SharePoint – 2010 Syllabus

Part-1:
General Introduction
 What is IIS
 IIS Website & Web Application
 Steps to Create Multiple Website on Port 80
 What is Application Pool
 What is AppDomain
 What is ISAPI Filter / Extension
 Web Garden & Web Farm
 HTTPS and SSL
 Active Directory users and groups creation
Introduction to SharePoint
 What is SharePoint
 High Level Features
 Six Pillars of SharePoint 2010
 Version History of SharePoint
 Role of SharePoint Server in LAN.
 Components in SharePoint
 Developers Onion View of SharePoint.
SharePoint Installation and Administration
 Hardware & Software Requirements
 Supported Browser
 Types of Installation
 Software’s to be Installed
 Central Administration Site
 Managed Accounts
 Configuration To Send and Receive E-Mail
SharePoint Site Hierarchy
 SharePoint Site Hierarchy
 Web Application
 Site Collection
 Creating Site and Sub Site
 SharePoint site Home Page.
 Branding Site Look and Feel
 Working with Quota Templates
 Save Site as Template
 Create Site from Template
Lists
 Overview of Lists
 Create Custom List
 Add Custom Columns
 Site Columns and Groups
 Sort and Filter List
 Create / Manage List View
 Content Type
 List Template
 Versioning of Data
 Metadata Navigation Settings
 List Throttling
Predefined List & Libraries
• Predefined Lists
• Predefined LibrariesSharePoint – 2010 Syllabus

Part-2:
• Editing Document properties
• Version Settings
• Check out, edit, and check in files.
• Create folders and navigate between them
• Adding Documents
• Document Template
• Document Workspace
Security – User Groups and Permissions
 Authentication vs. Authorization
 Creating users and groups in Active Directory
 SharePoint Groups
 Creating Custom Permissions Groups
 Granting Permission to User/groups
 To Create a Custom Permission level
 To bind Users/Groups and Permission Level
 Managing Permissions in Sub site.
 Allow Users to create their own site
 To Set Site Confirmation and Deletion of unused sites
 Permissions for Lists / Libraries / ListItems
Claim Based Authentication
 How does Claims Based Authentication works?
 Creating SQL Server Database for authentication using Membership and Role Provider
 Creating Web Application using CBA.
 Allowing Anonymous Access in a Web Application
 Enable Form Based Authentication
 Editing web.config of Web Application, Central Admin Application and STS
 Zones in SharePoint
 Creating an Alternate Access Mapping
Enterprise Content Management
 Managed Metadata Service
 Term, Termsets& Keywords
 Enterprise Content Type
 Document sets
 Document ID Service and IDs
 Content Organizer and Automatic routing
 In Place Record Management
User Profile Service Administration
 What is Social Computing?
 Managing User Profiles
 User Profile Service Application
 Synchronization Service
 Working with Audience
 Tags and Notes
 Working with MySite
Administering and configuring Search
 Purpose of Enterprise Search solution
 Microsoft Server Side Search Products
 What’s New in SharePoint Search Server 2010
 Logical architecture for the Enterprise Search Components
 Setting up Search Service Application
 Configuring Crawler SettingsSharePoint – 2010 Syllabus

Part-3:
 Queries and Results Settings
 Search Administration at the Site Collection Level
 Creating Keywords, Definitions, Best Bets and Synonyms
 Creating Search Scopes
PowerShell
 Overview of PowerShell
 Pipelining of cmdlets
 Windows PowerShell Scripts
 Using .NET Objects
 SharePoint PowerShell Snap-In
 Creating/Managing a Web Application
 Creating/Managing Site Collection and Site
Backup and Restore
 Complete Backup of Web Application
 Complete Restore of Web Application
 Granular Backup of Site Collection
 Exporting & Importing of List
Server Object Model
 Using Microsoft.SharePoint.DLL
 Site Architecture and Object Overview
 SPWebApplication, SPSite, SPWeb, SPList and more…
 Sample Programs to understand the Object Model
CAML and LINQ
 Introduction to CAML
 Writing CAML Queries
 Implementing Join
 LINQ Introduction
 LINQ to SharePoint
Client Object Model
 Managed Object Model
 Silverlight Client Object Model
 Javascript Client Object Model
 Using SharePoint Web Services in Client Application
SharePoint Tools for Visual Studio 2010
 Visual Studio Project templates for SharePoint 2010
 Server Explorer, Feature Designer, Package Explorer
 Building and Deploying Solutions in Visual Studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010
Features
 SharePoint Root Directory
 Features Overview
 Features Scope
 Create a new feature and Deploying Features using VS2010
 Feature Events
 Manage SharePoint Solution (WSP) using PowerShell Commands
Visual Studio Templates
 Creating Content Type.
 Creating SharePoint List Definition with List Instance.
 Modify the User Interface Using Custom ActionsSharePoint – 2010 Syllabus

Part-4:
Event Receivers
 Event Handlers - Before events and After Events.
 Event receiver base classes.
 Registering Event Handlers
 Example of Before Events
 Programming After Events
Working with WebParts
 Building a Simple Web Part
 Persisting Properties
 Editing Properties in Editor WebPart
 Developing Custom Editor WebPart
 Composite Web Part
 Visual Web Part
 Web Part Communication.
Sandboxed Solutions
 What is Sandboxed Solution.
 Comparing Farm Solution with Sandbox Solutions.
 Benefits of using sandboxed solutions.
 To enable sandboxed solutions by using Central Administration.
 Create a Sandboxed Solution Project with a web part.
 Build and Deploy the Sandboxed Solution.
 Using Windows PowerShell for Administration Sandboxed Solutions.
InfoPath
 About InfoPath 2010
 Creating SharePoint list and Publishing in SharePoint site
 Creating Form and Publishing to SharePoint site
 Deploy Form Templates That Contain Form Code That Requires Full Trust
 Writing Custom Code in InfoPath Form
 Walkthrough to Delete SharePoint list items from InfoPath form
Business Connectivity Service
 Creating a BDC Project in VS.NET
 Working with Entities and Methods
 Type Descriptor
 Using Data in External List
 Granting Permissions to the BDC List.
Workflow
 What is Workflow
 SharePoint Workflows
o 3-State Workflow
o Approval Workflow
 Custom Workflow: Role of Visio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 and VS-2010
o Building Workflow with Visio 2010
o Building Workflow with SharePoint Designer 2010
o Developing Workflow with Visual Studio 2010
o Adding Association Forms in Visual Studio 2010
SharePoint Designer
 Introduction to SharePoint Designer 2010
 Creating / Opening a site in SPD 2010
 Creating / Customizing Lists and LibrariesSharePoint – 2010 Syllabus

Part-5:
 Ghosted and Unghosted Pages
 Understand Master Pages
 Branding SharePoint 2010

Introduction

"SharePoint is a browser based business collaboration tool with composites and insights and search and communities and content and publishing and a document management. It’s collaborative, it’s business intelligence, it’s colleagues, partners, intranet, extranet, internet and much more."

What Is SharePoint

SharePoint is basically a web site or a collection of web sites that enables users to share data, information and knowledge with each other. In one word, collaborate, and you'll often hear people describing it as a collaboration tool or platform.

SharePoint Versions

There are different versions of SharePoint and it can be hard to know which version your organization has deployed. The only way to really know is to ask you IT department but here is a brief description of some.

The following are early versions of SharePoint that shouldn't be deployed anymore. If your organization does, they're in need of an upgrade really bad:

Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001
Microsoft SharePoint Team Services (2002)
Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (free license) - Microsoft SharePoint 2003 (paid)

Starting with SharePoint 2003, Microsoft offers a free version and a more powerful paid version of SharePoint. So for 2007, there's Windows Services 3.0 (free) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) which is the paid version. If your organization still has some version of 2007 it's also time for an upgrade as the next version after 2010 is already around the corner.

The 2010 versions are called SharePoint Foundation 2010, free, and SharePoint Server 2010 (Standard or Enterprise) which is the paid version.

Free vs Paid

The free versions of SharePoint include the ablility to create lists for storing data, libraries for storing documents and files, and sites for storing the lists, libraries and other pages. These are just a few features but are the most important ones.

The paid version includes all of the free version's features plus things like My Profiles, enterprise search and business intelligence features. Again these are just a very few of the many features included.

The Cloud

Microsoft now offers SharePoint Online for a per-user monthly rate. The great thing about SharePoint Online is you get the power of SharePoint without the headaches of trying to manage and maintain it from an infrastructure point. You don't have to worry about backups or patches and upgrades as Microsoft and their engineers do that for you.

Administrators:

Site Administrator

A SharePoint site is the place where users perform their daily interactions. A site administrator can set permissions, create security groups, add and delete lists, libraries and sub sites. They can also configure navigation, title, icon, master page, theme, page layout availability and enable or disable site features.

Site Collection Administrator

Sites are grouped together within site collections and administered by the site collection administrator. Site Collection administrators can do everything a site administrator can do plus add, modify and delete master pages and page layouts. They can also configure search settings, variations and enable or disable site collection features.

Farm Administrator

All the servers, services and databases for a SharePoint implementation is called the farm. The settings are stored in the "config" database. A farm can be as small as one server or can contain many servers. A farm administrator configures and maintains it's servers, services, service applications, timer jobs, search settings, and can install farm solutions and infopath forms.

Developers:

Workflows

Workflows are tasks and actions that can be organized as a series of items or can be setup to respond to events based on the state of something. Serial types of workflows can be developed using SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio. You can only develop state workflows with Visual Studio.

Forms

There are many ways to develop forms to collect and store information in SharePoint. All lists and libraries come with forms that can be modified with SharePoint Designer. You can also develop forms with InfoPath and attach them to a list or include them in Form Libraries that are saved as XML documents. Forms can be created using Visual Studio through the development of custom web parts, user controls and layout pages using ASP.net technology. Lastly, using the SharePoint client object model, forms can be developed with client side scripting code or managed code through Silverlight.

Branding/Look and Feel

There are two main modes that SharePoint is implemented in organizations, as a web content management system or as a collaborative solution. In both instances the look and feel of the sites can be customized using Visual Studio and ASP.net features such as master pages, page layouts, user controls and web parts. All of these of which can contain html, client side scripts and styles. SharePoint Designer can be used to modify master pages and page layouts.

Web Parts

Web parts are components that provide some type of functionality that can be easily added or removed to a page in SharePoint. Some other systems refer to these types of components as plug-ins or widgets. Web parts can be developed as regular ASP.net web parts, the recommended approach, or as SharePoint web parts that offer a few more capabilities. Web parts can only be developed with Visual Studio and can be developed as regular web parts that don't have a visual interface, as visual web parts that offer the visual interface which makes them easier to develop, or as Silverlight application web parts.

Applications

SharePoint provides several libraries and ways to extend it or to develop full blown applications.

The SharePoint object model or the server object model (SOM) is a set of libraries of classes the lets developers do anything in SharePoint programmatically. Application using SOM must be deployed and can only run on SharePoint servers.

The SharePoint client object model (COM) comes in two versions. The ECMAScript version runs on web browsers as a scripting language based on JavaScript. The .NET managed code version is based on .NET and can be run on computers just as other .NET or Silverlight applications.

Both the SOM and the .NET managed COM are developed using Visual Studio. ECMAScript COM can be developed with anything type of client which can be as advanced as Visual Studio or as simple as Notepad.

Basic Intro SharePoint Architecture Questions

1) What are Web Applications in SharePoint?

An IIS Web site created and used by SharePoint 2010. Saying an IIS virtual server is also an acceptable answer.

2) What is an application pool?

A group of one or more URLs that are served by a particular worker process or set of worker processes.

3) Why are application pools important?

They provide a way for multiple sites to run on the same server but still have their own worker processes and identity.

4) What are zones?

Different logical paths (URLs meaning) of gaining access to the same SharePoint Web application.

5) What are Web Application Policies?

Enables security policy for users at the Web application level, rather than at the site collection or site level. Importantly, they override all other security settings.

6) What is a site collection?

A site collection contains a top-level website and can contain one or more sub-sites web sites that have the same owner and share administration settings.

7) What are content databases?

A content database can hold all the content for one or more site collections.

8) What is a site?

A site in SharePoint contains Web pages and related assets such as lists, all hosted within a site collection.

9) What are My Sites?

Specialized SharePoint sites personalized and targeted for each user.

10) What is the difference between Classic mode authentication and Claims-based authentication?

As the name implies, classic authentication supports NT authentication types like Kerberos, NTLM, Basic, Digest, and anonymous. Claims based authentication uses claims identities against a against a trusted identity provider.

11) When would you use claims, and when would you use classic?

Classic is more commonly seen in upgraded 2007 environments whereas claims are the recommended path for new deployments.

12) Describe the potential components for both a single server, and multiple servers, potentially several tiered farms:

A single-server SharePoint Server 2010 environment leverages a built-in SQL Server 2008 Express database. The problems with this environment is scalability, not being able to install the with built-in database on a domain controller, the database cannot be larger than 4 GB, and you cannot use User Profile Synchronization in a single server with built-in database installation.

An example of a multiple tier farm would be a three-tier topology, considered one of the more efficient physical and logical layouts to supports scaling out or scaling up and provides better distribution of services across the member servers of the farm. This is considered a good architecture since one can add Web servers to the Web tier, add app servers to the application tier, and add database servers to the database tier.

SharePoint Backup and Restore Questions

13) What are some of the tools that can be used when backing up a SharePoint 2010 environment?

· SharePoint farm backup and recovery

· SQL Server

· System Center Data Protection Manager

14) What Microsoft tool can be used for incremental backups?

System Center Data Protection Manager

Managed Metadata Questions

15) What is Managed Metadata?

Managed metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that you can define, and then use as attributes for items.

16) What are Terms and Term Sets?

A term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with an item. A term set is a collection of related terms.

17) How do Terms And Term Sets relate to Managed Metadata?

Managed metadata is a way of referring to the fact that terms and term sets can be created and managed independently from the columns themselves.

18) Are there different types of Term Sets?

There are Local Term Sets and Global Term Sets, one created within the context of a site collection and the other created outside the context of a site collection, respectively.

19) How are terms created and used?

There are several ways; however the most common is to use the Term Store Management Tool.

20) How is Managed Metadata, and the related Term technology used?

Through the UI, the most common use is through the managed metadata list column which allows you to specify the term set to use. It also related to searching and enhancing the user search experience.

Sandbox Solutions Questions

21) What is a sandboxed solution?

Components that are deployed to run within the sandboxed process rather than running in the production Internet Information Services (IIS) worker process.

22) What are some examples of things that might run within the SharePoint sandbox?

Any of the following are acceptable answers:

Web Parts
Event receivers
Feature receivers
Custom Microsoft SharePoint Designer workflow activities
Microsoft InfoPath business logic

others….

23) Why are sandboxed solutions used?

Primarily because they promote high layers of isolation. By default they run within a rights-restricted, isolated process based around Code Access Security (CAS). Isolation is possible to increase with activities like running the sandboxing service on only specific SharePoint 2010 servers.

SharePoint Search Questions

24) What is a content source in relation to SharePoint search? What’s the minimum amount of content sources?

A content source is a set of options that you can use to specify what type of content is crawled, what URLs to crawl, and how deep and when to crawl. You must create at least one content source before a crawl can occur.

25) What is a search scope?

A search scope defines a subset of information in the search index. Users can select a search scope when performing a search.

26) What is a federated location with SharePoint search?

Federated locations provide information that exists outside of your internal network to your end-users.

27) How does managed metadata affect search?

Enhances the end-user search experience by mapping crawled properties to managed properties. Managed properties show up in search results and help users perform more successful queries.

28) What is query logging in SharePoint 2010?

Collects information about user search queries and search results that users select on their computers to improve the relevancy of search results and to improve query suggestions.

29) What authentication type does the SharePoint crawler use?

The crawl component requires access to content using NTLM authentication.

Services Architecture Questions

30) Please describe what a Service Application is in SharePoint 2010.

Service applications in SharePoint 2010 are a set of services that can possibly be shared across Web applications. Some of these services may or may not be shared across the SharePoint 2010 farm. The reason these applications are shared is the overall reduction of resources required to supply the functionality these services cultivate.

31) Please provide an example of one of these service applications.

Any of the below are acceptable answers:

Access Services
Business Data Connectivity service
Excel Services Application
Managed Metadata service
PerformancePoint Service Application
Search service
Secure Store Service
State service
Usage and Health Data Collection service
User Profile service
Visio Graphics Service
Web Analytics service
Word Automation Services
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service

32) What are Service Application Groups used for?

Just provides a logical grouping of services that are scoped to a particular Web Application.

33) How are Service Applications deployed in terms of IIS (Internet Information Services)?

They are provisioned as a single Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site.

34) Explain how connections are managed with Service Applications.

A virtual entity is used that is referred to as a proxy, due to label in PowerShell.

35) What are some common examples of SharePoint 2010 services architectures, and what are the advantages of each design?

The three most popular designs are single farms with either a single service application group or multiple service application groups, or Enterprise services farms.

Single farms with a single service application group are generally the most common, and have the advantages of easy deployment, simple service application allocation, effective resource utilization and cohesive management.

Single farms with multiple service application groups is less common, and have the advantage of potential individual management of service applications as well as allowing data isolation, and while being more complex to deploy and maintain allows targeting of sites to particular service applications.

Enterprise Service Farms is pretty uncommon as it is a complete farm dedicated to Service Applications but promotes autonomous management and high levels of data isolation.

36) Are there any other type of relevant service architectures?

Depending on the environment requirements, a specialized farm can also be used in order to deploy specific services tailored to the organizational requirements which can aid in scaling out and conservation of resources.

37) What is the User Profile service?

Allows configuring and managing User profile properties, Audiences, Profile synchronization settings, organization browsing and management settings, and My Site settings.

38) What are User Profiles?

Aggregates properties from diverse identity content sources together to create unified and consistent profiles across an organization, used throughout the SharePoint environment.

39) What is Excel Services?

Allows sharing, securing, managing, and using Excel 2010 workbooks in a SharePoint Server Web site or document library. Excel Services consists of the Excel Calculation Services (ECS), Microsoft Excel Web Access (EWA), and Excel Web Services (EWS) components.

40) What is PerformancePoint Services?

Allows users to monitor and analyze a business by building dashboards, scorecards, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

41) What is Visio Services?

Allows users to share and view Microsoft Visio Web drawings. The service also enables data-connected Microsoft Visio 2010 Web drawings to be refreshed and updated from various data sources.

42) What is Access Services?

Allows users to edit, update, and create linked Microsoft Access 2010 databases that can be viewed and manipulated by using an internet browser, the Access client, or a linked HTML page.

43) What is the Secure Store Service (SSS)?

A secure database for storing credentials that are associated with application IDs

44) What is Content Deployment?

Content deployment enables you to copy content from a source site collection to a destination site collection.

Backup / DR Questions

45) Describe how redundancy can be built into a SharePoint environment. Please be specific in regards to any auxiliary components.

Multiple front-end web servers (WFE’s) can be deployed and correlated through Windows NLB or anything approach. Application servers can be deployed into the farm for a variety of purposes, depending on organizational requirements. Databases can be clustered or mirrored, again depending on requirements and environment.

46) From a basic standpoint, what is the difference between SQL clustering and mirroring?

Clustering provides a failover scenario whereby one or more nodes can be swapped as active depending on whether a node goes down. In mirroring, transactions are sent directly from a principal database and server to a mirror database to establish essentially a replica of the database.

Governance Questions

47) What Is Governance in terms of SharePoint 2010?

Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that guide, direct, and control how an organization’s business divisions and IT teams cooperate to achieve business goals.

48) What are some useful, OOB features of SharePoint that aid with governance of an environment?

Any of the below are acceptable answers. There are some others but these are the major ones that I generally look for from a candidate:

Site templates – consistent branding, site structure, and layout can be enforce a set of customizations that are applied to a site definition.

Quotas – limits to the amount of storage a site collection can use.

Locks - prevent users from either adding content to a site collection or using the site collection.

Web application permissions and policies – comprehensive security settings that apply to all users and groups for all site collections within a Web application.

Self-service site creation - enables users to create their own site collections, thus must be incorporated into a governance scheme.

Monitoring Questions

49) Describe the monitoring features that are baked into SharePoint 2010.

Diagnostic logging captures data about the state of the system, whereas health and usage data collection uses specific timer jobs to perform monitoring tasks, collecting information about:

· Performance Counter Fata

· Event Log Data

· Timer Service Data

· Metrics For Site Collections and Sites

· Search Usage Data

General Workflow Questions

50) What is a declarative workflow? Can non-authenticated users participate in workflows?

Workflows created by using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, the default setting enable deployment of declarative workflows. Yes, however you do not give non-authorized users access to the site. The e-mail message and attachments sent from notifications might contain sensitive information

1) What are the two base classes a WebPart you are going to use within SharePoint 2007 can inherit from?

There are two base classes that a WebPart which is going to be consumed by SharePoint can inherit from, either the SharePoint WebPart Base class or the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class. When inheriting from the SharePoint WebPart Base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart. When inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart. It is considered good practice to use the ASP.NET WebPart base class since the old base class is meant for backwards compatibility with previous version of SharePoint, however there are four exception when it is better to leverage functionality from the SharePoint WebPart base class:

Cross page connections

Connections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zone

Client-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)

Data caching infrastructure

2) What are the differences between the two base classes and what are the inherit benefits of using one over another?

The difference is the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart base class is meant for backward compatibility with previous versions of SharePoint. The benefit of using the SharePoint WebPart base class is it supported:

Cross page connections

Connections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zone

Client-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)

Data caching infrastructure

ASP.NET 2.0 WebParts are generally considered better to use because SharePoint is built upon the ASP.NET 2.0 web architecture. Inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 base class offers you features that inherit to ASP.NET 2.0, such as embedding resources as opposed to use ClassResources for deployment of said types.

3) What is the GAC?

The GAC stands for the global assembly cache. It is the machine wide code cache which will give custom binaries place into the full trust code group for SharePoint. Certain SharePoint assets, such as Feature Receivers need full trust to run correctly, and therefore are put into the GAC. You should always try to avoid deployment to the GAC as much as possible since it will possibly allow development code to do more than it was intended to do.

4) What is strong naming (signing) a WebPart assembly file mean?

Signing an assembly with a strong name (a.k.a strong naming) uses a cryptographic key pair that gives a unique identity to a component that is being built. This identity can then be referred throughout the rest of the environment. In order to install assemblies into the GAC, they must be strongly named. After signing, the binary will have a public key token identifier which can be use to register the component in various other places on the server.

5) What are safe controls, and what type of information, is placed in that element in a SharePoint web.config file?

When you deploy a WebPart to SharePoint, you must first make it as a safe control to use within SharePoint in the web.config file. Entries made in the safe controls element of SharePoint are encountered by the SharePointHandler object and will be loaded in the SharePoint environment properly, those not will not be loaded and will throw an error.

In the generic safe control entry (this is general, there could be more), there is generally the Assembly name, the namespace, the public key token numeric, the typename, and the safe declaration (whether it is safe or not). There are other optional elements.

6) What is the CreateChildControls() method? How can you use it to do something simple like displaying a Label control?

The CreateChildControls method in WebParts is used to notify the WebPart that there are children controls that should be output for rendering. Basically, it will add any child ASP.NET controls that are called instantiating each control with its relevant properties set, wire any relevant event handlers to the control, etc. Then the add method of the control class will add the control to the controls collection. In the relevant WebPart render method, the EnsureChildControls method can be called (or set to false if no child controls should be called) to ensure that the CreateChildControls method is run. When using CreateChildControls it implies that your WebPart contains a composition of child controls.

In order to create something like a label control in Create, you would create a new label control using the new keyword, set the various properties of the control like Visible=True and ForeColor = Color.Red, and then use Controls.Add(myLabelControl) to add the control to the controls collection. Then you can declare EnsureChildControls in the Render method of the WebPart.

7) What does the RenderContents method do in an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?

The render contents method will render the WebPart content to the writer, usually an HtmlTextWriter since WebParts will output to an HTML stream. RenderContents is used to tell how the controls that are going to be displayed in the WebPart should be rendered on the page.

*** Side Question: I got asked what the difference between CreateChildControls and the RenderContents method. The CreateChildControls method is used to add controls to the WebPart, and the RenderContents method is used to tell the page framework how to render the control into HTML to display on a page.

8) What is the WebPartManager sealed class? What is its purpose?

The WebPartManager sealed class is responsible for managing everything occurring on a WebPart page, such as the WebParts (controls), events, and misc. functionality that will occur in WebPartZones. For example, the WebPartManager is responsible for the functionality that is provided when you are working with moving a WebPart from WebPartZone to WebPartZone. It is known as the the central class of the Web Part Control Set.

*** Side Question: I got asked how many WebPartManager controls should be on a page. In order to have WebParts on a page there has to be just one WebPartManager control to manage all the WebParts on the page.

9) What is a SPSite and SPWeb object, and what is the difference between each of the objects?

The SPSite object represents a collection of sites (site collection [a top level sites and all its subsites]). The SPWeb object represents an instance SharePoint Web, and SPWeb object contains things like the actual content. A SPSite object contains the various subsites and the information regarding them.

10) How would you go about getting a reference to a site?

< view plain text >

1. oSPSite = new SPSite("http:/server");

3. oSPWeb = oSPSite.OpenWeb();

11) What does a SPWebApplication object represent?

The SPWebApplication objects represents a SharePoint Web Application, which essentially is an IIS virtual server. Using the class you can instigate high level operations, such as getting all the features of an entire Web Application instance, or doing high level creation operations like creating new Web Applications through code.

12) Would you use SPWebApplication to get information like the SMTP address of the SharePoint site?

Yes, since this is a Web Application level setting. You would iterate through each SPWebApplication in the SPWebApplication collection, and then use the appropriate property calls (OutboundMailServiceInstance) in order to return settings regarding the mail service such as the SMTP address.

Side Question: I got asked if there are other ways to send emails from SharePoint. The answer is yes, there is. You can use the SendMail method from the SPutility class to send simple emails, however it is not as robust as using the System.Net.Mail functionality since it doesn’t allow things like setting priorities on the email.

13) How do you connect (reference) to a SharePoint list, and how do you insert a new List Item?

< view plain text >

1. using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("yourserver"))

2. {

3. using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())

4. {

5. SPList interviewList = myWeb.Lists["listtoinsert"];

6. SPListItem newItem = interviewList.Items.Add();

8. newItem["interview"] = "interview";

9. newItem.Update();

10. }

11. }

14) How would you loop using SPList through all SharePont List items, assuming you know the name (in a string value) of the list you want to iterate through, and already have all the site code written?

< view plain text >

1. SPList interviewList = myWeb.Lists["listtoiterate"];

2. foreach (SPListItem interview in interviewList)

3. {

4. // Do Something

5. }

15) How do you return SharePoint List items using SharePoint web services?

In order to retrieve list items from a SharePoint list through Web Services, you should use the lists.asmx web service by establishing a web reference in Visual Studio. The lists.asmx exposes the GetListItems method, which will allow the return of the full content of the list in an XML node. It will take parameters like the GUID of the name of the list you are querying against, the GUID of the view you are going to query, etc.

Side Question: I got asked how I built queries with the lists.asmx web service. In order to build queries with this service, one of the parameters that the GetListItems method exposes is the option to build a CAML query. There are other ways to do this as well, but that was how I answered it.

16) When retrieving List items using SharePoint Web Services, how do you specify explicit credentials to be passed to access the list items?

In order to specify explicit credentials with a Web Service, you generally instantiate the web service, and then using the credentials properties of the Web Service object you use the System.Net.NetworkCredential class to specify the username, password, and domain that you wish to pass when making the web service call and operations.

*** Side Question: I got asked when you should state the credentials in code. You must state the credentials you are going to pass to the web service before you call any of the methods of the web service, otherwise the call will fail.

17) What is CAML, and why would you use it?

CAML stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language. CAML is an XML based language which provides data constructs that build up the SharePoint fields, view, and is used for table definition during site provisioning. CAML is responsible for rending data and the resulting HTML that is output to the user in SharePoint. CAML can be used for a variety of circumstances, overall is used to query, build and customize SharePoint based sites. A general use would be building a CAML query in a SharePoint WebPart in order to retrieve values from a SharePoint list.
18) What is impersonation, and when would you use impersonation?

Impersonation can basically provide the functionality of executing something in the context of a different identity, for example assigning an account to users with anonymous access. You would use impersonation in order to access resources on behalf of the user with a different account, that normally, that wouldn’t be able to access or execute something.

19) What is the IDesignTimeHtmlProvider interface, and when can you use it in WebParts?

The IDesignTimeHtmlProvider interface uses the function GetDesignTimeHtml() which can contain your relevant render methods. It was helpful to use in 2003 since it allowed your WebPart to have a preview while a page was edited in FrontPage with the Webpart on it, because the GetDesignTimeHtml() method contains the HTML for the designer to render.

20) What are WebPart properties, and what are some of the attributes you see when declaring WebPart properties in code?

WebPart properties are just like ASP.NET control properties, they are used to interact with and specify attributes that should be applied to a WebPart by a user. Some of the attributes you see with ASP.NET 2.0 properties are WebDescription, WebDisplayName, Category, Personalizable, and WebBrowsable. Although most of these properties come from the System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts class, ones like Category come out of System.ComponentModel namespace.

21) Why are properties important in WebPart development, and how have you exploited them in past development projects? What must each custom property have?

Properties are important because WebParts allow levels of personalization for each user. WebPart properties make it possible for a user to interact, adjust, and increase overall experience value with the programmatic assets that you develop without having the need to use an external editor or right any code. A very simple example of exploiting a property would be something like allowing the user to change the text on the WebPart design interface so that they can display whatever string of text they desire.

Each custom property that you have must have the appropriate get and set accessor methods.

22) What are ClassResources? How do you reference and deploy resources with an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?

ClassResources are used when inheriting from the SharePoint.WebPart.WebPartPages.WebPart base class, and are defined in the SharePoint solution file as things that should be stored in the wpresources directory on the server. It is a helpful directory to use in order to deploy custom images. In ASP.NET 2.0, typically things such as images are referenced by embedding them as resources within an assembly. The good part about ClassResources is they can help to eliminate recompiles to change small interface adjustments or alterations to external JavaScript files.

23) What is a SharePoint Solution File? How does it differ from WebPart .cab files in legacy development? What does it contain?

A SharePoint solution file is essentially a .cabinet file with all a developers ustom componets suffixed with a .wsp extension that aids in deployment. The big difference with SharePoint solution files is is that a solution:

allows deployment to all WFE’s in a farm

is highly manageable from the interface allowing deployment, retraction, and versioning

Can package all types of assets like site definitions, feature definitions (and associated components), Webparts, etc.

Can provide Code Access Security provisioning to avoid GAC deployments

Just to name a few thingsâ€¦

24) What is a .ddf file and what does it have to do with SharePoint Solution creation?

A .ddf file is a data directive file and is used when building the SharePoint solution bundle specifying the source files and their destination locations. The important thing for someone to understand is that the .ddf file will be passed as a parameter to the MAKECAB utility to orchestrate construction of the SharePoint solution fiel.

25) What file does a SharePoint solution package use to orchestrate (describe) its packaged contents?

The solution Manifest.XML file.

26) What deployment mechanism can you use to instigate Code Access Security attributes for your WebParts?

SharePoint solution files can add in order to handle code access security deployment issues. This is done in the element in the SharePoint solution manifest.XML, which makes it easier to get assemblies the appropriate permissions in order to operate in the bin directory of the web application.

27) What is a SharePoint Feature? What files are used to define a feature?

A SharePoint Feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances, such as at the farm, site collection, web, etc. Features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature is installing, uninstalling, activated, or deactivated. They are helpful because they allow ease of upgrades and versioning.

The two files that are used to define a feature are the feature.xml and manifest file. The feature XML file defines the actual feature and will make SharePoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.

Side Question: I got asked how the introduction of features has changed the concept of site definitions. SharePoint features are important when understanding the architecture of site definitions, since the ONET.XML file has been vastly truncated since it has several feature stapled on it.

28) What types of SharePoint assets can be deployed with a SharePoint feature?

Features can do a lot. For example, you could deploy

Simple site customizations

Custom site navigation

WebParts

pages

list types

list instances

event handlers

workflows

custom actions

just to name a fewâ€¦.

29) What are event receivers?

Event receivers are classes that inherit from the SpItemEventReciever or SPListEventReciever base class (both of which derive out of the abstract base class SPEventRecieverBase), and provide the option of responding to events as they occur within SharePoint, such as adding an item or deleting an item.

30) When would you use an event receiver?

Since event receivers respond to events, you could use a receiver for something as simple as canceling an action, such as deleting a document library by using the Cancel property. This would essentially prevent users from deleting any documents if you wanted to maintain retention of stored data.

31) What base class do event receivers inherit from?

Event receivers either inherit from the SPListEventReciever base class or the SPItemEventReciever base class, both which derive from the abstract base class SPEventReceiverBase.

32) If I wanted to not allow people to delete documents from a document library, how would I go about it?

You would on the ItemDeleting event set: properties.Cancel= true.

33) What is the difference between an asynchronous and synchronous event receivers?

An asynchronous event occurs after an action has taken place, and a synchronous event occurs before an action has take place. For example, an asynchronous event is ItemAdded, and its sister synchronous event is ItemAdding.

34) How could you append a string to the title of a site when it is provisioned?

In the OnActivated event:

< view plain text >

1. SPWeb site = siteCollection.RootWeb;

2. site.Title += "interview";

3. site.Update();

35) Can an event receiver be deployed through a SharePoint feature?

Yes.

36) What is a content type?

A content type is an information blueprint basically that can be re-used throughout a SharePoint environment for defining things like metadata and associated behaviors. It is basically an extension of a SharePoint list, however makes it portable for use throughout an instance regardless of where the instantiation occurs, ergo has location independence. Multiple content types can exist in one document library assuming that the appropriate document library settings are enabled. The content type will contain things like the metadata, listform pages, workflows, templates (if a document content type), and associated custom written functionality.

37) Can a content type have receivers associated with it?

Yes, a content type can have an event receiver associated with it, either inheriting from the SPListEventReciever base class for list level events, or inheriting from the SPItemEventReciever base class. Whenever the content type is instantiated, it will be subject to the event receivers that are associated with it.

38) What two files are typically (this is kept generally) included when developing a content type, and what is the purpose of each?

There is generally the main content type file that holds things like the content type ID, name, group, description, and version. There is also the ContentType.Fields file which contains the fields to include in the content type that has the ID, Type, Name, DisplayName, StaticName, Hidden, Required, and Sealed elements. They are related by the FieldRefs element in the main content type file.

39) What is an ancestral type and what does it have to do with content types?

An ancestral type is the base type that the content type is deriving from, such as Document (0×0101). The ancestral type will define the metadata fields that are included with the custom content type.

40) Can a list definition be derived from a custom content type?

Yes, a list definition can derive from a content type which can be seen in the schema.XML of the list definition in the element.

41) When creating a list definition, how can you create an instance of the list?

You can create a new instance of a list by creating an instance.XML file.

42) What is a Field Control?

Field controls are simple ASP.NET 2.0 server controls that provide the basic field functionality of SharePoint. They provide basic general functionality such as displaying or editing list data as it appears on SharePoint list pages.

43) What base class do custom Field Controls inherit from?

This varies. Generally, custom field controls inherit from the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseFieldControl namespace, but you can inherit from the default field controls.

44) What is a SharePoint site definition? What is ghosted (uncustomized) and unghosted (customized)?

SharePoint site definitions are the core set of functionality from which SharePoint site are built from, building from the SiteTemplates directory in the SharePoint 12 hive. Site definitions allow several sites to inherit from a core set of files on the file system, although appear to have unique pages, thereby increasing performance and allowing changes that happen to a site propagate to all sites that inherit from a site definition. Ghosted means that when SharePoint creates a new site it will reference the files in the related site definition upon site provisioning. Unghosted means that the site has been edited with an external editor, and therefore the customizations are instead stored in the database, breaking the inheritance of those files from the file system.

45) How does one deploy new SharePoint site definitions so that they are made aware to the SharePoint system?

The best way to deploy site definitions in the SharePoint 2007 framework is to use a SharePoint solution file, so that the new site definition is automatically populated to all WFE’s in the SharePoint farm.

3) What is the use of safe controls entry in web.config?

4) Explain the Webpart life cycle.

Webpart life cycle also same as asp.net life cycle. Here you can find some additional events like CreateChildControls, RenderContents etc.

§ OnInit

§ OnLoad

§ CreateChildControls

§ OnPreRender

§ Render (RenderContents, etc)

5) What is the CreateChildControls() method?

6) What does the RenderContents method do in an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?

7) What is the WebPartManager sealed class? What is its purpose?

8) What is a SPSite and SPWeb object, and what is the difference between each of the objects?

9) When should you dispose SPWeb and SPSite objects? And even more important, when not?

You should always dispose them if you created them yourself, but not otherwise. You should never dispose SPContext.Current.Web/Site and you should normally not dispose SPWeb if IsRootWeb is true.

10) What is RunWithElevatedPrivileges? when you can use it?

RunWithElevatedPrivileges impersonates the identity of the current thread. In effect, this means that the code will run with higher level permission instead of using login user permission.

11) When running with SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges (web context) what credentials are being used? What is the performance impact of RunWithElevatedPrivileges?

The App Pool Identity for the web application running SharePoint. Performance impact with RunWithElevatedPrivileges creates a new thread with the App Pool’s credentials, blocking your current thread until it finishes.

12) When modifying a list item, what is the “main” difference between using SPListItem.Update() and SPListItem.SystemUpdate()?

Using SystemUpdate() will not create a new version and will also retain timestamps. Using SystemUpdate alerts is not sent, and modified by is not changed to system account.

13) What is CAML, and why would you use it?

14) What is a SharePoint Feature? What files are used to define a feature?

A SharePoint Feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances, such as at the farm, site collection, web, etc.

15) What are event receivers?

16) If you have an ItemUpdated or ItemUpdating event receiver and it causes an update to the item, how do you prevent another ItemUpdated and ItemUpdating event from being fired during your update?

Before performing your update, call DisableEventFiring(). After update, call EnableEventFiring().

17) How would you programmatically retrieve a list item?

You can use SPQuery to filter the list and SPSiteDataQuery used to join multiple list. Learn more on CrossListQueryCache, PortalSiteMapProvider.

Q. Can we use our custom master page with the application pages in SharePoint 2010 ?

Ans. With 2010, you can now set whether the pages under _Layouts use the same Master Page as the rest of your site. You can enable or disable this functionality through the web application settings in Central Administration. This however, is not applicable to your custom application pages. If you want your custom applictaion page to inherit the site master page you must derive it from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.LayoutsPageBase class.

Q. What does CMDUI.XML contain?

Ans. The definitions for the out-of-the-box ribbon elements are split across several files in the SharePoint root, with TEMPLATE\GLOBAL\XML\CMDUI.XML being the main one.

Q. Why would you use LINQ over CAML for data retrieval?

Ans. Unlike CAML, with LINQ to SharePoint provider, you are working with strongly typed list item objects. For example, an item in the Announcements list is an object of type Announcement and an item on a Tasks list is an object of type Task. You can then enumerate the objects and get the properties for your use. Also, you can use LINQ syntax and the LINQ keywords built into C# and VB for LINQ queries.

Q. How do you write to SharePoint ULS logs in 2010 ?

Ans. In SharePoint Foundation, ULS exposes configurable settings in two ways, through the – Object model and Windows PowerShell cmdlets. For writing to SharePoint ULS logs developers can can use Diagnostics Service, which will make the customized categories viewable in the administrative UI for our errors.
or they can use the number of cmdlets available for accessing ULS logs using powershell. Some of the cmdlets are Get-SPDiagnosticConfig ,Get-SPLogEvent etc.

Q. How does Client object model works ?

Ans. When we use SharePoint client API’s to perform a specific task, the SharePoint Foundation 2010 managed client object model bundles up these uses of the API into XML and sends it to the server that runs SharePoint Foundation. The server receives this request, and makes appropriate calls into the object model on the server, collects the responses, forms them into JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and sends that JSON back to the SharePoint Foundation 2010 managed client object model. The client object model parses the JSON and presents the results to the application as .NET Framework objects (or ECMAScript objects for ECMAScript).

Q. What is difference between Load() and LoadQuery() methods ?

Ans. Load method populates the client object directly with what it gets data from the server i.e. a collection object like ListItemCollection etc. but LoadQuery returns the data as a completely new collection in IEnumerable format. Other major difference is that the Collections that you load using the Load() method are eligible for garbage collection only when the client context variable itself goes out of scope where as, in these collections go out of scope at the end of IEnumerable list.

Q. How do you access ECMAScript object model API’s ?

Ans. The ECMAScript library is available in a number of JS files in the LAYOUTS folder. The main file among number of .js files is SP.js. When you include this file in the APSX page using a ScriptLink control, all other required JS files are loaded automatically. By linking SP.js to your page, the SP namespace gets registered. SP is the SharePoint namespace that contains all objects. For debugging purposes every js file also has a ‘debug’ equivalent in the same folder.

Q. What is the purpose of calling clientContext.ExecuteQuery() ?

Ans. ExecuteQuery gives you the option to minimize the number of roundtrips to the server from your client code. All the components loaded into the clientcontext are executed in one go.

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