Taxonomies and Ontologies

The terms “Taxonomy” and “Ontology” are often used inter-changeably and are often confused. However, the terms to express different concepts.

• Taxonomy is about classification, and so represents “Is-A” relationships. For example, in the zoological world, a domestic cat (“Felis catus”) is a member of the family “Felidae” which itself is a member of the order “Carnivora”. Such taxonomies are typically, but not always, hierarchical. An object can exist simultaneously in many different taxonomies. So, a cat also belongs to the group “predators”, which would also include the insect “praying mantis”.
• Ontology is about the concepts and relationships that can exist for an object or a group of objects[1]. For example, the “Part-Of” (“Part Holonym” [2]) relationship is used to describe the parts of a car (a wheel is part of a car). Therefore, a taxonomy is a type of ontology by this definition.

SharePoint 2007 introduced the managed metadata service to allow the definition of taxonomies to be used for classifying items and documents through metadata columns. Companies are encouraged to define their own or use industry standard taxonomies for classifying documents across the organization to ensure standardization and improve searchability.

Less work has been done in integrating ontologies within SharePoint, although progress by a number of third-party software vendors is being made. “WordNet” [3] provides a rich source of generic ontological information using the English language, and codifies many types of relationships between nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs using “cognitive synonyms” (synsets). Vertical market ontologies are now being built, such as for financial governance by the “GRC3 – Governance, Risk and Compliance Competence Centre” at the University of Cork, Ireland (http://www.ucc.ie). Integration of such ontologies in SharePoint will be the next step in improving search, leading to the possibility of useful question-answering systems.

[1] What is an Ontology? http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-an-ontology.html

[2] Speech and Language Processing, Jurafsky & Martin, 2nd Pearson International Edition p.653

[3] Princeton University “About WordNet.” WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.  http://wordnet.princeton.edu 

Exception in MergeAspSiteMapFiles for “SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard” (PSConfig)

Recently, I’ve found that a SharePoint farm failed to update when running the “SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard” or when running PSConfig directly. The PSConfig log file in the 14 hive contained the following exception information:

07/12/2012 16:18:22  9  ERR                  Failed to install the application content files.
An exception of type System.Xml.XmlException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Name cannot begin with the '\' character, hexadecimal value 0x5C. Line 5, position 2.
System.Xml.XmlException: Name cannot begin with the '\' character, hexadecimal value 0x5C. Line 5, position 2.
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseQName(Boolean isQName, Int32 startOffset, Int32& colonPos)
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseElement()
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseElementContent()
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadNode(Boolean skipOverWhitespace)
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadDocSequence(XmlDocument parentDoc)
   at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
   at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(String filename)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAspSiteMapFile.MergeAspSiteMapFiles(XmlDocument xmldocSiteMap, String strSrcFilePath, String strMergeFilePattern)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAspSiteMapFile.Copy(String strSrcDir, String strSrcLeaf, String strDestDir, Boolean bMergeMaps, Boolean bBackupExistingFile)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAdministrationWebApplication.CopyAdminAppDomainDirectories(DirectoryInfo virtualDirectoryPath, OverwriteSetting overwrite)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService.ApplyApplicationContentToLocalServer()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ApplicationContentTask.Run()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()
07/12/2012 16:18:22  9  INF                  Entering function TaskDriver.NotifyTaskSummary

I suspected that this was caused by a application I had deployed to the SharePoint farm. However, it was not obvious what in the application was causing the problem.

The key to finding the problem was the call to ApplyApplicationContentToLocalServer in the stack trace. Reading up on the documentation for this method indicated that this is responsible for merging all the site map in the 14 hive and placing them in the _app_bin folder for each web application in the appropriate inetpub folders. These sitemap files are XML documents with “.sitemap.” somewhere in the name.

This post is useful in understanding this process: http://sharepointinterface.com/tag/features/

Using this information I managed to find the sitemap file that was causing the problem – the XML document was invalid since in contained a “\” rather than “/”. And yes, it was installed by the application I had deployed.

Now, what I find interesting is that an issue in a site map deployed by an application can cause the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard to fail, and therefore stop any updates from being applied. Not only interesting, but worrying too.

Forms Solutions for SharePoint 2010

We have probably all experienced using Microsoft InfoPath 2010 for generating forms, both using the client application and the forms server. Here are some other forms solutions you might take a look at:

• Nintex Forms (http://www.nintex.com/en-US/Products/Pages/NintexForms2010.aspx)
• PowerForms for SharePoint (http://www.bpc-components.com/pages/sharepoint/power-forms)
• SharePoint Form Generator (http://sfg.codeplex.com/)
• SharePoint Form Web Part (http://www.sharepointformwebpart.com/)
• PDF SharePoint (http://www.pdfsharepoint.com/)
• Advanced Forms (http://www.kaldeera.com/en-US/products/AdvancedForms/Pages/Features.aspx)

I haven’t evaluated or compared these products, but hopefully this will provide you with a starting point if you’re looking for that type of thing. Let me know if there are others to add.

SharePoint 2010 – Provisioning User Profile Synchronization

Configuring AD synchronization with SharePoint 2010 can be problematic. Here’s a great post on how to configure the services, including ForeFront Identity Manager:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/russmax/archive/2010/03/20/sharepoint-2010-provisioning-user-profile-synchronization.aspx

SharePoint 2010 Foundation, Server Service Pack 1 for Download

Here’s information on SP1 for SharePoint 2010 Foundation http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2460058. Download from here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26640

And for SP1 for SharePoint Server (Enterprise and Standard) information http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2460045. Download from: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26623

 

SharePoint Diagnostic Studio

Talking of tools (see Favorite SharePoint Development Tools), the SharePoint Diagnostic Studio from Microsoft provides SharePoint performance monitoring functionality. This tool is particularly useful for consolidating the ULS records across servers in a SharePoint server farm. It’s part of the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit v2.0.

While useful, the user interface is not particularly polished or easy to use. In particular, the SharePoint Diagnostic Studio must be run with the language set to “US-English”, otherwise date formats will be presented incorrectly and date/time filtering will not work.

Overall Description: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=971

Download from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=718447d8-0814-427a-81c3-c9c3d84c456e&displaylang=en

Documentation: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh144782.aspx

Favorite SharePoint Development Tools?

Here’s a four free development tools you shouldn’t start a SharePoint development project without:

• CAML Builder from U2U (http://www.u2u.be/Res/Tools/CamlQueryBuilder.aspx): Build and test your CAML queries and paste into your code.
• CKS (Community Kit for SharePoint, Tools Edition) (http://cksdev.codeplex.com/ ): Makes the SharePoint development cycle tolerable (almost). Version 2 was released May 2011.
• ULS Viewer (http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer ) In my opinion, the best.
• SharePoint Manager (http://spm.codeplex.com/). Invaluable for browsing a SharePoint farm, viewing and changing parameters and option.

For uploading single or groups of files from the desktop or mail messages from Outlook I use, of course, our “SPDrag&Drop” tool. Take a trial by downloading from here: http://www.nickgrattan.net/SPDragDrop/ProductInfo.aspx

Opening Web Parts Gallery Programmatically

Navigating to the Web Part Gallery in the browser interface takes you to http://site collection URL/_layouts/_catalogs/wp/Forms/AllItems.aspx. Attempting to open the list through “_catalogs/wp” will fail:

SPList spWPG = spWeb.Lists["_catalogs/wp"];  // does not work

 Instead, you need to use the following code:

SPList spWPG = spWeb.Lists["Web Part Gallery"];

Reference: http://meiyinglim.blogspot.com/2007/10/programatically-organizing-web-parts-in.html

SharePoint Global Resource (resx) file locations

Global resource (resx) files are stored in the following locations in SharePoint 2010:

• App_GlobalResources folder in the VirtualDirectories folder in inetpub (e.g. C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80)
• Resources folder in the 14 hive (e.g. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Resources)
• Config/Resources folder in the 14 hive (e.g. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\Resources)

In general, a single resx file in your solution should be copied into each of these locations during installation.  This is how they are used:

• Resources files in App_GlobalResources are used when code in an ASPX page refers to a resource, e.g.

<asp:Label ID="lblNumberingTitle" runat="server" Text="<%$Resources:GlobalSiteResources, AutoNameTitle %>" />

• Resources files in the Resources folder are used when referencing resources using the SharePoint object model, e.g.

btnExport.Text = SPUtility.GetLocalizedString("$Resources:GlobalSiteResources, Tab_Export", "GloablSiteResources", language);

• Resources files in the Config/Resources are copied into the App_GlobalResources folder whenever a new web application is created. By adding the resx files here you will ensure your application will be able to access its global resource files in new web applications.

Chart Web Part: Hiding “Data & Appearance” and “Advanced Properties”

The “Chart Web Part” shipped with SharePoint 2010 does a reasonable job of displaying graphs. However, when added to a web part page, it displays “Data & Appearance” and “Advanced Properties” links which can be annoying:

The links cannot be hidden through the web part configuration user interface. Instead you need to:

1. Open the ASPX page in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
2. Locate the Chart Web Part in Code View.
3. Edit the ShowToolbar property from “True” to “False”.
4. Save changes.

Now these links will be hidden. You can use the standard drop down web part menu to access them if you need to without re-enabling them: