SharePoint 2010 Capacity Management and Performance Planning

• Capacity management and sizing for SharePoint Server 2010
• SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: software boundaries and limits
• SharePoint Server 2010 performance and capacity test results and recommendations
• SharePoint Server 2010 performance and capacity technical case studies

Cheers
C

Architecture and Topology

• Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010
• Extranet Topologies for SharePoint 2010 Products
• Search Topology Operations in SharePoint Server 2010
• Databases That Support SharePoint 2010 Products
• Services in SharePoint 2010 Products

Cheers
C

How do I – Validate user input is numeric from Powershell?

As the level of complexity and power of our Powershell scripts increase, it is inevitable that we reach a point where we need to interact with the user and prompt them for some information. In this case we were building a script to automate the creation and scaling of Search so we needed to know how many servers would be configured as Crawl servers. We all know the Read-Host cmdlet can provide us with the input, but how do we know that the user actually entered numeric only data? The easiest way is to simply use a try/catch block and attempt to convert the input to an int value. Here’s how we do that:

$numberOfCrawl = 0
$inputOK = $false
do
{
  try
  {
    [int]$numberOfCrawl = Read-Host -ForegroundColor red "Please enter the number of servers you wish to configure as Crawl servers."
    $inputOK = $true
  }
  catch
  {
    Write-Host -ForegroundColor red "INVALID INPUT!  Please enter a numeric value."
  } 
}
until ($inputOK)
Write-Host –ForegroundColor green "You chose to configure [$numberOfCrawl] Crawl servers."

We start by defining the $inputOK variable as false and then wrap the entire piece of code in a do/until loop that repeats until the user enters a valid numeric only value. Inside of this loop, we have a try/catch block. Inside the try, we attempt to assign the entered value from Read-Host to the $numberofCrawl variable which we cast as an int. If the user enters a non-numeric value, the cast will fail and will be caught by the catch. In the catch we output an error message in red text and simply allow the loop to restart from the top. If however, the user entered a valid numeric value, the cast will succeed afterwich we set the $inputOK variable to true thus allowing the loop to end gracefully. As a final step, we display the entered value to the user.



Cheers
C

How do I – Sort a list of custom class objects in descending order in C#?

Suppose we have a custom class defined thus:

class CustomClass
    {
        public string String1 { get; set; }
        public string String2 { get; set; }
        public string String3 { get; set; }
        public int Int1 { get; set; }
        public int Int2 { get; set; }

        public CustomClass()
        {
            String1 = "";
            String2 = "";
            String3 = "";
            Int1 = 0;
            Int2 = 0;
        }

        public int Calculate()
        {
            return Int1 + Int2;
        }
    }

As we can see, the class initializes it’s variables and has a Calculate() method that simply returns the added value of the two int variables of the class. Now suppose we have a list of these class objects in our app with varying values thus:

 CustomClass MyClass = new CustomClass();
    MyClass.Int1 = 10;
    MyClass.Int2 = 5;
    CustomClass My2ndClass = new CustomClass();
    My2ndClass.Int1 = 7;
    CustomClass My3rdClass = new CustomClass();

    List lst = new List();
    lst.Add(My2ndClass); 
    lst.Add(MyClass);
    lst.Add(My3rdClass);
We now have a list containing 3 of our custom class objects. The first object in the list has an Int1 value of 10. The second has an Int1 value of 5 and the third, given the class’ initialization method, will have an Int1 value of 0. Given the order that we added the class objects to our list, the list, when looking at the Int1 field would look thus: 7, 10, 0 How do we go about sorting this list by any one of the variable fields of the custom class, say Int1 in our case? The built in support for Linq in Visual C# and the .NET Framework, actually makes this very easy. Using a Lambda expression, the task becomes a one liner thus:
 lst = lst.OrderByDescending(x => x.Int1).ToList();
We start with the OrderByDescending() method and then pass the Lambda expression to reference back to the object itself. The x => part of the expression tells C# to reference back to the calling object which in our case is lst. C# will reference back to lst as x which is where the x.Int1 then instructs the OrderByDescending method to use the Int1 field as the value by which to sort, in descending order, the x object which translates to lst. By appending the ToList() method to the back of the statement, C# will take the sorted result and generate a new List<> object which we simply assign back to the original lst variable. If we needed to sort in ascending order we would use the OrderBy() method instead thus making the statement:
 lst = lst.OrderBy(x => x.Int1).ToList();
Cheers
C

How do I - Sort a list of custom class objects in descending order in C#?

Suppose we have a custom class defined thus:

    class CustomClass
    {
        public string String1 { get; set; }
        public string String2 { get; set; }
        public string String3 { get; set; }
        public int Int1 { get; set; }
        public int Int2 { get; set; }

        public CustomClass()
        {
            String1 = "";
            String2 = "";
            String3 = "";
            Int1 = 0;
            Int2 = 0;
        }

        public int Calculate()
        {
            return Int1 + Int2;
        }
    }

As we can see, the class initializes it's variables and has a Calculate() method that simply returns the added value of the two int variables of the class.  Now suppose we have a list of these class objects in our app with varying values thus:

    CustomClass MyClass = new CustomClass();
    MyClass.Int1 = 10;
    MyClass.Int2 = 5;
    CustomClass My2ndClass = new CustomClass();
    My2ndClass.Int1 = 7;
    CustomClass My3rdClass = new CustomClass();

    List<CustomClass> lst = new List<CustomClass>();
    lst.Add(My2ndClass); 
    lst.Add(MyClass);
    lst.Add(My3rdClass);

We now have a list containing 3 of our custom class objects.  The first object in the list has an Int1 value of 10.  The second has an Int1 value of 5 and the third, given the class' initialization method, will have an Int1 value of 0.  Given the order that we added the class objects to our list, the list, when looking at the Int1 field would look thus:

7, 10, 0

How do we go about sorting this list by any one of the variable fields of the custom class, say Int1 in our case?

The built in support for Linq in Visual C# and the .NET Framework, actually makes this very easy.  Using a Lambda expression, the task becomes a one liner thus:

    lst = lst.OrderByDescending(x => x.Int1).ToList();

We start with the OrderByDescending() method and then pass the Lambda expression to reference back to the object itself.  The x => part of the expression tells C# to reference back to the calling object which in our case is lst.  C# will reference back to lst as x which is where the x.Int1 then instructs the OrderByDescending method to use the Int1 field as the value by which to sort, in descending order, the x object which translates to lst. 

By appending the ToList() method to the back of the statement, C# will take the sorted result and generate a new List<> object which we simply assign back to the original lst variable. If we needed to sort in ascending order we would use the OrderBy() method instead thus making the statement:

    lst = lst.OrderBy(x => x.Int1).ToList();

Enjoy

C

I am humbled to be honored again

I am humbled to be honored as a Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server, for the 9th time.  The MVP community is a great group of people that I'm proud to be associated with.

How do I – Play the TNG Red Alert (or any audio file for that matter) in my WinForms C# app

Out of the box, C# and .NET supports the playing of any .WAV file.  The code is pretty straight forward.  We simply need to reference the system media class to create a SoundPlayer{} object thus:

System.Media.SoundPlayer p = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(@"C:\Media\MySoundEffect.wav");

Once we have the object, we simply invoke the Play() method thus:

p.Play();

So in two simple lines of code, we are able to play any .wav file from our application.  There are some more embedded problems that may not immediately be obvious.  Allow me to explain.

Suppose I'm trying to add the Star Trek TNG Red Alert sound to my app for an emergency notification.  I begin by locating the sound in question.  A quick web search takes me to the http://www.trekcore.com/audio/ site where the Red Alert section has several samples to choose from.  Once I locate the sound sample that I wish to use, I click the link and download the file.

PROBLEM #1:  The file is in the .mp3 audio format.  Attempting to use it in the instantiation of the SoundPlayer() method fails with the message that only .wav files are supported.

RESOLUTION

We could use a custom media player class, or we could just let the internet do some work for us.  A quick search pointed me to the http://media.io/ online audio conversion web site.  The simple interface couldn't be cleaner or more straight forward:

Simply take the .mp3 file we previously downloaded and upload and convert it on this site.  Now we finally have a .wav file that we can use in our project.  Now we would like the alert sound to be played 3 times and a popup window present the error notification.  That's easy, right?  We simply use a for() loop that looks like this:

for (int i = 0; i <= 2; i++)
{
    System.Media.SoundPlayer p = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(@"TNG-Red-Alert.wav");
    p.Play();

}

MessageBox.Show("There is an error!", "ERROR", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error); 

We compile and run the app and expect the alert sound to play 3 times… only… it doesn't.  So why doesn't it play our audio?  It seems the problem is related to the fact that the asynchronous .Play() method, being spun from the current executing thread, does not have enough time to execute before the modal .Show() method is executed.  As you know, the MessageBox.Show() method will block the existing thread from executing any further until user action is taken on the window.  As such, the Play() method is queued really quickly given present computer CPU speeds, and once the.Show() method is invoked, it aborts the asynchronous threads to the .Play() method.  To solve the problem we have to allow the .Play() method some time to begin execution.  The easiest way to do that is to simply .Sleep() the current thread.  By injecting this line of code:

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1500);

right after the .Play() call, the currently executing thread will pause for 1.5 seconds.  Depending on what audio you're playing, you can tweak this value (in milliseconds) to match accordingly.

At this point, the alert message and audio work correctly… but the OCD in me still isn't happy with the effect we get.  When the error condition is generated, the audio alert is played three times, per our code, and then the error alert is popped up.  The problem I have with that is that the audio warning gets my attention, but then I have to wait for it to finish playing three times before the error message with useful information pops up.  That should be easy to fix, right?  Why not just simply move the .Show() method call to before the for() loop containing the .Play() call?

Unfortunately, this doesn't work as you'd expect.  Because of the fact that the .Show() call actually freezes the current thread, the message box is displayed and then awaits user interaction before it allows the audio code to execute.  What we need is for the .Show() code to be spun off in another thread so as to allow the audio alert to play while the message is displayed.  To do this, we create a new method thus:

public void ShowAlert()
{
    System.Threading.Thread t = new System.Threading.Thread(() =>
    {
        MessageBox.Show("There is an error!", "ERROR", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
    });
    t.Start();
}

Once we have the message box contained in a separate thread, we simply make that call prior to playing our audio thus:

ShowAlert();
for (int i = 0; i <= 2; i++)
{
    System.Media.SoundPlayer p = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(@"TNG-Red-Alert.wav");
    p.Play();
    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1500);
}

Once the user interacts with the message box, the thread (t) will terminate gracefully.  In the mean time our main app is free to continue execution of our loop to play the alert sound.





Enjoy


C

How do I – Play the TNG Red Alert (or any audio file for that matter) in my WinForms C# app

Out of the box, C# and .NET supports the playing of any .WAV file.  The code is pretty straight forward.  We simply need to reference the system media class to create a SoundPlayer{} object thus:

System.Media.SoundPlayer p = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(@"C:\Media\MySoundEffect.wav");

Once we have the object, we simply invoke the Play() method thus:

p.Play();

So in two simple lines of code, we are able to play any .wav file from our application.  There are some more embedded problems that may not immediately be obvious.  Allow me to explain.

Suppose I'm trying to add the Star Trek TNG Red Alert sound to my app for an emergency notification.  I begin by locating the sound in question.  A quick web search takes me to the http://www.trekcore.com/audio/ site where the Red Alert section has several samples to choose from.  Once I locate the sound sample that I wish to use, I click the link and download the file.

PROBLEM #1:  The file is in the .mp3 audio format.  Attempting to use it in the instantiation of the SoundPlayer() method fails with the message that only .wav files are supported.

RESOLUTION

We could use a custom media player class, or we could just let the internet do some work for us.  A quick search pointed me to the http://media.io/ online audio conversion web site.  The simple interface couldn't be cleaner or more straight forward:

Simply take the .mp3 file we previously downloaded and upload and convert it on this site.  Now we finally have a .wav file that we can use in our project.  Now we would like the alert sound to be played 3 times and a popup window present the error notification.  That's easy, right?  We simply use a for() loop that looks like this:

for (int i = 0; i <= 2; i++)
{
    System.Media.SoundPlayer p = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(@"TNG-Red-Alert.wav");
    p.Play();

}

MessageBox.Show("There is an error!", "ERROR", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error); 

We compile and run the app and expect the alert sound to play 3 times… only… it doesn't.  So why doesn't it play our audio?  It seems the problem is related to the fact that the asynchronous .Play() method, being spun from the current executing thread, does not have enough time to execute before the modal .Show() method is executed.  As you know, the MessageBox.Show() method will block the existing thread from executing any further until user action is taken on the window.  As such, the Play() method is queued really quickly given present computer CPU speeds, and once the.Show() method is invoked, it aborts the asynchronous threads to the .Play() method.  To solve the problem we have to allow the .Play() method some time to begin execution.  The easiest way to do that is to simply .Sleep() the current thread.  By injecting this line of code:

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1500);

right after the .Play() call, the currently executing thread will pause for 1.5 seconds.  Depending on what audio you're playing, you can tweak this value (in milliseconds) to match accordingly.

At this point, the alert message and audio work correctly… but the OCD in me still isn't happy with the effect we get.  When the error condition is generated, the audio alert is played three times, per our code, and then the error alert is popped up.  The problem I have with that is that the audio warning gets my attention, but then I have to wait for it to finish playing three times before the error message with useful information pops up.  That should be easy to fix, right?  Why not just simply move the .Show() method call to before the for() loop containing the .Play() call?

Unfortunately, this doesn't work as you'd expect.  Because of the fact that the .Show() call actually freezes the current thread, the message box is displayed and then awaits user interaction before it allows the audio code to execute.  What we need is for the .Show() code to be spun off in another thread so as to allow the audio alert to play while the message is displayed.  To do this, we create a new method thus:

public void ShowAlert()
{
    System.Threading.Thread t = new System.Threading.Thread(() =>
    {
        MessageBox.Show("There is an error!", "ERROR", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
    });
    t.Start();
}

Once we have the message box contained in a separate thread, we simply make that call prior to playing our audio thus:

ShowAlert();
for (int i = 0; i <= 2; i++)
{
    System.Media.SoundPlayer p = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(@"TNG-Red-Alert.wav");
    p.Play();
    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1500);
}

Once the user interacts with the message box, the thread (t) will terminate gracefully.  In the mean time our main app is free to continue execution of our loop to play the alert sound.





Enjoy


C

For the audio aficionados

An interesting Kickstarter campaign for a portable DAC.

New USB Awesomifier for Headphones



Cheers
C

For all the audio aficionados

A very interesting Kickstarter campaign for a portable DAC.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gavn8r/geek-a-new-usb-awesomifier-for-headphones/description

Fixing Visual Studio 2012 defaults

One of the biggest pet peeves I experienced when switching to Visual Studio 2012 was the fact that the default command buttons were changed.  In going for a cleaner look, many of the main command buttons most developers use most frequently, was removed from the toolbar interface and buried in the menu structure instead.

Personally, the buttons I find myself using most frequently are the Navigate Backwards and Navigate Forwards ( ), Comment Selected Lines and Uncomment Selected Lines ( ) and lastly Increase Line Indent and Decrease Line Indent ( ).

The Navigate functions are still there, but the Comment and Indent functions are buried deep within the Edit/Advanced menu.  While it’s true that the Comment functions do have hot keys attached to them, I hardly consider Ctrl+K,Ctrl+C for a single click to be useful to most developers save the few that know the hotkeys by heart.

As for the Indent commands, they don’t have any hotkeys and you’d have to click through Edit/Advanced/Indent to get the action.  Though small annoyances, these can be addressed by simply adding the commands back to the command bar.  Here’s how to do just that:

1. Click Tools on the menu bar.
2. 
3. On the popup menu, click "Customize".
4. After the Customize dialog window opens, click over to the "Commands" tab.
5. Select the "Toolbar" radio button.
6. In the dropdown to the right of the Toolbar radio button, select the "Standard" toolbar to work with.
7. The toolbar's controls will be previewed in the bottom left of the dialog window.
8. To the right of the preview, click the "Add Command" button.
9. 
10. In the Add Command dialog window that opens up, select the "Edit" category to the left.
11. On the right, scroll down through the commands and locate the "Line Indent" command.
12. Select the command and click the "OK" button.
13. 
14. The command will be added to the top of the Controls preview.
15. 
16. Repeat steps 8 through 12 for the "Line Unindent", "Selection Comment" and "Selection Uncomment" commands as well.  The interface doesn't allow multi-select, though that would be nice touch in a future update.
17. Once you have all the commands, use the "Move Up" and "Move Down" buttons to the right to arrange the commands in the order you wish them to appear on the toolbar.
18. 
19. When you're happy with the arrangement, click the "Close" button.  Your new toolbar should now reflect your favorite buttons again. :-)
20. 

Happy coding!
C

How do I – Scroll the Telerik RadGridView to the top after a data refresh?

What seems like a very simple thing to do, and quite frankly it should be, turned out to be a little more tricky than I thought.

Setting the Scene
The app has a RadGridView control that displays information from a SQL database.  The data is presented to the control via a simple Linq2SQL DataSet.  Given that the RadGridView control has a .CurrentRow property which is updatable, logic dictates that a simple statement such as this:

   1:  grdContentSources.CurrentRow = grdContentSources.Rows[0];

would take care of moving the cursor to the top after the data refresh.  Alas, it doesn’t.  Next I experimented with disconnecting the data source, filling the table adapter and then reconnecting the data source to the grid, but that didn’t work either.  Internet searches, especially the very helpful Telerik support site, indicated that we should be using the .IsCurrent() method of the row instead.  So this should solve the problem, right?

   1:  grdContentSources.Rows[0].IsCurrent = true;

Unfortunately, that didn’t solve the problem either.  Then I found an obscure comment from “Jack”, and Admin on the Telerik team, that pointed me towards the .ChildRows collection for sorted data instead.  Since I did have some sorting on the grid, I tried it and it worked!  Here’s the complete code:

   1:  Cursor.Current = Cursors.WaitCursor;

   2:  this.crawlManDBDataSet.vwContentSourceCrawlHistory.Clear();

   3:  this.vwContentSourceCrawlHistoryTableAdapter.Fill(

   4:    this.crawlManDBDataSet.vwContentSourceCrawlHistory);

   5:  grdContentSources.ChildRows[0].IsCurrent = true;

   6:  Cursor.Current = Cursors.Default;

Since the operation takes some time, in line 1 we set the cursor to the hour glass.  In line 2 we clear the source table for the grid.  In line 3 we refill the table to get refreshed data.  This reflects back onto the grid as it triggers a .Changed() event to refresh the grid view.

Line 5 is where the magic happens as we simply set the .IsCurrent property of the .ChildRows[0] row to be true.  Using zero takes the grid back to the top.  We could set this to any value within the range of the grid e.g. we could have used:

   1:  grdContentSources.ChildRows[

   2:    grdContentSources.ChildRows.Count - 1].IsCurrent = true;

in order to scroll the grid to the bottom instead.

Enjoy
C

SharePoint boundaries and limits

There are many boundaries and limits that you will generally not run into, in the SharePoint world.  One such boundary that I ran into the other day is 500 content sources per Search Service App.  Being aware of these could help you plan architecture for your designs and systems correctly so that the need for adjusted architecture later on, is negated.

For 2010, start here:

SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits