I had thought about this question for myself a few years back. I, specifically, like the answer by Jon Mckee. Looking at the technology landscape 15 years back and now, there has been so much of change and the way it has evolved. Its practically impossible for any developer to keep up with a lot of these new technologies. And, unfortunately, a lot of companies that use these technologies are run by people who know how to do business & make money very well, but not really much about these technologies. Hence, comes the trend of picking up the popular technology in the market and using it for their requirement. Its a really complex world to be wondering about these things or summarize them in a paragraph for that matter. My two cents is that one should be really focusing on things that really matter like basics, algorithms, design patterns, cryptography, understanding framework's underlying code. I think a lot of developers out there today learn technology without understanding the underlying concepts & intricacies. For example, there is lot of market for AngularJS, but it is built on JavaScript and how many out there actually bother about understanding it? Its might be easier and quicker to code in Angular but incomplete knowledge will introduce a lot of bugs and problem in the deliverable at later point of time. Developers are being judged based on a race between what is needed and how quickly it can be delivered. The moment one tends to learn these technologies for the sake of keeping up with the race, the developer in them is on the way to a dead end. New technologies and frameworks are going to evolve and get released faster than ever.

Thanks for the response.

Hi, This question is regarding the best practice to be followed while developing web parts. In developing web parts, the CreateChildControls method can be programmed in 2 ways, Create all the required controls inside this method, set their properties and call 'this.Controls.Add(xxxx)' for each control created. or Create the controls to be rendered in web part as a web user control i.e., .ascx file and deploy this control in the 12 hive's Control Templates folder. In the 'CreateChildControl' method, load this web user control and call 'this.Controls.Add(xxxx)'. When developing a web part with complex controls or rather huge number of controls in it, which one of the above is best in terms of performance and why? Thanks Arut

Thanks Mark.

Hi All, I'm trying to implement security trimmed controls in SharePoint and I'm quite new to this. My requirement is to hide or display a certain content (it could be anything like OOB webpart, custom control, navigation link etc.) on the SharePoint main page or MySite based on the user permission. How do I accomplish this? Thanks Arut

Thanks for the response.

Hi, I'm working on a scenario to implement item level security as explained below: I have a custom list that has items viewed by different departments from different locations. When a person logs into the sharepoint site and goes to this custom list, he should be able to see the items relevant to his location and department only. How can I implement this item level security in sharepoint? Appreciate your time & effort in advance. Thanks Arut

Hi, I have a requirement of deploying a SPItemEventReceiver as feature to multiple sites (28 site collections actually). Is there a way this can be done in a single step, in order to avoid the deployment and feature activation steps for each of the site collection. [I know how to create a WSP and deploy it as feature for a single site collection. My question is intended only to know if all this can be done in one step] Please note that I already know the following approaches: (a) Create a batch file and write stsadm commands in the same to deploy/ activate the feature on the required site collections. This batch file would run and deploy/ activate the feature in the site collections mentioned in the file. (b) Create a SPFeatureReceiver and deploy it on 1 site collection. Overriden method in the receiver should have logic to add our item event receiver on the required multiple site collections and activate them. Is there any other way? Thanks Arut

Riyaz, It should be quite possible as the underlying base object is SPList, irrespective of custom list or document library. However, I guess you might need to have fields in the document library that display information. Thanks Arut

Since, there were no replies on this post, I'm posting the solution I had tried out on this. May be it'll be helpful to some one. (a) Open or access the SharePoint site list in a browser, from which you want to export the data. (b) Click 'Export to spreadsheet' under 'Actions' in the list tool bar. This action allows you to export the data and before exporting the data, it'll prompt you to save or open the web query. Click 'Open' button and export the query as a data connection file to a local folder. This saves the data connection file to the local folder as .odc file. (c) You can later import this data connection file into Excel's data connections, which can be called from the VBA to get the latest data from SharePoint list. Thanks Arut

could you elaborate on what exactly you are trying to do and how you are doing it?

Hi, I'm working on how to read a SharePoint list view data programmatically thru Excel 2007 VBA/ macros. Could you provide me few pointers to get how to implement this? Thanks Arut

After deploying the InfoPath form to SharePoint InfoPath form services, you need to activate it as feature in SharePoint site collection and add it as content type to a form library. I guess you have done this part already. All you need to do now is to go to Form Library Settings -> Advanced Settings (under General Settings) and Select the option 'Display as Webpage' under Browser Enabled documents. Also, note that you should have selected 'Open in browser' in the Form options before publishing the form. Hope you would have got the ans.

I'm not sure about the root cause, but you might want to check the permission groups and users for the site in which you are creating a sub site.

There are two ways of doing this. (a) Using Windows Workflow: Workflow deployed will create a task (typically, a task form) for the specific approver. The required validations and functionalities have to be handled in the Workflow code. (b) Using Info Path form: The email generated (sent to the specific user) should have a link specified (like a hyper link). In this case the approver will be opening the same form and hence, in the loading event, you should check the required privileges & hide/ show of the UI part. Could you be more specific on your question?

Thanks Chirantan

Check the following links: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg132857.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2006/11/18/developing-workflows-in-vs-part-1-workflow-objects-and-a-crash-course-on-mechanics.aspx#124292

Check the following links: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg132857.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2006/11/18/developing-workflows-in-vs-part-1-workflow-objects-and-a-crash-course-on-mechanics.aspx#124292

Hi, I've built a custom field type that will fetch data from BDC and display it to the user. I'm not sure how to deploy this custom field as a feature in SharePoint. Kindly let me know the steps to create a solution package. I know how to create the .ddf file, manifest.xml file and to deploy the solution using STSADM commands, but not sure about what has to be mentioned in Feature.xml & also, which other file are required? Note: The code is as given below. This may not required to answer this questions.

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

namespace MyCustomFieldType
{
public class BDCField : Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldMultiColumn
{
public BDCField(SPFieldCollection fields, string fieldName): base(fields, fieldName)
{
}

    public BDCField(SPFieldCollection fields, string typeName, string displayName): base(fields, typeName, displayName)
    {
    }

    // Returns a WebControl as the field control's UI
    public override Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseFieldControl FieldRenderingControl
    {
        get
        {
            return new BDCFieldControl();
        }
    }
}

}

Note that along with this I've another file that renders the field control. Also, an XML file (as fldTypes_FieldName.xml) placed under TEMPLATE\XML folder in the project directory and its contents define the field type's properties. Thanks Arut

Hi All, I'm new to working on SharePoint BDC. I'm working on a prototype using the sample AdventureWorks DB (as basis for my actual work to be done later). I've created the application definition file to access data from the Products table and created a BDC application by importing ADF. I'm able to retrieve the required values using BDC List web part and view them without any issues. But, when I try to create a column (of type BusinessData) in a list, I'm not even able to select the Instance in the "Type" field. Is this because I've not defined a specific finder method? Given below is my ADF: