A first look at Sharepoint wikis

Want to know what is a wiki is in Sharepoint V3.0? Well we have released a new YouTube video that will give you an introduction to this new feature of Sharepoint V3.0. To view the video simply click here or go to the Video – Links portion of this Supportweb site.

This presentation will show you how to create and edit documents in a wiki and well as demonstrate the power of wikis to business in things like knowledge bases.

So you want to install Sharepoint V3.0 onto SBS 2003?

Let me show you the ways.

Well more accurately let the article I just created tell you. You can find it here in the Supportweb Document Library as free download. The article takes a brief look at the different options and considerations you need to make before installing Sharepoint V3.0 onto a Small Business Server 2003.

If you don’t already know then you shouldn’t do an in-place upgrade (it breaks things if you do), you also have the option to install the Sharepoint into SQL if you want (although the “official” Microsoft procedure doesn’t mention that).

The articles looks at the installation of Sharepoint V3.0 on SBS from a reseller or systems implementer’s perspective, however hopefully this doesn’t mean that it won’t have value for other attempting this kind of installation. I also mention some of the benefits the Microsoft Search Server 2008 will bring to SMB space given its ability to not only index Sharepoint content but also file shares.

As always I appreciate any feedback on this article or any of the material that I create. Also, if you are interested in something specific them also let me know since I like to create material that is of benefit to “real” people.

Sharepoint Document libraries – Part 3

You’ll find our latest video on Sharepoint Document libraries now here on YouTube. It shows you what is under the covers of the settings menu option in document libraries. This menu allows you to do things like changes the title and description of the library, manage the permission and RSS settings and configuration. The settings menu also allows you to configure columns and views.

For the time being, this will conclude our look at Sharepoint document libraries.

Blocked file types in SharePoint

Any files trying to be uploaded into Sharepoint V3.0 with the following file extensions will be blocked by default :

ade
adp
app
asa
ashx
asmx
asp
bas
bat
cdx
cer
chm
class
cmd
com
config
cpl
crt
csh
der
dll
exe
fxp
hlp
hta
htr
htw
ida
idc
idq
ins
isp
its
jse
ksh
lnk
mad
maf
mag
mam
maq
mar
mas
mat
mau
mav
maw
mda
mdb
mde
mdt
mdw
mdz
msc
msh
msh1
msh1xml
msh2
msh2xml
mshxml
msi
msp
mst
ops
pcd
pif
prf
prg
printer
pst
reg
rem
scf
scr
sct
shb
shs
shtm
shtml
soap
stm
url
vb
vbe
vbs
ws
wsc
wsf
wsh

This list will apply not only to the uploading of documents, but also to extensions changes of documents once they are in a document library. So if you have .zip file in a document library and try to unzip that file into a document library and the .zip contains a .exe file then that document won’t extract.

To configure blocked file types:

Go to Sharepoint 3.0 Central Administration.
Select Operations page.
Select Blocked File Types under Security Configuration.
Modify the list to include or exclude the file extensions required.
Click OK to save and close.

SharePoint V3.0 file locations

When you install SharePoint V3.0 onto SBS 2003 using the standard “side-by-side” installation you will find the following locations in use :

:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Data\Applications\\Config – contains global configuration files used by the search engine, like language specific noise word and thesaurus files along with the thesaurus schema XML file.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\SERVER12\Server Setup Controller – critical setup files that might be needed later fro re-running certain aspects of the setup and configuration wizard.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN – executables like stsadm and prescan.exe

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS – administrative pages address by the _layouts relative path on the Sharepoint sites.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES – is the _images realtive path for images addressable anywhere in Sharepoint sites.

SharePoint V3.0 databases

When you install Sharepoint V3.0 onto SBS 2003 using the recommended installation from Microsoft you will end up installing the WMSDE database that was mentioned in a previous post. This is typically referred to as the \Microsoft##SSEE SQL instance. Now of course you could manipulate this from the command line using the osql commands but if there is GUI interface why no use that? If you download the Microsoft SQL Management Studio and install that you can use a GUI to interact with the WMSDE Sharepoint databases.
So what do these databases do ? Well :

Sharepoint_AdminContent_ stores the information related to lists, document libraries, tasks and so so on of the Central Administration site.
Sharepoint_Config_ stores information about the configuration of your Sharepoint farm. Things like servers and their role are saved here. If the farm involves a multi server environment (with web front ends, content and search servers) then how the whole farm is configured is held here. BY default each server in the farm checks with the configuration database every 30 seconds.
WSS_Content contains information related to lists, document libraries, tasks, wikis, blogs, structure details, security information and so on for your Sharepoint user site.
WSS_Search_ contains search metadata, history log, search log and so on that is used for the inbuilt Sharepoint search functionality.

Remember there is only a limited amount of things you can do with the SSEE instance but the GUI certainly makes it easier and now at least you have some idea as to what each database does!

SharePoint V3 databases

When you install SharePoint V3 on SBS2003 in the manner recommended by Microsoft (side by side installation), SharePoint will install Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (Windows) known as WMSDE.

WMSDE
The MSDE version that ships with Windows SharePoint Services is called as Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (Windows)-(WMSDE). WMSDE and has no storage limits unlike MSDE.

When you install Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services on a single server using the defaults, you have an installation that uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (Windows) (WMSDE) for your databases.

Some of the WMSDE Limitations as follows.
1) Cannot use WMSDE for web farm setup.
2) WMSDE overcomes limitations that MSDE has (like 2GB size limit, number of simultaneous connections). However you can’t use it for anything else, because you can only use it for a specified signed schema (WSS Schema).
3) No Full Text search.
4) The instance of WMSDE installed can be used only by WSS.

Also, no matter where you specify the installation of Sharepoint you’ll find that WMSDE installs under the Windows directory, which typically is on the C: drive of your server. Now this drive may not have enough space if you are planning a large Sharepoint environment so beware as WMSDE, from what we can determine, has no database limits. This means that the Sharepoint database could in theory grow and fill the entire C: drive.

If you are looking for the location of the Sharepoint V3 content databases that have been installed with WMSDE you’ll find them at :

c:\windows\sysmsi\ssee\mssql.2005\mssql\data

This will be the case if you have SBS 2003 standard or premium and simply accept the default installation options for Sharepoint V3. If you have SBS 2003 Premium, that includes some version of SQL, then you are able to have the Sharepoint content databases reside on the SQL server, which typically will be on the data drive of your server and not the system drive. However, to achieve this configuration you need to do thing differently from the way Microsoft recommends.

Search Server Express 2008 running on SBS 2003

We now have Search Server Express 2008 RC running on a Small Business Server R2 Premium. After installing Windows Sharepoint 2007 we installed Search Server Express 2008. Now because it is SBS 2003 R2 Premium (which includes SQL Workgroup 2005) we decided to install the Sharepoint databases there. During the Search Server Express 2008 installation it seems to look where Sharepoint is installed and if it is at least on SQL Server 2005 Express or better it installs its own databases in the same location. so in our case we now have Windows Sharepoint 2007 and Search Server 2008 Express both configure to use SQL 2005 workgroup databases.

Now it did seem to take quite a while to complete the configuration of Search Server Express 2008 on the SBS machine, but we have generally noticed this to be standard. So don’t worry, Search Server Express does take a while to complete its installation. With the software installed we created a data share and dumped a whole lot of files in there. Next we scheduled Search Server to index not only Sharepoint but also this data share.

Once the schedule has run we could now successfully search both the server data share and Sharepoint. Impressive to say the least. Now that we were a bit hypo with this success we decided to install Search Server Express onto our production SBS server. Whoa there….we then remembered that Search Server Express 2008 still isn’t production software yet! Over the years we have learnt the hard way that you SHOULDN’T install beta software onto production machines.

Dang, we’ll just have to wait for the final code to be released but the more we see the more we love Microsoft Search Server Express 2008.