Author: dakojususheel@gmail.com

The evolution of SharePoint 2010 has been revolutionary, there were so many new features, capabilities, development changes and architectural enhancements to 2010 when compared with 2007. So with 2013 released we should not be expecting a completely new architecture as most of its architecture is inherited from 2010. Microsoft has always channeled its efforts in making SharePoint a self-service product, heavily encouraging on no-code solutions, using browser and office applications for business needs. So 2013 has some architectural enhancements to support the above and also making SharePoint a better product. This blog post with summarize major enhancements and the related posts would explain each in detail.

•  Database improvements – Contributes to faster & efficient data retrieval
  As Microsoft keeps improving SQL Server version by version, adding more features/   functionality, SharePoint can leverage such enhancements and make it more even powerful in terms of data storage, search and retrieval.
  The following can be treated as highlights of the database enhancements
  1. Shredded Storage
  As the name indicates files are shredded and stored in the content database. Once the user requests a file all the bits and pieces are combined and shown as a single file. So when a file has multiple versions, only the changes on that file are saved to the content database instead of the entire file being saved repeatedly. So no more storing of the entire file, version after version, as it has always been in SharePoint 2007/2010. This would be faster, reduces the amount of space occupied in the content database and also saves on network bandwidth.
  2. The database is Microsoft SQL Azure compliant
  If you wish to host SharePoint 2013 on the cloud the SQL Server database is all set for this. This is quite important to those organization which plan to host their sites on cloud as the new features include Updates to throttling behavior, New event table for trouble shooting, Recursive triggers are supported etc.
  3. Cleaned up databases – Both config and content databases
  Redundant and unused tables are removed and this would clearly enhance the database performance when queried.
  4. Better design
  The SQL Server has an improved schema to support ‘Shredded Storage’ which reduces the input and output operations while using document libraries.
• Request Management
  SharePoint 2013 ships with request management which is designed for ‘Throttling & Routing’, ‘Prioritization’ and ‘Load Balancing’. Please DO NOT consider this as a replacement of ‘Load Balancer’ or ‘Traffic Mangers’ and as a matter of fact your organization MAY NOT require this at all. If you chose to use this make sure you understand the capabilities and if that’s the right choice for the problem.  ‘Request Management’ is just a service instance that run on WFEs (Web Front End server which runs SharePoint Foundation Web Application Service (SPFWA)). This service understands SharePoint and can route requests at the ‘Web Application’ level and this is the key advantage of Request Management. 
• Workflow enhancements
   SharePoint Server 2013 brings a major advancement to workflow: enterprise features such as fully declarative authoring, REST and Service Bus messaging, elastic scalability, and managed service reliability.SharePoint Server 2013 can use a new workflow service built on the Windows Workflow Foundation components of the .NET Framework 4.5. This new service is called Workflow Manager and it is designed to play a central role in the enterprise. More on this can be found at What’s new in workflow in SharePoint Server 2013>>
• Cache Service improvements
  The cache service improvements plays an important factor in building high-performance and scalable applications. In SharePoint 2010 each server has its own cache which is used only if the request comes to that server and so when a request come to a different server the whole information has to be recreated. But SharePoint 2013 introduces Distributed Cache Service (DCS) which is based on the Windows Server AppFabric 1.1. AppFabric Caching stores serialized managed objects in a cache cluster which can be used by all the server to serve the request. This pooled memory is presented to cache clients as a single source of caching memory.
  
• Minimal Download Strategy
  In SharePoint 2010, when a user requests a page or makes changes to it, the whole page is downloaded. But in SharePoint 2013 only changed portions of the page are downloaded using Ajax Delta control which is added to the head section of the master page.
• The Theme Engine
  Themes in SharePoint 2013 are HTML5 compatible and the format is not based on Office Open XML format as in SharePoint 2010. So in SharePoint 2010 you can create new themes using office applications which you can no longer do it in 2013,but you would use browser to preview and publish new themes.
• Mobile Device support in SharePoint 2013
  SharePoint 2013 content is created and delivered based of location aware technique which detects the user-agent and servers the content. So lists are location aware and optimized for mobile delivery. So there are multiple views for enhanced mobile experiences such as Contemporary view (for HTML5 supported browsers), Classic View (for backward compatibility for SharePoint 2010), Full Screen view (for full desktop view on mobile device).
• Deprecated browser support and more supported browser
  Internet explorer 6 and 7 are still supported for content rendering but cannot be used for content authoring, so WCM authors can use IE 8 & above for full support. Other browsers like Chrome, Mozilla FireFox, Apple Safari offer limited support.
  
• New, deprecated  and modified/improved service applications
  This sections provides very brief explanation of the service applications, detailed description is out of scope of this post, but will be covered in later with in SharePoint 2013 blogs
  1. )New service applications
  The following service applications are added to SharePoint 2013
  – Machine Translation
  – Work Management
  – App Management.
  2.) Modified/improved Service Applications
  The following applications are improved in 2013
  – SSA (Search Service Application)
  – MMS (Managed Meta Data Service Application),
  – BCS (Business Connectivity Services),
  – User Profile Service application
  – Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service
  – Access Service Application  which is split into 2 services.
  a.) ‘Access Services 2010‘
  b.) ‘Access Services‘ for 2013 only.
   3.) Deprecated Service Applications
  The following service application are not totally deprecated but served as a different way such a isolating as a separate product or service on server etc.
  – ‘Office Web Apps’ is no longer a service applications and is packaged as a separate service product.
  – ‘Web Analytics’ is no longer a service application but is part and parcel of SharePoint search engine.
  – ‘Power Point Automation Service’ is no longer a service applications but can be started using ‘Service On Server’ page in SharePoint.
• Web Application and Site Collection improvements
  Microsoft now recommends using Claims based authentication by default and also use Hosted Named Site Collections. With HNSC each site collections can be accessed using its own top-level URL even though they originate from the same content database. 
• SharePoint 2013 development changes
  1. ) SharePoint Apps – Any hosting services to run and deploy your app
  This is something new to SharePoint and also its developer community. The concept is old and is similar to how we have apps hosted in Android market, Microsoft or Apple’s app store. They are all apps & everything in there is an app. This is direction the ‘Apps for SharePoint’ is going even faster. Apps are easier to integrate with cloud services,  Office suite and has even better platform for distribution.  In spite of all this complex technical evolution of apps, as always Microsoft provided easier options to create apps as web applications using HTML, JavaScript or using  server side programming languages like C#, VB.NET or PHP. Now the developer
  2.) Extended Client-Object Model
  This would enable custom code can be created by using a similar apps model
  3.) Alternative choice to  Sandbox solution
  Microsoft still continues to support farm solutions, but there are not major enhancements to Sandbox solutions and recommends using App instead of Sandbox solution. Now the choice would be either Farm solution or App instead of Farm solution or a Sandbox solution.Details explanation to each of the enhancements would be covered in other articles under SharePoint 2013 category.

References:

• TechNet Microsoft
• Book – Exploring Microsoft SharePoint 2013 by Penelope Coventry
  – This is one of the best technical books I have ever read, the author has outstanding knowledge in the subject. I totally recommend reading this book. I would give total credit, even this blog post for the author

1. Creating InfoPath:
I have created the following InfoPath for demonstration purpose, please ignore the content. Before we go further  I believe you have your InfoPath form ready for deployment.

InfoPath form

2. Publish InfoPath: Please follow the below steps to publish the InfoPath form

Step 1: Change the Security Level to “Full Trust”.

Note: This is required because the private assembly for a managed code form template is running under a hosted CLR application domain, the security settings for forms require full trust.

Step 2: Click on the ‘Info’ and you should find ‘Publish your form’

Step 3: Locate the path where you want to publish and name the template appropriately

Step 4: If you are not sure you may leave this field empty

Step 5:  Publish the form.

3. Create Visual  Studio Project:

Step 1 : Create an empty SharePoint project

Step 2:  Add a feature and name it appropriately. Please make sure you have ‘Site’ as the scope of the feature as this InfoPath is deployed as content type

Step 3:  Add a new Element File
Note: Empty elements are most often used to define SharePoint project items that lack a project or project item template in Visual Studio, such as fields. When you add an empty element to your project, it contains a single file that is named Elements.xml. Use XML statements to define the desired elements in Elements.xml

Creating Empty Element

Step 4: Add the dll and the InfoPath to the element folder as shown below

Step 5: Configure element properties as shown below.
Note: Use the XsnFeatureReceiver class to trap events that are raised after an InfoPath form template installation, uninstallation, activation, or deactivation on the server. The assembly and class name used to trap these events must be referenced in the feature.xml file used to deploy the SharePoint feature containing one or more InfoPath form templates.

Feature.xml file would look as below
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii" standalone="yes"?>
<Feature Id="39EBA28E-2238-4C82-A37E-81BAEBFB7A61" 
    Title="Simple Form Template" 
    Description="This feature deploys infopath as content type" 
    Version="1.0.0.0" 
    Scope="Site" 
    ReceiverClass="Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.Administration.XsnFeatureReceiver" 
    ReceiverAssembly="Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" 
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
    <ElementManifests>
        <ElementManifest Location="Elements.xml" />
        <ElementFile Location="InfoPathasFeature.xsn" />
    </ElementManifests>
    <ActivationDependencies>
        <ActivationDependency FeatureId="C88C4FF1-DBF5-4649-AD9F-C6C426EBCBF5" />
    </ActivationDependencies>
</Feature>

Step 6: Include the .xsn, dll to be a part of deployment files.
If you preview your feature you would see the following the are no items in the feature except for the ‘Element.xml’. See how it changes after completing this step

Modify the xsn properties, change the ‘Deployment Type’ to ‘Element File’

Modify the dll properties, change the ‘Deployment  Type’ to ‘ElementFile’

Note: Setting the ‘DeploymentType’ to ‘ElementFile’ specifies the deployment of element files to SharePoint. Element files are referenced by the feature manifest (feature.xml). The default path for ElementFile is {SharePointRoot}TemplateFeatures.

After completing the above modifications, you will find the items in the feature as show below.

Step 7: Package and Deploy the project

Step 8: After you are done with deployment, verify if the folder structure is shown as below

Modify List Settings:

Follow the below steps to set the default content types to the form library.

Navigate to the advanced setting of the ‘Form Templates’ library and select ‘Yes’ as shown below.

Navigate to the ‘Add  Content Types’ Screen & if you select “All Groups” or preferable “Microsoft InfoPath” you should find the “InfoPathasFeature” Content Type in the list.

Check if the content type is added:

Your are done! Check if the InfoPath is showing up if you select ‘New Document’ as below

References:

1. How to: Deploy InfoPath Form Templates with Code
2. Security levels of InfoPath forms
3. XSNFeatureReciever Class

Error1:

I have encountered the following error “Microsoft InfoPath has stopped working” while trying to open VSTA (Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications) via the InfoPath form. I was trying to leverage ‘Edit from Code’ option available in InfoPath. I tried  troubleshooting for a while, searched for errors in my event log and researched a bit to find a solution. But failed! The following solution did work for me, but there could be hundred different reasons why it failed on you. Hopefully the following solution saves some time for you

Solution: For unknown reasons VSTA failed to locate the code that it was referencing previously. I have deleted the references to code using ‘Remove Code’ option in InfoPath and reattached the code and everything worked fine seamlessly! This basically involves navigating to Developer>Language> Form Options> Programming> Remove Code. After completing this, point ‘Project Location’ to where the form code existed before and hit ‘OK’.

Error2:

Task failed because “sgen.exe” was not found, or the .NET Framework SDK v2.0 is not installed.  The task is looking for “sgen.exe” in the “bin” subdirectory beneath the location specified in the SDKInstallRootv2.0 value of the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoft.NETFramework.  You may be able to solve the problem by doing one of the following:  1.) Install the .NET Framework SDK v2.0.  2.) Manually set the above registry key to the correct location.  3.) Pass the correct location into the “ToolPath” parameter of the task

Solution:

This error started coming up when I added web reference to VSTA and started to build the application. The whole error is all about the setting in the project settings “Generate Serialization Assembly” this setting was initially “Auto” so I have set this to “Off” and the build was successful. When the the setting was set to “Auto” the VSTA was trying to find sgen.exe (XML Serializer Generator –  this tool creates an XML serialization assembly for types in a specified assembly in order to improve the startup performance of a XmlSerializer when it serializes or deserializes objects of the specified types).

Error3:

I have encountered the following error while I tried to run my VSTA that loads my InfoPath form to debug. “InfoPath cannot open files selected forms because of an error in the form code. Policy settings prevent opening Internet forms with managed code. To fix this problem, contact your system administrator”

Solution: 

It appears that some forms need to be in full trust if they contain managed code. I gave the form ‘Full trust’. This scenario works for me and might not fit well with your environment, please be cautious when using this option as this will enable InfoPath form to access files and settings on the computer.

You must have come to this post searching for ‘Sandbox Solutions’ in one of your favorite search engines. Good that you are at the right place to know in and out of Sandbox solutions.

Why do I need a Sandbox Solution?

Scenario 1# Sometimes I am a dumb programmer.
Programming is like hand writing. The start is the most important. The better the writing habbits are, the better your wrting style is.  Even for a programmer, if good coding habits are not adopted/exercised right from the beginning, he would some how mange to get the stuff working, but he will never realise that its not he best way to do. Especially with SharePoint even after taking a great care in disposing SharePoint objects there might be  chances of bad coding practices to creep in, leaving some objects undisposed which can potentially throttle the server with high memory usage.

You might be thinking of asking me why is Garbage Collector not taking care of this? For instance, when using objects of type ‘SPSite’ or ‘SPWebapplication’, part of the actions do not run under managed code at all. You shouldn’t be surprised to know that CRUD(create, read, update, delete) operations to ‘content’ database are performed by a COM component which does not run managed code and the ‘Garbage Collector’ is not even aware of these objects. This is one reason why you have to dispose your SharePoint objects promptly. To handle situations like this  ‘Sandbox Solution’ is the answer.

Scenario 2# I hate my administrator
As a developer, once you finish your development and have your solution package ready you are eager to deploy it to staging or production. Its not very uncommon to hear from your administrator asking you to come back. You will be pissed off even more if you are a site collection administration and not able to deploy your own solutions to your site with out administrator’s intervention. ‘Sandbox Solution’ is the answer.

Scenario 3# I hate my developer
As an admin, I really get scared when my developers approach and say “The solution package is ready. Can you please deploy that to production?” At that moment, I have so many things going on in my mind. Will his solution get my portal down? I am not sure what his code does, Will it delete all my existing webapplications? Is his code accessing local file system and exposing sensitive data?  Even if I have tools like SPDispose check tool that can check memory leaks, there are very low or no chances of validating his code against any bad practices. ‘Sandbox Solution’ is the answer.

Scenario 4# My client always has a big NO!
For instance consider yourself as a service provider or a product development company. When the clients buy our product/SharePoint solution, what is the guarantee that you don’t have malicious code with in your solution that could access their local files or sensitive data? How can they trust that your code is not consuming too much of their server resources? There might be a situation where the client might not even let you change their folder/file structure, which in many cases the developer becomes handicapped with out being able to change webconfig, or add files to 14/12 hive. ‘Sandbox Solution’ is the answer.

Fortunately to handle situations like above, Microsoft has introduced ‘Sandbox Solutions’. So what is a Solution? Typically development is like solving a puzzle, when you finished solving and got the peices together, its time to pack or wrap it up. So you develop and pack all your folders, files together in file with .wsp extension as a solution to your client’s requirements. So your client has SharePoint installed and needs to deploy this solution in their farm. Once deployed, all these files get into those folders that were created while installing SharePoint. SharePoint picks these up when the end user requests for them via the application built. Contine reading to understand the concept of solution packaging and how ‘Sandbox Solutions’  provide solutions to the above mentioned scenarios….