SharePoint developers and administrators are familiar with the concept of creating and deploying solution packages (.wsp files) to the farm using the stsadm command line utility. In some cases, (for example, when deploying an admin approved InfoPath Forms Services template), we may no longer have a local copy of the solution package. Ideally, we would export a copy of the solution from the SharePoint solution store. While the SharePoint object model provides a developer with a straightforward way to obtain solution packages out of the solution store, this doesn’t really help a SharePoint administrator. So how do we empower ...

Congratulations to Aptera team member Jon Fazarro on his recent Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification!  Jon received this certification after passing the TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Application Development exam and fulfilling all of the certification’s professional requirements.

Jon has experience in working with Microsoft SharePoint and is currently working with Aptera clients to develop a new employee portal site and has also been involved in portal performance testing.  Jon is also skilled in working with .NET framework, XML documents, XML web services development and consumption, Windows Workflow Foundation and IIS 6.

“The most significant benefit I ...

In Which We Painlessly Scope the Lifespan of the Entity Framework Context

In the previous post of this pair, we covered where non-barbarian (and non-physicist) developers can hook their business logic code when using the ADO.NET Entity Framework. To round out the set, we will A the frequently-asked Q of when we should instantiate the ObjectContext, and when we should run it out to the curb for the GC. IMHO AFAIK. LOL.

ObjectContext != DbConnection

If you are coming at the Entity Framework from an old-timey ADO.NET perspective, you might align the idea of a data context ...

In Which We Take Care of Business with the Entity Framework

There are few phases of application development that I want to have done with faster than running plumbing from the database. Some of us, bless the cockles of their tiny hearts, live in ORM-land and love it. As for me, I'll take the path of least resistance every time with regard to this drudgery, because I have features to code and a user interface to build. And at the moment, the path of least resistance means using the ADO.NET Entity Framework.

The Entity Framework does a bang-up ...