Jan Tielens' Bloggings

Security is hot these days, and that’s a good thing. But from the developer’s point of view, security can be a bitch sometimes. Code Access Security (CAS for short) is a wonderful and very useful concept, but developers need to know keep CAS in mind if they want their code to run. If you want to learn more about CAS in general, I definitely recommend Maxim Karpov’s article as a starter.

Everyone who has created a webpart for SharePoint, knows that the “developer experience” is not as good as one would expect. You create the webpart in Visual Studio, based on the Webpart Template, but you can’t design the User Interface by drag-and-dropping controls on the webpart. But luckily you can use the “User Control technique” which gives the advantage that you can use the VS.NET UI designer. Patrick Tisseghem has evangelized this technique a lot, check out his article, his posts and the video. Fons Sonnema has written an article about how you can create and use a generic webpart that can host an ASP.NET User Control. I’ve extended this webpart with some extra functionality; let me introduce you to the SmartPart for SharePoint!

It's my pleasure to announce another new Belgian blogger! This time it's my good friend Christof Claessens who finally has got his weblog up and running (thanks Scott!). If you're into BizTalk, keep an eye on him: he told me he will be posting some really cool stuff. So Christof, now you've got the audience listing, let's start the show! :-)

Jelle Druyts is organizing a Belgian Geek Dinner on the 25th of June. Sounds like fun to me!

Scott has posted an interesting example: a webservice that accepts any type of XML Document, which will be send to a single BizTalk receive port. Afterwards you can process the XML Document in an orchestration for example. Cool stuff, I can defenitly imagine some scenarios where this would be useful! With this web service you don't need to have a special web service for each type of InfoPath form you want to submit to BizTalk for example.

Finally I've found some time to work some more on my SharePoint Lite for SharePoint project and today the Release Candidate 1 can be downloaded form the GotDotNet Workspace. RC1 is feature-complete for V1 (I've already got some cool features for the next version in mind), to get an idea what's possible you can watch this video. To install the workflow engine, execute the MSI package (so the assembly gets deployed to the GAC) and follow the installation instructions closely. The installation instructions are modified a little bit, so the installation video isn't up to date anymore but it will be updated ASAP. Probably the main part in the installation is the creation of the config file that contains the workflow logic. At this point you need to alter the configuration XML file manually, but there's a Configuration Application on its way. A very basic configuration file could look like this (updated on the 15th of June, see http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/06/15/156419.aspx):

Bryant Likes has published his solution to show SQL Server Reporting Services stuff in SharePoint. For the latest releases, you can visist the GotDotNet Workspace. Nice work Bryant!