, an increasingly popular mechanism for accessing remote resources in SOA applications. In this article I’ll help you gain some foundational understanding and definitions, then familiarize you with the mechanics of coding a client to retrieve data from a response-oriented RESTful service. In Part 2, I’ll explore the three types of request-oriented operations.

The History of Programming

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:15:00 EDT

I’ve been programming since around 1982, first using an Apple in high school and then finally getting my first computer, the Timex Sinclair 1000 (2k of ROM and 2k of RAM), that same year. Both computers came with a form of the BASIC programming language and it was the start of my lifelong pursuit of trying to understand computers. A few months ago, one of my good friends called and asked if I had a PowerPoint presentation on the history of programming. When I checked my extensive list of presentations, I noticed that I didn’t have one, so that led me on a journey to create a presentation on that very subject. However, where to start? Maybe 1940 or 1950? After thinking about it for a while I realized that’s really not where programming started. You need to go way, way back to really understand the programming concept and where it came from. This led me to envision the world as a dark, almost black place with a small white light in the center… really the only light around was the small white light in the center and that light represented the idea: there has to be a better, more accurate, way to count and keep track of things for commerce.

Using the Tag Property - Part 2

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:00:00 EDT

This is the second part of a two-part article. In the last article we learned how to use the tag property to create our own microhelp and automate it. In this article we are going to go one step further and use the tag property for other things. The list of items that I used the tag property for has shrunk over the years as Sybase has tried to give us more tools. Apart from the microhelp the most common use I had was to implement a tool tip. Now Sybase gives us a tool tip without our having to code a pop-up window. Luckily I don’t have to have a long list of items; one more is sufficient to show you the technique that I desire. I want to show you how to use the tag property for more than one thing. We have the microhelp, how about something else such as automatically bolding the static text that is associated with the control?

Every Enterprise Needs a Modernization Strategy

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 11:45:00 EDT

An enterprise without a modernization strategy is an enterprise with a painful future of paying technical debt with the highest interest possible. This is especially true of custom-developed applications. Software changes, period. So why not include a strategy for change in your enterprise. I have seen a lot of enterprises that pride themselves on being ready for requirement changes during their application development projects, but very few that ever consider a modernization strategy. Modernization should be architected into your applications. History has continuously shown us that in our industry nothing stays new very long. I have seen some large projects that need to upgrade the version of the .NET Framework before they even get the first release to production, but they never even consider that an option, so they deploy a legacy application on their first release. Most of the projects without a modernization plan lack architectural guidance as a whole. The projects that plan for modernization don't simply re-create the mess they were intended to replace. I have seen projects deliver two years worth of work, only to realize they just delivered themselves a legacy system that will require them to start over from the beginning.

Windows Azure Series - Roles Offered by Windows Azure

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:45:00 EDT

Part 1 of the Windows Azure Series, provided an introduction to Windows Azure, and Part 2 provided a look inside the Windows Azure datacenters. Part 3 will continue with a look at the Windows Azure Roles and the Development Environment. The last one is especially important for the next couple of articles as we will look at the API as well. This article will focus on the “Compute” part of Windows Azure. The Roles Explained Windows Azure currently (April 2011) has three different roles. In case I didn’t mention it before, Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service offering. Therefore, developers have to think a little differently than IaaS Platforms. If you have more roles, Windows Azure does the load balancing for you. There is no need to pay extra money for a load-balancing service or to handle this on your own. But now back to the Roles, which are the WebRole, the WorkerRole and the VmRole. Each of the Roles serves a different need for modern Software as a Service applications.

Using the New TableBlob Column Type

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EDT

If you’re familiar with the Database Binary / Text Large Object column type in PowerBuilder Classic (see Figure 1), you know it’s a way of storing blob data associated with an OLE Automation application (Paint, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel) and then displaying it as part of a DataWindow.. There were some limitations with the Database Binary / Text Large Object. It required the end user to have the application that was used to add the object to the database in order to view the data. It often didn’t display the data well within the DataWindow. And it wrapped the data stored in the database with an OLE wrapper, making it difficult to deal with the data outside of the OLE Automation application used to store it.

Slicing the Pie with PowerBuilder .NET 12.1 EBF Project Partitioning

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:30:00 EST

There are all kinds of pies, chicken pot pie, shepherd’s pie, cherry pie and of course good ol’ American apple pie. Every host or hostess knows that pies are perfect circles. There are infinite ways to divide and serve them. They can be cut in halves, thirds, quarters, eighths, sixteenths or any combination thereof. If a pie is small, you might even choose to serve each guest a whole pie. It’s up to you to determine which size pieces are appropriate for your guests. In a sense, configuring a .NET application for deployment is a lot like dividing a pie. You can deploy the entire application as a whole pie (a single EXE) or you can carve it up into a set of smaller related assemblies. How you divide the application into separate deployment pieces is really your choice. In this article, I’ll take a look the new project painter feature included in the March 21.1 EBF release that gives you control over how you architect your deployment. I’ll give you the lowdown on why this feature is important to you and show you how to work with the configuration tools to achieve your desired result.

Is Hand-Coding Becoming Obsolete?

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 07:45:00 EST

Increasingly, IT managers, CIOs and software developers are turning to a new approach for rapidly building robust database applications without programming - application generators. Today’s business environment demands managers find ways to do more with less, and application generation allows both developers and non-developers to build applications quickly and efficiently. Application generation tools build database-driven applications that can be deployed to the Web, the Cloud, or to Microsoft SharePoint environments.

Refactoring Corner: Partitioning DataWindow Technology

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:15:00 EST

One of the main goals of PowerBuilder Classic application refactoring is to divide the code into logical partitions. Although you will likely not gain significant performance increases in exchange for your efforts, you will achieve two other highly significant gains. First, your logic will gain interoperability; you will have the ability to share application business and data logic with other applications developed in other .NET languages. (I say ability because you still need to make your method interfaces Common Type System compliant.) Second, your code maintenance activities will gain a more predictable and less likely flawed result because of the code’s newly attained clarity. Figure 1 shows the conceptual structure of a typical Classic application before refactoring. Note that both business logic and data access logic are embedded with GUI elements.

Agile Development != Chaos

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 07:45:00 EST

The most agile project teams I have seen are those that do not claim to be agile or lean. They have a solid well documented architecture in place as well as designs of the modules being built. They have separated the responsibilities amongst the team members according to the team member's skill set. They don't try to pretend everyone has the experience levels that would allow them to contribute to all aspects of the development process. Requirements, Architecture, Analysis and design, and Proof of Concepts take up 80% of the projects resources of time and money, and coding takes up 20%. As the team's process becomes repeatable and reuse starts to be capitalized on, project's time to production is shortened, estimates are actually accurate, and budgets are met.

Peering Behind the PowerBuilder .NET Assembly Curtain

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 09:45:00 EST

Part of the allure of the .NET platform is that all code, no matter what language or grammar it’s written in, compiles down to Common Intermediate Language (CIL) that is managed and executed by the Common Language Runtime (CLR). PowerScript code goes through a two-step process before becoming CIL. First it’s run through PBCS.exe, which converts PowerScript to the equivalent C#. Then the emitted CS code is compiled by the C# compiler, CS.EXE, into standard CIL. One of the tools that ships with the .NET SDK is a CIL disassembler ILDASM.exe. The tool allows you to explore the emitted assemblies and examine their CIL instructions and metadata. I decided to build a simple C# application into an assembly and explore its CIL and reproduce it in PowerScript to compare compiler outputs and see what I could learn.

Bound and Tied: What Is Data Binding?

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 06:45:00 EST

XAML data binding is a codeless (declarative) way of transferring information from one object to another. It’s very helpful in a UI where data originating in one object controls a characteristic of (or is the source of data displayed in) another object. Data binding’s main benefit is to greatly reduce (if not eliminate) the number of lines of procedural code you have to write in code behind class event handlers. Taken to its full extent, it’s possible for a designer (a non-programmer) to define both the GUI’s look and feel as well as its behavior within a design tool without resorting to programmer assistance. Figure 1 shows a simple example. The window has a horizontal slide bar and a static text. Moving the track bar slider changes the size of the static text.

Right Click, Analyze Team

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 10:15:00 EST

A great agile team is a highly disciplined team. Embracing new levels of discipline consistently across teams is tough without guidance and continual feedback. Wouldn’t it be great to have an experienced Agile Development Coach entrenched into every single one of your project teams? This coach could consistently make recommendations on how to optimize your team, make sure your team accurately tracks progress and detects conditions that could lead to increased project risk. Wouldn’t it be great if this experienced coach could be built right into the software you use to manage your project?

Using Add-ins with PowerBuilder .NET 12.0

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 08:15:00 EDT

When Sybase originally released PowerBuilder 10.0, one of the new features they added with that version was the PowerDesigner plug-in. There had been a number of IDE “add-in” third-party products for PowerBuilder before (e.g, SmartPaste, SmartJump), but this was the first time that Sybase had opened up an API to officially support add-ins to the IDE. Unfortunately, Sybase never documented how the API worked. So, even today in PowerBuilder 12 Classic, you can go to the Tools-> Plug-in Manager option and be presented with a dialog that appears to originally have been intended to support a number of plug-ins, but only lists one (see Figure 1). With the release of PowerBuilder.NET 12.0, the possibility of having plug-ins to the IDE officially supported gets a new life. That’s because PowerBuilder.NET 12.0 is based on the Visual Studio Isolated Shell and Visual Studio has supported (and documented the API for) plug-ins for the IDE since 2002. Visual Studio even supplies templates that you can use to create your own plug-ins (or as they are called in Visual Studio parlance: add-ins). The PowerBuilder.NET 12.0 documentation indicates that it supports those add-ins.

Writing COM Controls for PowerBuilder in C#

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 03:45:00 EDT

While there is literature describing how to use .NET controls in PB (see for example, past issues of this magazine), all are silent on how to set control properties at runtime and how to persist them. This article will address both issues. Like regular OLE controls, you can allow your .NET control properties to be set at design-time by means of property pages (see Figure 1). The ideas in this article have been implemented in source code available at the PB12 Resource (http://www.sybase.com/powerbuilder12). Look for “Writing A COM Control for PB using C# Part 6.” This article will reference it.

Bye Bye Clip Window; Hello Snippets

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EDT

Clips or snippets are pieces of code that are either difficult to remember or often used with minor tweaks. Developers look for ways to leverage their IDE to write code snippets once and then paste them into an editor whenever / wherever they are needed. In Classic the IDE facility is called the Clip Window. In the .NET IDE the facility is called Snippets. The process of creating and using Snippets in .NET is quite different from its Classic counterpart. The purpose of this article is to familiarize a Classic developer with the .NET IDE Snippet facility and help increase their .NET coding productivity by guiding them through the process of defining and using .NET code Snippets.

The Three-Minute Mile – Why Is My Project Team Killing Itself?

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:15:00 EDT

Back in my younger days, I could run a sub seven-minute mile. When I heard about somebody running a five-minute mile, I thought “now that’s really fast.” Today, the world record for the mile run is 3:43:13, set in 1999 by Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco. In the ’80s, IT projects felt like they moved at the pace of an eight-minute mile. We took the time to write detailed requirements, detailed design documents, thorough project plans, test plans, you name it. If someone had a new idea or a new process on how to “do it right,” it was implemented. I recall hour-long meetings on ways to improve processes on projects and conversations around what wasn’t being documented that needed to be documented in case somebody asked the question “where’s that documented?” We even took the time to write detailed communication plans, which is something that I haven’t seen in a while. At some point during my career, upper management started asking the question “can you move the project along faster by adding more people?” So we would add a few more developers, cut the QA testing cycle and shaved off a few weeks on the project schedule. It began to feel like a six-minute mile run. Fast-forward to today and it feels like projects are clipping at the pace of a three-minute mile. Fast just wasn’t fast enough! At times, I’ve left work with a splitting headache, a plethora of emails to read when I got home, and pondering if this truly is the current state of IT projects?

Cloud Computing, SOA and Windows Azure - Part 3

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EDT

A cloud service in Windows Azure will typically have multiple concurrent instances. Each instance may be running all or a part of the service’s codebase. As a developer, you control the number and type of roles that you want running your service. Windows Azure roles are comparable to standard Visual Studio projects, where each instance represents a separate project. These roles represent different types of applications that are natively supported by Windows Azure.

The Future of Software Development

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EDT

As software developers, our mission is to deliver positive, technology-based solutions – software that provides both the means and the method for working faster, performing better, achieving more. There is little doubt that the technologies we create provide users with the control and functionality needed to be more efficient and productive. However, what happens when the tools we use to produce these solutions get out of control? Evolution in the technology ecosystem has accelerated to the speed of light – blink and you may miss something important. The software development landscape has mushroomed with near-exponential growth; new products and innovations are flooding the market on a daily basis. It begs the question: does this swift evolutionary pace represent a positive stage in the maturation of software development or are we moving too quickly for our own good? What does the future of software hold for us? It is an open question that can only be answered with time.

Cloud Computing, SOA and Windows Azure - Part 2

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EDT

The Windows Azure platform is an Internet-scale cloud computing services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. Windows tools provide functionality to build solutions that include a cloud services operating system and a set of developer services. The key parts of the Windows Azure platform are Windows Azure (application container), Microsoft SQL Azure, and Windows Azure platform AppFabric. The infrastructure and service architectures that underlie many of these native services (as well as cloud-based services in general) are based on direct combined application of Stateful Services [786] and Redundant Implementation [766]. This is made possible by leveraging several of the built-in extensions and mechanisms provided by the Windows Azure platform (as explained in this chapter and Chapter 16).

Building Bridges: PowerBuilder/InfoMaker Integration in the .NET Universe

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:15:00 EDT

There has been some talk lately about the impact of the new .NET PBL and EXE format on applications that dynamically integrate InfoMaker reports (or other external PBLs). The concern is that since PowerBuilder has gone .NET and InfoMaker remains Classic, platform differences will break the integration mechanism that ties these two products together. In this article I’ll take a look at the issue, provide some background for the uninitiated and propose a mechanism to bridge the gap. For those of you not familiar with InfoMaker, it’s a reporting tool featuring the DataWindow Object Painter and runtime engine wrapped in a power-user friendly tool. InfoMaker is a popular in Sybase shops where there is an ad hoc or admin-user reporting requirement. It is also bundled as a report writer with many commercial systems. Product synergy allows InfoMaker-generated reports to become part of the core PB application while still under the control of their admin creator. This integration is possible for two reasons: one, InfoMaker report definitions are syntactically equivalent to DataWindows; and two, InfoMaker stores its report definitions in a PBL in the same format that PowerBuilder does. Most notably, InfoMaker PBLs are fully PowerBuilder Classic compatible. I’ll begin by taking a look at the PBL structure and the runtime API for accessing it.

Crazy Eights: Migrating a Legacy Application up to PowerBuilder 12 .NET

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:30:00 EDT

I grew up in a Brooklyn NY apartment building. As a young kid, one of my rainy day after-school pastimes was playing card games with the other kids in my building. One of the games we played was crazy eights. If you’re curious about this simple card game, check out the Wikipedia description at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eights Recently I was tasked with migrating a legacy application with distant roots in version 4, up to PowerBuilder 12 .NET. The trip over to version 12 Classic went fine with nary a hitch. The ride over to .NET was not too bumpy either. But then I started to exhaustively drive the code. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of part of a DataWindow that forced me over to the liquor cabinet to get the gin. Most of the numbers look normal, but then I noticed those crazy [8]s in the balance, weight and price objects. To make sure it wasn’t something I hadn’t notice before migration, I went back to the classic version. Figure 2 shows the same DataWindow object in the Classic version. As you can see, it doesn’t have the crazy [8]s.

Microsoft Cloud Services

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:38:34 EDT

Of course Microsoft has their own Cloud hosting services, Azure, but there are still other scenarios where Microsoft software can be Cloud deployed, and these offer a fertile product development area for web hosting providers. These 'Microsoft Cloud Services' (MCS) offer the ideal way to move into more of an MSP mode, providing a fuller range of IT outsourcing services and growing recurring revenues accordingly, but without having to stretch too far from their core web hosting product set. Most organizations already have apps like Sharepoint and Exchange deployed internally, so hosted versions don't offer any pain-solving solutions. In contrast new, Cloud-based services that add value to these existing installations are very well targetted niche opportunities.

Refactoring PowerBuilder Applications

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:15:00 EDT

The migration march to PB 12.NET will have many shops revisiting legacy applications. In my previous articles (“Refactoring Is Not an ‘R’ Word, [PBDJ, Vol. 16, issue 12] and “Refactoring Classic PowerBuilder Applications Using TDD and pbUnit” [PBDJ, Vol. 17, issue 1) you read why refactoring code before migration helps ensure smooth migration and enterprise integration. You were introduced to Test Driven Development methodology and saw how you can use it to ensure successful refactoring. I introduced you to pbUnit, an open source tool and framework that you can use for both refactoring and developing new code in PB Classic applications, and guided you through installing pbUnit and mastering the basic algorithm for refactoring PB legacy code. In this article I’ll show you a technique to use for rolling multiple test cases into a single test suite and how to approach writing test cases that exercise database-centric code.

A Simple Approach to Complex Event Processing

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:45:00 EDT

What is an event? Generally speaking, an event is an occurrence that brings about significant change in the state of an object from a certain point of view. For example, the “sunrise” is an event that is defined from the perspective of an earthling. Yet from the perspective of an alien, Earth’s sunrise is not a sunrise at all, but merely a lonely planet’s celestial rotation. On a simple scale, we can view the change of time as an event in itself. Consider a sun dial’s interpretation of time. While a sun dial doesn’t move, the forces of time act upon the object, thus causing an event. The former describes simple events, or a singular event defined from the perspective of its onlooker, whereas complex events are the product of an onlooker’s interpretation of a series of events. The same event can be defined as either “complex” or “simple” depending on its context. For example, the Siberian spring can be distinguished as a simple event if one learns of it from a newspaper. The same event would be considered complex if taken from the perspective of a Siberian wolf that does not read newspapers, but acknowledges spring’s arrival due to a number of sub-events, such as rising air temperatures, thawing snow, and leaves appearing on the trees.

Creating Enterprise Search Metadata Property Mappings with PowerShell

Wed, 26 May 2010 16:07:00 EDT

One of the things that drove me absolutely nuts about Enterprise Search in MOSS 2007 was that there was no built-in way to export your managed property mappings and install them on a new server. A third party utility on CodePlex helped, but it was still less than ideal. With SharePoint 2010, well you still really can’t export your property mappings to a file, but you do get a lot of flexibility using PowerShell. By taking a proactive approach, we can use PowerShell instead of the UI to create our property mappings. We can then use these same scripts later when its time to move these settings to production. The SDK does a pretty good job with examples on how to use all of the commands we need, but I found a few minor errors and omissions. We’ll look at some of the individual commands and then put it all together. Our goal at the end of this is to have a .ps1 script that you can store in your source control system.

The first thing we need to do is get a reference to our search service application. By default, it just so happens to be called Search Service Application. However, if you installed it manually, or are using FAST, it is likely to be called something different.

$searchapp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication "Search Service Application"

We assign this to a variable called $searchapp (or whatever you want) so that we can reference it later in the script. In today’s example, I have some site columns on a document library that I want to use as managed properties. In this case I have site columns called TestProperty1 and TestProperty2. If I were to perform a full crawl, Enterprise Search would automatically create crawled properties called ows_TestProperty1 and ows_TestProperty2. However, I want to save myself some time and skip that full crawl. This is especially valuable when you have a large index. Luckily, I can just create these crawled properties using PowerShell using the New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty command (i know that’s a lot to type). The syntax is pretty simple, but there are a few gotchas. First the VariantType parameter isn’t entirely obvious. I know 31 is text, but I’m not sure exactly what value to use on other types. The link from the SDK give you quite a few values (note they are all in hex), but I still need to figure out the rest of the values sometime. The other thing is the PropSet parameter is marked as optional when in fact it is required. I’m really not sure what value you should use here and when so I just used the same GUID most crawled properties used (viewable from the UI), 00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346. We also have to get a reference to the crawled property category that we want (in this case SharePoint) so we call Get-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCategory first and pass that to the Category attribute. Here is what the commands looks like to create TestProperty2.

$category = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCategory –Identity SharePoint -SearchApplication $searchapp
$crawledproperty = New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -SearchApplication $searchapp -Category $category -VariantType 31 -PropSet "00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346" -Name ows_TestProperty2 -IsNameEnum $false

You can verify that it was created in SharePoint using the UI.

Now, we need to create a managed property using the New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataManagedProperty command. The documentation on the Type parameter for this command is a bit sketchy too. Currently, it lists the six managed property types Text, Integer, Decimal, DateTime, YesNo, Binary, but it doesn’t say what the value for each one is (the parameter requires an int). From the example, they give I was able to determine that 1 is a test. At some point, I’ll go find the enum in the SDK and see what the rest of the values are. The rest of the command is pretty simple, just specify a name and pass a reference to the service application.

$managedproperty = New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataManagedProperty -SearchApplication $searchapp -Name TestProperty2 -Type 1

You may have noticed I am assigning the result of each New command to a variable. This is so that we can pass that in to the New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataMapping command. Just pass in references to the service application, managed property, and crawled property and you are done.

New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataMapping -SearchApplication $searchapp -ManagedProperty $managedproperty -CrawledProperty $crawledproperty

Here is what the command looks like in PowerShell. It simply gives you info on what was created.

If you need to map multiple crawled properties to a managed property simply call the command repeatedly with a reference to each crawled property. Once you finish, you can verify in the UI that the managed property was mapped successfully.

At this point, you need to do a full crawl to make use of your managed properties. Here is what the whole script looks like put together with multiple mappings.

$searchapp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication "Search Service Application"
$category = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCategory –Identity SharePoint -SearchApplication $searchapp
$crawledproperty = New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -SearchApplication $searchapp -Category $category -VariantType 31 -PropSet "00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346" -Name ows_TestProperty1 -IsNameEnum $false
$managedproperty = New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataManagedProperty -SearchApplication $searchapp -Name TestProperty1 -Type 1
New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataMapping -SearchApplication $searchapp -ManagedProperty $managedproperty -CrawledProperty $crawledproperty
 
$crawledproperty = New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -SearchApplication $searchapp -Category $category -VariantType 31 -PropSet "00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346" -Name ows_TestProperty2 -IsNameEnum $false
$managedproperty = New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataManagedProperty -SearchApplication $searchapp -Name TestProperty2 -Type 1
New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataMapping -SearchApplication $searchapp -ManagedProperty $managedproperty -CrawledProperty $crawledproperty
$crawledproperty = New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -SearchApplication $searchapp -Category $category -VariantType 31 -PropSet "00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346" -Name ows_TestProperty2a -IsNameEnum $false
New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataMapping -SearchApplication $searchapp -ManagedProperty $managedproperty -CrawledProperty $crawledproperty

It seems like a lot but it really isn’t. I create two managed properties (TestProperty1 and TestProperty2). In the case of TestProperty2, I actually map two crawled properties to it.

As far as I am concerned this is the only way to go from now on when it comes to doing property mappings. Once you have the script down, it’s much faster than clicking through the UI and of course you can run it on other servers. Be sure and give it a try as you start setting up search on all of your new SharePoint 2010 deployments.

Using the New PB Object Outline

Mon, 17 May 2010 08:14:00 EDT

For many releases of PB Classic, the object painters allowed the user to open views to see various parts of the edited object, such as Layout, and Control List. This feature allowed for each view to be customized to its contents, but it also meant that you really never had a complete snapshot of the object in one view. And we all know that an interesting object is the sum of all its parts. In PB .NET 12.0, we were presented with a challenge for object views. For one thing, in the Visual Studio shell any views we might create would not be contained within the designer, but would rather be part of the IDE layout. This meant views would remain open when the designer was closed. The second challenge had to do with all the new language enhancements that we now support. Enumerations, Indexers, and .NET Properties might all require additional views. My, oh my, we have view overload!

Behind the Scenes of ASP.NET MVC 2

Thu, 13 May 2010 08:15:00 EDT

With Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft is shipping the next version of the popular ASP.NET MVC Framework with its IDE. A year ago I blogged about my findings when getting my hands on the first version of ASP.NET MVC. The MVC Framework provides really nice features that make it very easy to build web applications on top of ASP.NET. The updated support in Visual Studio also makes it very appealing to choose MVC instead of traditional ASP.NET.

Garbage Collection in IE7

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:08:17 EDT

After my recent presentation at TSSJS – Performance Anti-Patterns in AJAX Applications - I got interesting feedback from one of the attendees: “The presentation was good but I thought you are talking more about actual problems with XHR/AJAX Requests”. I have to admit that I focused on all common problems of Web 2.0 applications – including network roundtrips, JavaScript and Rendering – and not just on those related to asynchronous communication. The comment made me work on a sample application where I want to test different approaches of asynchronous data processing that I’ve seen when working with our user base. I ran into a very interesting performance problem that I didn’t anticipate. So – before I blog about the actual different approaches (XML vs. JSON, XHR vs. script tags, …) I want to share a performance problem in IE 7’s JavaScript engine that everybody should be aware of.

How to Avoid the Top Five SharePoint Performance Mistakes

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:33:06 EDT

SharePoint is without question a fast-growing platform and Microsoft is making lots of money with it. It’s been around for almost a decade and grew from a small list and document management application into an application development platform on top of ASP.NET using its own API to manage content in the SharePoint Content Database. Over the years many things have changed – but some haven’t – like – SharePoint still uses a single database table to store ALL items in any SharePoint List. And this brings me straight into the #1 problem I have seen when working with companies that implemented their own solution based on SharePoint.

Case Study: Financial Aspects to Mainframe Migration

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:15:00 EDT

The long-predicted demise of the mainframe is about as likely as the paperless office. In fact, the analogy is appropriate, because companies are reducing their reliance on both paper and on mainframes, for the same reasons: achieving better results and saving money. That the mainframe is a time-tested and powerful platform is accepted. But you don’t see the word “efficient” or “cost-effective” in the litany of mainframe attributes. With a legacy of leased capital equipment and pay-by-use, the mainframe’s chief attribute is the fact that it is costly. There may be occasions where this cost is warranted. This article explores other examples, and in particular the financial benefits seen in the growing phenomenon of reapportioning or migrating some of the mainframe’s workload to more suitable platforms

Cloud Computing Is Like No Other Technology Wave

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:15:00 EDT

As for the right name, what more need be said than that Cloud Computing has caught on in a way that "Grid Computing" or "Utility Computing" or "Elastic Computing" never did? As a metaphor is sums up perfectly the spirit of compute capacity that can be set up and torn down programatically, leaving someone else to take care of the networking and hardware. However there's no doubt that "Cloud fatigue" is in danger of setting in as almost every existing suite of software becomes not re-engineered but merely re-branded, and give the magic C-word. Which is why my own preference is now to move to a slightly more nuanced metaphor, that of the "Resource Cloud."

Refactoring Is Not an ‘R’ Word

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:48:00 EST

The migration march to PB 12.NET will have many shops revisiting legacy applications. The first article in this series will explain why refactoring code before migration can help ensure a smoother migration process and a post-migration enterprise integration effort. It will introduce the Test Driven Development methodology and explain how it can be used to ensure successful refactoring. It will also introduce pbUnit, an open source tool and framework for refactoring PB Classic applications. The next article will show you, by example, how to use the tool and methodology to refactor PB legacy code. Martin Fowler, in his now classic work, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, defines refactoring as “changing the structure of code WITHOUT changing its functionality.” Refactoring is all about establishing or reestablishing order and structure in code; moving chunks of code about for optimum readability, maintainability, portability and reuse. If your intent is to add or change functionality, that’s not refactoring, that’s maintenance.

Cloud Economics – Amazon, Microsoft, Google Compared

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST

Any new technology adoption happens because of one of the three reasons: Capability: It allows us to do something which was not feasible earlier Convenience: It simplifies Cost: It significantly reduces cost of doing something What is our expectation from cloud computing? As I had stated earlier, it is all about cost saving … (1) through elastic capacity and [...]

Six Enterprise Megatrends to Watch in 2010

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:45:00 EST

Most enterprise technologists should see a continued payoff of the hard work in planning, architecture, documentation, development and configuration work that has been occurring over the last several years. Enterprise technologists were building Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) long before SOA was over-hyped. And most enterprise technologists I know were investigating constructs of scalable, elastic Cloud [...] Related posts:

New CIO Playbook: Positioning IT as Strategic to the Business

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

According to a Smart Enterprise Magazine CIO report, three-quarters of today's CIOs help their companies develop new products or services. Gartner Group's 2008 Worldwide Survey of CIOs, 85 percent of CIOs are now looking toward "IT to make the difference in their enterprise strategy." This move away from "keeping the lights on" to a focus on business strategy and external customer interaction is completely changing the day to day activities of today's CIO. The result of IT's executive leadership becoming a "part of" vs. a "supporter of" the business is forcing a shift of culture and mindset across the IT organization. If CIOs do not approach this change with a sound plan, inertia may set in due to passive/aggressive behavior and create operational risk.