Create a standalone Azure SharePoint 2013 development environment

Posted on 13 May, 2014 by frogman

There are some nice things happening on Azure. One of the nice things is the availability of standard virtual machine templates, so I thought I would give the SharePoint 2013 development VM a try.
I set the following features as must haves -

  1. Self contained standalone development server without the support of a domain controller or separate SQL server.  You only get so many free credits with an MSDN subscription and I didn’t want them eaten up by a domain controller.
  2. Visual Studio 2013 premium.

The following instructions assume that you already have as a minimum an MSDN with Visual Studio premium account and that you have activated your free Azure development account.
Continue reading →

Posted in SharePoint, SharePoint 2013, Tips and Tricks | Leave a comment

Returning cypher query aggregate values such as SUM and COUNT via the .NET Neo4jClient

Posted on 29 September, 2013 by frogman

Take a look at the following cypher query which is used to return regions with ‘east’ in their names and their associated research grants.

START region=node:vop(‘region:east’)
MATCH region<-[?:RESIDES_IN]-organisation-[?:HOLDS]->grant
RETURN region, grant

Nothing wrong with the above query….. Continue reading →

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Adding a fulltext index for a Talend Big Data neo4j import

Posted on 6 September, 2013 by frogman

I have recently been migrating data from SQL Server to a neo4j database using Talend Big Data. It was apparent from an early stage that creating fulltext indexes is not supported in Talend BD or at least poorly documented if it does exist. So here is how I got around the problem….. Continue reading →

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How to flush the SharePoint cache

Posted on 16 August, 2013 by frogman

It is possible to use the CacheManager, an internal class, found in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing assembly to flush the cache as follows -

            //The CacheManager is an internal class found in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing assembly
            //Its methods can be used if invoked
            Assembly lib = Assembly.Load("Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c");

            Type cmType = lib.GetType("Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.CacheManager");
            MethodInfo getManager = cmType.GetMethod("GetManager", new Type[] { typeof(SPSite) });

            //Get a cache manager for the site
            using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://yoursite"))
            {
                object cacheManager = getManager.Invoke(new object(), new object[] { site });

                //Flush the site's cache
                MethodInfo flushCache = cmType.GetMethod("FlushCache", new Type[] { typeof(bool) });
                flushCache.Invoke(cacheManager, new object[] { true });
            }
Posted in .NET Development, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013, Tips and Tricks | Leave a comment

Publishing Page Image disappears when the page is published

Posted on 7 June, 2013 by frogman

I recently created a feature for a publishing site. The deployment included a custom master page, layout and new home page. The feature activated and the home page was editable, allowing me to add a publishing image to the content. However, as soon as I checked in and published the page the image would disappear.
Turned out that I had assigned the wrong content type to the new default home page. I had set it to ‘Page’ instead of ‘Welcome Page’.

Posted in SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, Tips and Tricks | Leave a comment