Visual Studio 2005’s VSI failed to installed after setup Visual Studio 2008 (Actually it’s changing My Documents location)

I try to install the Time Tracker VSI (downloadable from http://www.asp.net ) after both VS2005 and VS2008 are installed. But I got the follow message instead. No error for installation of VSI meant for VS2008.

At first I thought is VS2008 screwed up my installation, but after some research online, I realize its not. Before installing VS2008, I actually moved my user’s profile from C Drive to E Drive. So to solve this problem, I simply launch VS2005 and go into Tools –> Options menu, on the left pane, click on Projects and Solutions, change the location of both Project templates and also Item templates. Then now it should have solved the problem.

Don’t throw away your Visual Studio 2005 yet

The XML Schema designer has been removed in Visual Studio 2008, for those people who deals with XML everyday (OpenXML, SharePoint), coding XML Schema in plain text can be a pain sometimes. I read in the XML Team’s blog that there will be a new schema designer but it didn’t make it to RTM. The CTP only works with Beta 2 for now, so VS2008 RTM is left without a graphical XML Schema editor.

 
XML Schema Designer in VS2005

Here is the blog URL about the new XML Schema Designer

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/NewXMLSchemaDesignerCTPReleasedForVisualStudio2008.aspx

SharePoint FAQ – 28 Nov 2007

Qn 1:

What is the difference between Windows Sharepoint Server and Office Sharepoint server?

For my purpose, where I require workflow and forms/input pages, which server do I require?

Is there development version of the sharepoint server? (just like sql express for sql server?)

Check out the URL below of WSS and MOSS differences

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101758691033.aspx

SharePoint does not have a developer edition, FYI SQL Server Developer Edition is actually SQL Server Enterprise Edition with 1 connection. Unlike the Dev. Edition, Express Edition can be deployed in production environment, but Developer Edition does not allow that. When you talk about development on SharePoint, you choose either WSS, MOSS Standard or MOSS Enterprise and run it on Windows Server 2003.

Qn 2:

Other than using Infopath forms can we developed our own application/web pages using C#.net and deploy it to sharepoint to be hosted and access to those webpages be controlled by sharepoint?

Besides InfoPath form, you can also use ASP.NET pages as form in a SharePoint workflow, they are no different from a normal ASP.NET page. And the data is stored either in a database table or a SharePoint list (vis SahrePoint object model). Quite a bit of development is needed and users cannot edit the pages easily.

Qn 3:

What is Sharepoint Designer used for? Is it a must? Or the same can be achieved using Visual Studio .Net 2008/2005?

Is it necessary to use VS.Net 2008 or 2005 can be used as well?

SharePoint Designer is actually the new version of FrontPage which is meant for end users to edit the look and feel of a SharePoint site, customize workflow and manages the documents within. Of course Visual Studio has more features but it’s too technical for normal corporate users. Find out more at the product website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/FX100743231033.aspx

Qn 4:

For the purpose of developing reports for SQL Reporting Services, is the Express version sufficient or do we require the standard edition… I notice on the website it said “Report Server is available for SQL Server Express in the SQL Server Express with Advanced Services download.”

To run SQL Reporting inside SharePoint, you need to install the Reporting Services addin for SharePoint, which under the requirement, it says does not run on SQL Server Express. Only SQL Server Standard and above is supported. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1E53F882-0C16-4847-B331-132274AE8C84&displaylang=en

SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and MOSS 2007

Managed to get Reporting Services integrated with MOSS yesterday. Phew… took me a morning to do that and this is my 2nd try on a VPC environment.  The first thing I do it on a Windows 2003 VPC with Domain Controller, SQL Server, MOSS together. Apearantly later when I setup everything and go back to grant database access in Central Administration web site it returns me some funny message. After spending sometime on the web, I realize there is some problem when you have DC on the same machine.

So in my 2nd try I setup 2 VPCs, the 1st one hosting the DC and Cert server while the 2nd one have SQL Server and MOSS installed. Then I got it right this time. There is a word of cautious though, if you use a domain account to start the SQL Server services (such as domain\sqlservice) then you will have problem starting up the reporting Services Web Service at http://domain.com/reportserver. This is because the web service in IIS 6.0 uses Network Service account in the application pool, so all you need is go into IIS and change the App Pool identity (in the case will be the ReportServer app pool) to your SQL Server service account.

Below are some links which help me get started in all this.

Configure the Report Server Integration Feature in SharePoint Central Administration
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb326213.aspx

Report Server How-to Topics
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb283321.aspx