Random Thunks

Ok Bill – I’ll buy it that disk space is cheap. However just because it is doesn’t mean that it should be wasted.

I’m talking here about the huge amount of repatition with files such as the List Schema and the various forms that support lists etc.

The schema.xml for tasks weights in at a whopping 530KB! That’s half a Meg of pure XML – most of it repeated.

Each defined view comes with 1651 lines of peripheral fluff (albeit very important peripheral fluff). What was wrong with creating a View fragment and just referencing that eight times (for the eight predefined views that comes with the task content type)? As my boss commented – that’s just XML abuse.

And let’s not forget the large amount of repeated field definition that takes place here (replete with types, choices, default etc.)

Then we’ve the forms – the single item and the view forms. Again – identical. Why? I get the idea that you’d want to allow users to bookmark a form – but what was wrong with using the query string and pass the view name or form action as a parameter?

It’s a pity we can’t bill our customers per byte – we’d make a fortune!

Bleeding edge is all very well and good, but one would have thunked (or at least liked to have thunked) that Microsoft might get some decent documentation out to support all this bleeding edge stuff.

Alas though it was not to be so instead one is left to scour Mr. Berners-Lee’s fabulous invention, the World Wide Web, to see what information is out there in a (sometimes vain) attempt to get something up and running (Google is my friend).

In my case it was an understanding of forms within a workflow – most specifically APSX forms. Now, Microsoft will have you believe that InfoPath 2007 is the way to go, but I have two major issues with that.

• To provide a ‘rich’ user experience you have to use the client based version.
• The MOSS Form Server based forms (also on MOSS Enterprise) are horribly crippled and can do only a subset of what one can normally achieve with some of the ASP.NET control goodness out there.

Now, granted one big advantage to using InfoPath is that some of the plumbing is hidden away from you – but given that we as developers have to provide to the end user – a rich, customer pleasing, front end beats out ease of development any day of the week.

So, given that InfoPath 2007 is not really an option, what are we left with? Either ASP.NET custom controls on a web part, or full ASPX pages; Both have benefits and drawbacks. I personally like the idea of a page because I can currently better conceptually grasp all that’s going on within a page container. However this also involves some extra work embedding the chrome to ensure a consistent MOSS look and feel.

So, over the next few blog posts I’ll be demonstrating how to put together a workflow using only ASPX pages. All this is a current work in progress for a Showcase project we’re working on in conjunction with Microsoft for a major International company based here in Cincinnati.

I only hope it all works!

It finally happened – just like many other peeps out there in ‘pooter land (and other industries to boot), my previous employer decided to outsource all us DBA’s.

Sux – but what you gonna do?

So, I’ve now left my DBA days behind me and found a new evil to tame. S’long SQL Server 2005. Hello MOSS 2007 and all it’s idiosyncrasies (or which it has many of)…

All future posts will be brought by to you by the number 3 and the letter W. Promotional consideration (e.g. they now pay me my filthy lucre) is from NuSoft Solutions.