Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Problem

When you try to install Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint services or SharePoint 2007 on your Windows XP workstation, it fails after displaying the following or similar message:
"This product can only be installed if Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 has been installed"

You don't have to install WSS on your workstation. Even if you try, it fails after showing a message similar to the following:
"This product requirs Windows Server 2003 SP1. Install this service pack and re-run setup"

I attempted a few workaround and then came across Umakanth's blog post  that fixes this problem in one simple registry edit to make the setup program believe that SharePoint is installed on your workstation.

1.Run regedt32 and navigate to
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools]

2. If there is a key "Web Server Extensions" get into it else create one

3. If there is a key "12.0" get into it else create one

4. Create the following string value
Name = Sharepoint
Value = ”Installed”

5. Re-run the setup and see it work.
Wait! Though the extensions are installed, your project may still show errors like "Could not load file or assembly" when you reference "Microsoft.Sharepoint" and other assemblies.

All you need is to drag the SharePoint assemblies from folder: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\ISAPI on your ShaerPoint server and drop to c:\windows\assembly folder of your workstation. Make sure that the files are from a 32-bit server.

Search Web Parts in MOSS 2007

MOSS 2007 has nine built-in web parts for search to provide a powerful tool to customize the search results and the user interface without writing lengthy code. These web parts are listed below:
Advanced Search Box

• People Search Box
• People Search Core Results
• Search box
• Search Core Results
• Search High Confidence Results
• Search Paging
• Search Statistics
• Search Summary

Public Web Sites Hosted on MOSS 2007

When I asked someone about a few local web sites being hosted on MOSS 2007, her answer was, "Everyone uses MOSS." I wasn't surprized by the answer though it didn't help me. At wssdemo, I found a list of hundreds of web sites hosted on MOSS 2007: http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/websites.aspx

Approval Workflow Status Values in MOSS 2007

The workflow approval status values are listed below:
the integer values:

0 - Not Started
1 - Failed on Start
2 - In Progress
3 - Error Occurred
4 - Stopped by User 
5 - Completed
6 - Failed on Start, Retrying
7 - Error Occurred, Retrying
8 - View Query Overflow
15 - Canceled
16 - Approved
17 - Rejected

Workflow in MOSS 2007

A workflow can be defined as a model to represent real work for further assessment, In computerized environment, workflow may mean a software solution to capture the events and actions of these assessments as an attempt to computerize the actual business process.

Workflows could be implemented in three different ways in SharePoint 2007. SharePoint 2007 has some OOB workflows. Simple workflows can be created using SharePoint Designer. More complex workflows can be developed in Visual Studio. SharePoint 2007 uses Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) as an engine for workflows. WWF provides workflow runtime, and SharePoint lists and document libraries provide data repository for the items used by workflows.


If you are interested in knowing more this MSDN link is a good starting point: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc514224.aspx#MOSS2007DevWorkflowSolutions_WorkflowPlatform

The 12 Hive in MOSS 2007 Explained

The legendary 12 hive folder is where the OOB system files are located afterSharePoint 2007 installation. 

It is located at "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12" in a standard MOSS 2007 installation. This folder contains the following sub-directories:

• ADMISAPI - This folder maps to IIS virtual directory  for SharePoint Central Administration web service
• BIN - MOSS utilities binary files such as STSADM.EXE. Sub-directory LCIDD stores language specific binary files in individual folders for each language. 
• CONFIG - As the name suggests configuration files used by MOSS
• Data - Indexing services save indexes here.
• HCCab - A set of cab files containing manifest and content information used by the SharePoint help sytem are stored in LCID subdirectory
• Help - The help files used by the configuration wizard
• ISAPI - This folder maps to IIS virtual directory "_vti_bin" and stores all the standard Web Services for SharePoint except SharePoint Central Administration.
• LOGS - SharePoint logs.
• Resources - Localization resources for SharePoint sites
• TEMPLATE - The templates for a SharePoint web site. The features and xml files are also stored in subdirectories of this folder.

A snapshot of 12 hive folder (Click image to zoom)

Server Roles in a MOSS Farm

The architecture of a MOSS farm may contain one or more servers. These servers have various roles which can be divided into three broad categories, Web Front End (WFE), application server and database server.

1. Web Front End (WFE) Servers
The fast and lightweight WFE servers interact with the user. The MOSS site is hosted on the IIS installation on WFE. These servers connect to the database servers to query the MOSS database for grabbing the requested content and rendering the results in the client browser. All WFEs in a farm must be identical and may be load balanced.

2. Application Servers
An application server provides all shared service level capabilities to the users through WFEs.Just like WFEs, load balancing can be implemented on the application servers too. Following are some examples of the shared services hosted on an application server:

• Search Indexing
• Search Query
• Excel Calculation Service
• Windows SharePoint Services Search

3. Database Servers
The database server has the maximum impact on the availability of the MOSS solution because it is the single point of data storage for all MOSS data (users, applications and configurations). Redundancy and high availability can be ensured by clustering or mirroring.