FAST Search for SharePoint – Some useful tips and links
I am putting here some links for installing FS4SP.
I know it’s a bit tricky but if you follow step by step and do not make any mistake you should be able to install it without any problem. And make sure to make a check point and also make a copy of the VM once it’s installed and working. You don’t want to install FS4SP again and again.
Once you have installed it you may want to query the different content sources using API or using Web Service. The below tool helps you to create queries and then submit the queries through your custom code.
http://fastforsharepoint.codeplex.com/
One of the important things in FAST Search for SharePoint is mapping of metadata and using refinements.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262933(office.12).aspx
Virtual PC, VM Ware WorkStation and now Virtual Box
It has been long time from when I am using Virtual PC from Microsoft; I have also tried Virtual Server from Microsoft.
But there performance were not up to mark when you have guest OS which have heavy software’s like BizTalk, SQL , MOSS which does lot of disk I/O as well as lots of CPU too. With the ageing of these guest VM the performance of these decreases a lot. Both Virtual PC and Virtual Server were enough for me until I needed a “x64 Guest OS”.
I then went for “VM Ware WorkStation”, just for x64 Guest OS. The performance was *OK*.
The present Laptop configuration which I have is
· DELL Latitude E6400
· Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T9400 @ 2.54Ghz
· 4 Gb RAM
· 250 Gb Hard disk
· Windows Vista x64 Enterprise
Virtual PC on top of this configuration allows you to run only 32 – bit guests with ok performance but if you are working on BizTalk, MOSS etc.. You will feel that it should be better. Virtual Server also results in almost the same performance.
With VM Ware WorkStation you will get capability of Hosting x64 Guests, which is one of the important things. Though our team was using VM Ware with 32 –Bit Windows 2008 with VS 2008 SP2, CS 2009, and Azure SDK etc, the performance was better as compared to that of same things running on VPC 2007 and we were satisfied with it.
Lately one of my colleagues pointed me to Virtual Box, it has been only 1-2 days I am using this but I am impressed.
· You can point to both of you VPC Machines and
· VM Ware machines
· Open Source
And it also provides you a Seamless Mode, which allows you to run Guest programs seamlessly with the host OS. See the below image in which I am running Windows 7 as guest on x64 Vista Enterprise. And you can see
· Task Bar of Vista and Windows 7
· Calculator of Vista and Windows 7
· And Media Player of Vista and Windows 7
The performance also seems to be good. So …go and try Virtual Box.
The thing which are left is try these
Expression Encoder and C#
If you are planning to use Expression Encoder to encode your videos and audios, now you can all do this using OM of Expression Encoder.
There are three options available
1. Use Existing Audio and Video profile like VideoProfiles.HardwareDeviceH264Small and AudioProfiles.WmaForZune
2. If you want to use some custom profiles you can save the profiles and then use them
3. The Last is when you use presets, which allows you to have the max control on the out put videos/audios..
Windows Azure and the APTCA(AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute) gotcha
I have divided this article into three parts and that will make you understand some of the gotcha with Windows Azure.
1. Windows Azure and Live Mesh
2. Windows Azure and .NET Services
3. Windows Azure and WCF Services
Windows Azure and Live Mesh
If you are planning to have Live Mesh integrated with you Windows Azure applications in that case you just can’t use the Live Mesh assemblies like
· Microsoft.LiveFX.Client
· Microsoft.LiveFX.ResourceModel
etc..etc..
As these assemblies cannot be used from your Windows Azure code guess why? The reason being these assemblies are still not APTCA signed. And you will get a security Exception if you do this.
So if you want to do functionalities from your Windows Azure Application like Connecting to Live Mesh, Creating folders, files, deleting files and folders you just can’t use these assemblies directly.
The beauty of Live Mesh is that it supports pure REST based calls; in that case you can use all the functionality of Live Mesh from Windows Azure using “System.Net.Http.HttpWebRequest” only.
For this I highly recommend Fiddler2. http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/ which will definitely help do create you HttpRequest objects.
Windows Azure and .NET Services
If you are planning to integrate .NET Services from your Windows Azure code, you will face the same problem as you faced when you tried using the Live Mesh assemblies, i.e. you just can’t use assemblies like
· Microsoft.ServiceBus
· Microsoft.Workflow.Activities
etc..etc..
The reason being same these assemblies are still not APTCA signed.
What if you want to call Service Bus Services from Windows Azure code?
The only option is, when you host you Service Bus services use bindings like “Microsoft.ServiceBus.WebHttpRelayBinding”
Now in this case if you want to call this service from your Windows Azure code you do not need to have “Microsoft.ServiceBus” assembly referenced. You can call this service using plan…vanilla…our old and simple “System.Net.Http.HttpWebRequest”
What if you want to call Workflow Service from Windows Azure code?
If you want to use Workflow service from an Application you have to do a sequence of steps like
1. Create an instance of Workflow
2. Start the workflow instance
3. Now you can call this instance
The first two steps of above are not possible directly when you try to do this from your windows Azure code because in that case you need to have “Microsoft.Workflow.Activities” assembly referenced, and you can’t use this assembly from your Windows Azure code.
The last step of the above i.e. Call a cloud workflow instance. You can do this using “System.Net.Http.HttpWebRequest” from your windows Azure code.
Windows Azure and WCF Services
If you want to call and host WCF services in your Windows Azure application you can only use the Partial Trust profile of WCF.
At last if you are planning to develop you Windows Azure application you should know some of the above gotcha, as this will help you to know what is and what’s not possible from Windows Azure Applications.
BizTalk Server 2009 and ESB Guidance CTP 2.0
BizTalk Server 2009 beta is now available on Microsoft connect
BizTalk Server 2009 brings you some new functionality like
· Support for
o Windows 2008 Server
o Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
o Visual studio 2008 SP1
o .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
o SQL Server 2008
· Also BizTalk 2009 now comes with a new UDDI services which is based on UDDI 3.0 standards
· BizTalk RFID Mobile is also available
There are some other enhancements too…
I installed BizTalk Server 2009 on Windows Server 2008 with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and SQL Server 2008, and the setup was pretty smooth.
ESB Guidance CTP 2.0 is also out..
Cloud Computing Demo – .NET Services – Virtual Tech Days
I will be presenting a session on .NET Services on 25th November 2008 at Microsoft Virtual Tech Days.
Register here to attend the session … http://view.atdmt.com/action/inmidv_VTDNov08REGISTERNOW_2
The session will go into details of .NET Services i.e. Service Bus, Workflow services and the Access Control Service.
The Session also showcases an application built using Windows Azure, .NET Service Bus, SDS and Live Mesh on which I and Lyle Dodge worked on.
Experience with Microsoft .NET Workflow Service
Lately I was working on Microsoft Cloud Workflow services, and with some good new things you always get some limitations too…
At present the Cloud workflow comes with some basic activities and using then we can create some workflows, call Service Bus, make Http Requests., control access to them, and define some rules and some more…..
And yes you will get good scaling, management without investing into hardware, you also get a portal for management of workflow instances and if you don’t want to go to portal always you can always use the workflow API to manage them.
But some features I didn’t like…
· Unlike a typical workflow whose instance is created when ever a request comes, in .NET workflow service we have to do some sequence of steps before making a call…surprised, YES?
o Create an instance of workflow either through portal or using API
o Explicitly start it.. and now off course you can call it. But here is one more trick. When you create an instance you get an instance Id, and the url to which you have to send a request depends on several things and one of them is the instance id.
o So for you the Request url is always dynamic as it depends on workflow instance id which is a GUID.
o The Request URL looks like this
· The activities which are presently there are fairly limited.
· And if you are using CloudXPathRead and CloudXPathUpdate activities in your workflow make sure that the request you pass them should have correct type i.e “"text/xml"” otherwise the data will be Binary in WF and your WF will crash.
· One more feature which I would love to see is to have a local deployment server, so that we can debug these, unlike at present we have to always deploy them in the cloud and we cannot debug themL.
· And the last thing which is really important if you are planning to call cloud workflow from your Azure applications. You cannot create workflow instance and start them as the assembly which has these API cannot be called from Partial trust, and your Azure applications always run under that .. a big hindrance which Microsoft should really look into.
PDC 2008 Videos
The PDC 2008 is over. There were lots of big announcements from Microsoft, their cloud platform (Azure, .NET Services, SDS), update on Oslo, Windows 7 and the list goes on….
People who were not able to attend this conference can download and watch video from here
Cicada Resorts Kabini
You can find some of the snaps here
Bangalore to Kodaikanal
After a lot of planning and delays my trip to Kodaikanal was finally scheduled. It was mid May and the temperature in Bangalore was in late 20’s so I thought this is a good time to go to a hill station, and which other then Kodaikanal in southern part of India.
Kodaikanal is 2,195 m (7,202 ft) high on Palani Hills in the Western Ghats.
I booked my bus tickets to and from Kodaikanal through a KPN agent in Bangalore.
It was raining in Bangalore in the night when we left to Bommanahalli, from where we have to catch the bus to Kodaikanal. The bus started at around 10:30 pm from Bangalore. Kodaikanal is around 500 km from Bangalore.
In the morning at around 7:00 AM the bus reached Palani. Kodaikanal is around 65 km from Palani. Just after palani there is 65 km of ghat section. These ghat sections are one of the best which I have seen. The journey from Palani to Kodaikanal took around two hours and it was really beautiful.
We reached Kodaikanal at 9:30 in the morning. After 12 hours of tiring journey, we checked in a hotel and had some rest. We had lunch and then went out for some sightseeing.
DAY 1
In the afternoon during our lunch it started raining heavily. But soon it stopped and the weather was cool again. We first went to the kodai lake which was very near to our hotel and also near to the KPN Bus stand.
Kodai Lake is quite big and has boating facilities. There were lots of shops all around the lake.
After spending some time near Kodai lake, we went to see Bryant Park. It is a small and beautiful park near the lake. We spent around an hour there relaxing and having some snacks.
After that we went to see Coaker’s walk near to Bryant part. Coaker’s walk offers some of the very beautiful sceneries which you see from Kodai. We spent most of the evening there, had a long walk upto the end of it. We took some pictures there. When we were at the end of the Coaker’s walk it become foggy and cold. We had some coffee there.
All these locations were quite close to each other and you can see all these places by having a good evening walk. No need to hire city taxi.
DAY 2
I booked Kodaikanal sightseeing through my hotel travel agent. A 15 seat mini bus came at 9:30 in the morning for Kodai Sightseeing. The mini bus is one of the good options for sightseeing as the guide is also with you and it is a cheap option. Various places which were covered were.
Coaker’s Walk, Green valley view, Piller Rock View, Devil’s Kitchen, Kurunji andavar Temple, Bryant Park.
The bus dropped us at Kodai lake at around 4:00 in the evening. After that we planned to have cycle ride around the lake. It was fun to ride.
After about 1 hour of cycling we decided to have some snacks, We went to a Tibetan restaurant. We had some momo and some other Tibetan dishes. It was good refreshment. After having that evening snacks we did some shopping and then went to the hotel for rest.
DAY 3
We checked out of the hotel in the morning, after that we had two options either for a trip to a village or for a tracking trip. We choose tracking and went for that.
The tracking started with some waterfalls and a difficult journey for us. The water falls were quite good but not so big.
After that we went to see Dolphin’s Nose view. We had to walk at least 1 hour to reach there but the scenes from the Dolphin nose were just amazing. In our way back it started raining and thundering, at least we had an umbrella with us
At last we reached to the top where our bus was waiting for us. We then went to a 100 year old church.
The bus dropped us at 4:00 clock in the evening near the kodai lake. We spent some time there. At 6:30 we took the bus to Bangalore
All about BizTalk Server, WF, WCF, Cloud Computing 