Random thoughts on software engineering, tabletop gaming, IoT, politics, blockchain, and other topics.
There are many different approachs to using jQuery with SharePoint. Here is a summary of several different methods I have used, including how to get it to play nicely with NuGet.
There are three main decisions to make:
Continue reading Ways to load jQuery in SharePoint (2010/2013)(8 min read)
Web Service for Remote Portlets (WSRP) is a standard for aggregating content within a host system, allowing the content to come from an external system, yet styling to be provided by the host.
SharePoint has 'support' for WSRP since SharePoint 2007, via the WSRP Viewer web part (Enterprise), however while it may technically meet the standard it is all but useless for anything except the most basic of requirements (as at the current version, SharePoint 2013).
Continue reading WSRP ‘support’ in SharePoint 2013(4 min read)
So, usually I blog about technology, but it's about time I added a bit of social commentary.
A cool feature of the recent Australian Federal Election was the ABC Vote Compass. Here it is, showing where the major political parties are placed:
This concept, of plotting both the economic and social position of politics, has been around for a while, e.g. the Political Compass or Political Quiz (note: both of these have the Y-axis the other way around, so you have to swap top-bottom to compare to the ABC Vote Compass).
It also shows why none of the major Australian political parties are a good fit for me -- I want a mix of the economic right AND social liberalism, I want the social policies of the Greens / Labor, and the economic policies of the Coalition.
The positions of the major parties is something I could never quite understand: why is social liberalism so connected to the economic left, and why is the economic right (economic liberalism) so connected to conservative social policies?
That leaves me to turn to minor parties such as the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), often with below the line voting (and wishing we had above the line optional preferences).
This was originally going to be some guideline instructions for a CodePlex project, Essential.Diagnostics that I work on, but it ended up being more an opinion piece so I thought it would fit better on a blog.
There are several trace listeners (loggers) in the .NET Framework that can produce XML output. Outputting to XML results in more complex (verbose) files than, say, a simple text file output, but usually has the benefit of being better processed by tools, correlated across tiers, etc.
There are three main XML listeners, plus one extension in Essential.Diagnostics:
Examples of how to configure and use each one (used to produce the output below) is provided in the Essential.Diagnostics project.
Continue reading XML Logging in the .NET Framework(13 min read)
In Windows 8 the 'Safe Mode' option is not available on the boot with F8 screen, prompting several guides on creating an additional boot entry using BCDEDIT and chaning the properties via the Windows GUI -- not much use if your machine has already run into trouble.
Shift+F8 is the secret key that gets the old boot options menu, with 'Safe Mode', but you need to hold it down during POST and keep holding it down until the "Advanced Boot Option" screen appears, otherwise you can't time it right (unlike F8, or F10 below, which you just hit at the beginning of the boot).
Also the Edit Boot Options menu, available via boot with F10, is still available, and that allows low level control of all the boot options.
I couldn't track down a current reference for the options, but did find one for Windows XP / Server 2003, most of which still appear relevant: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833721
To get the same as 'Safe Mode with Networking':
Safe Mode is important for an early Developer Preview like this as drivers issues are much more likely (I ran into problems trying to add the NVIDIA drivers for my Alienware M14x and had to boot into safe mode to uninstall them).
I added a comparison of the major logging/tracing frameworks for .NET to the CodePlex site for Essential.Diagnostics, to demonstrate how System.Diagnostics stacks up against log4net, NLog and the Enterprise Library.
I also added a performance comparison (the source code is in the CodePlex project if you want to verify the results).
Look at the results for yourself, but I think System.Diagnostics does okay -- and the extensions in Essential.Diagnostics (plus others such as Ukadc.Diagnostics and UdpPocketTrace) fill out the gaps compared to log4net and NLog. Similarly on the performance side, all have very little overhead (NLog is a winner on overhead, but does relatively worse on actually writing the messages to a log file).
What about the Enterprise Library Logging Application Block? Well, I just don't think it does well compared to the others. Sure it was a lot better than .NET 1.0 System.Diagnostics, but a lot of that was added in .NET 2.0 System.Diagnostics (such as multiple sources). In some cases it is worse than what is currently available in the standard framework -- e.g. no delayed formatting. This shows up in the performance figures which indicate several magnitudes greater overhead than any of the other frameworks!
I'm obviously biased, but I really think that the best solution is to stick with the standard, out-of-the-box, System.Diagnostics, extended where necessary to fill any gaps (Essential.Diagnostics, etc, for additional listeners, filters & formatting).
P.S. Also check out my guidance on Logging Levels.
According to MSDN "in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 the preferred method of writing to the Trace Logs is to use the SPDiagnosticsServiceBase class" (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512746.aspx).
MSDN also provides some guidance on the trace and event log severity levels to use (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff604025.aspx), however the WriteEvent() and WriteTrace() methods use slightly different enums; the diagnostics logging configuration in Central Administration is slightly different again, and then you have a third set of values accessed by the PowerShell command Get-SPLogEvent.
The table below shows the mapping of levels from these different sources.
Despite the complicated mapping, in general I think things go in the right direction with events writing to the event log and trace log at the same time, and having a high trace level. The distinction between event logging and trace information is also good, with independently set thresholds.
| EventSeverity | EventLogEntryType | TraceSeverity | ULSTraceLevel | ULSLogFileProcessor .TraceLevel |
| None = 0 | None = 0 | 0 (None) | Unassigned = 0 | |
| ErrorServiceUnavailable = 10 | Error | 1 | Critical = 1 (or ErrorCritical) | |
| ErrorSecurityBreach = 20 | ||||
| ErrorCritical = 30 | ||||
| Error = 40 | ||||
| Exception = 4 | ||||
| Assert = 6 | ||||
| Warning = 50 | Warning | 8 | Warning = 8 | |
| FailureAudit = 60 | ||||
| Unexpected = 10 | Unexpected = 10 | Unexpected = 10 | ||
| Monitorable = 15 | Monitorable = 15 | Monitorable = 15 | ||
| SuccessAudit = 70 | Information | 18 | Information = 18 | |
| Information = 80 | ||||
| Success = 90 | ||||
| Verbose = 100 | ||||
| High = 20 | High = 20 | High = 20 | ||
| Medium = 50 | Medium = 50 | Medium = 50 | ||
| Verbose = 100 | Verbose = 100 | Verbose = 100 | ||
| VerboseEx = 200 | VerboseEx = 200 | VerboseEx = 200 |
Email (well, the majority of it anyway) is one nice standardised SMTP network -- any mail server can send to any address, finding each other by the domain. To some degree client protocols are also standardised (IMAP or POP), and although there are exceptions (e.g. Exchange protocol) the servers and clients still generally support the standard protocols as well.
Instant messaging, presence, and related networks are, however, still fragmented.
Continue reading [Rant] Why are IM/presence networks still fragmented?(3 min read)
SharePoint 2010 introduces the ribbon bar as a central place for all the editing controls, that in earlier versions could be scattered across the page.
When designing custom master pages for SP 2010 you may want to visually integrate the ribbon bar into the design, as is done in the out-of-the box v4.master (wiki & workspaces) and nightandday.master (publishing portal) pages.
To do this, I have documented the size of the different elements, so they can be included in the design.
Continue reading SharePoint 2010 design considerations(3 min read)
Essential.Diagnostics is a library of additional trace listeners and other bits for the .NET Framework System.Diagnostics trace logging.
It doesn’t change the way you write log statements (you still use TraceSource), but fits into the built-in extension points to add functionality (mostly additional trace listeners and filters).
From the project description:
“Essential.Diagnostics contains additional trace listeners, filters and utility classes for the .NET Framework System.Diagnostics trace logging. Included are colored console (that allows custom formats), SQL database (including a tool to create tables) and in-memory trace listeners, simple property and expression filters, activity and logical operation scopes, and configuration file monitoring.”
The intention is to round-out System.Diagnostics with additional capabilities so that it can be compared to alternative 3rd party logging systems (NLog, log4net, Common.Logging, and even Enterprise Library).
Note that the library is intentionally much lighter than Enterprise Library; rather than an overhaul of the logging mechanism itself the library is mainly meant to provide additional trace listeners.
I put the source code up a few days ago, but only recently finished the packaging scripts for the downloads.
With the recent release of NuPack NuGet, I have also spent an additional bit of time and set it up as a NuGet package.