Month: April 2011

SPFLogger–A whole new way to look at SharePoint 2010 Logs

One of the most amazing, and little talked about, features of SharePoint 2010 is its new logging database and the power that comes along with it. About 4 months ago I noticed a gap in the market and started talking to 2 friends of mine, David Feldman and Cornelius J. van Dyk, making the statement “I think that this would make for a really neat winforms app.” After some brain storming we decided to take the idea a different direction and use Silverlight 4 RIA Services.

The tool in its initial beta offering is fairly simple, yet elegant. It gives the user a very concise view of their NTEvent Logs, ULS Logs, and Timer Job Logs. Rather than having to write T-SQL against the Logging Database’s views, we provide an easy to use Silverlight interface to quickly and easily view the log entries, complete with filtering and some basic analytics for NTEvent Logs and Timer Job Logs.

This was my first foray into development and coding, as almost all of my career in technology has been spent on the ServerOperationsArchitecture site of the world, and this was an eye opening and career life changing experience. I got to work with 2 of my very good friends on a project that I am very passionate about, and I have been overly supported by my amazing, wonderful, beautiful, and ever patience wife, Jill, and my 2 amazing boys, Max & Sam, as I have dedicated my every waking free moment to this project.

Tonight, after 4 long months, I clicked the button to release SPFLogger to the CodePlex community. Please go check it out and give us feedback so that we can continue to grow and evolve this into something great. It is currently licensed under a dual license which allows for personal use under GPL version 2.0 and a custom license for commercial and closed source applications. Basically we wanted to keep people from using our code to make money without giving some to us, but we want people to be able to use it!

The link is http://spflogger.codeplex.com. We really hope that you love this tool as much as we do.

April 20, 2011
Speaking at SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast 2011 in Boston

My friend, Cornelius J. van Dyk, and I will be presenting at this year’s SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast conference in Boston held April 25-27 at the Marriott Long Wharf.

We will be presenting two sessions, “Heavy Metal PowerPivot” and “SharePoint Logging – The Undiscovered Country”. Both sessions promise to be fresh and exciting so come out and see us if you’re anywhere in the Boston area during that time.

We hope to see you there!

April 5, 2011
Developer Dashboard activation and parameters… up to the elbow…

Activating through PowerShell

In doing some research I have had some difficultly finding a single good resource for how to turn on the Developer Dashboard using PowerShell and what the parameters are for doing so. Here is what several hours or pouring through numerous resources has turned up, and I am sure it is not 100% complete:

Code to turn on the Developer Dashboard

This will turn on the icon at the top right hand corner of your masterpage for anyone with Designer or higher rights.

Optional Parameters

Who can see it?

Some Mask Settings

EmptyMask = allows everyone to see the developer dashboard
FullMask = requires full control policy or site owner permissions to see the developer dashboard
AddAndCustomizePages = default mask setting

There are many more options for Mask Settings which can be found by reviewing the SPBasePermissions list on MSDN.

Options:

1.) Allow everyone to see the Developer Dashboard
    a.) set EmptyMask and remove icon from Masterpage
    b.) append ‘?Developer Dashboard=true‘ to the end of any page you want to see the developer dashboard on
2.) Allow only people with Full Control (policy holders or site owners) to see the Developer Dashboard
    a.) set FullMask
    b.) give the supporting team a full control policy or grant one-off permissions
3.) Leave this setting alone and anyone with Designer or higher rights will see the icon

Is there any more data I can get than this?

TraceEnabled gives the additional section at the bottom of the developer dashboard which gives you:
    1.) Request Details
    2.) Trace Information
    3.) Control Tree
    4.) Session State
    5.) Application State
    6.) Request Cookies Collection
    7.) Response Cookies Collection
    8.) Headers Collection
    9.) Response Headers Collection
    10.) Form Collection
    11.) Query String Variables
    12.) Server Variables

There is a TON of data here that you might not see otherwise, and you only see it if you expand the section at the bottom called:

If you aren’t interested in seeing any of this data or allowing your users to see any of this data, just do not execute this option as the default is set to false.

If you are still stuck in 2007 mindset

Here is the corresponding STSADM Command:

A Quick Note from the Author

All of the above examples have used OnDemand as I believe that is best option, however you can replace OnDemand with Off or On as you see fit, this is just how I am writing it.

Grab a copy of the PowerShell code referenced about from my SkyDrive here.

April 4, 2011