BIFocal LLC

Month: June 2011

  • Office Web Apps Service Pack 1 is here!

    It has almost gone overlooked, but Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are not the only products to get a Service Pack 1 release today.  I know that the Office Web Apps are a bolt on to SharePoint 2010 and so they don’t get a whole lot of attention, but from an end user feature enhancement perspective, I am almost more excited about the Office Web Apps SP1 than anything else released today (Office 365 not withstanding).

    Sourced directly from Microsoft’s KB2460073:

    Overview of Office Web Apps SP1 improvements

    These are the key areas of improvement in SP1.

    All Office Web Apps

    • OpenDocument Format (ODF) support:
      Lets you view and edit ODF documents in Office Web Apps.
    • Lets you use Office Web Apps with the Google Chrome browser.
    • Outlook Web App document attachment viewing (for Exchange Online only):
      Lets you view Office document attachments in the browser directly from Outlook Web App.
    • Lets you use Office Web Apps with Internet Explorer 9 in Native mode.

    Word Web App

    Lets you print Word documents from Edit mode (in addition to View mode).

    Excel Web App

    • Added a Close button.
    • Lets you insert charts in Excel Web App.
    • Lets you copy and paste values and formulas by dragging the fill handle.

    PowerPoint Web App

    • Lets you print presentations from PowerPoint Web App.
    • Lets you edit text in more shapes, not just placeholder shapes.
    • Lets you insert clip art in PowerPoint Web App. (By default clip art support is disabled. An administrator can decide to enable it.)

     It is important to keep in mind that Microsoft has already released the June 2011 Cumulative Updates that contain security patches important enough to be released simultaneously with these Service Packs, so be sure to install that as well.

    Also, Microsoft has already released a list of known issues when installing Service Pack 1.  The Office Web Apps specific item,sourced directly from Microsoft’s KB2532126, is:

    • If Office Web Apps will be used in a mixed version environment, where Office Web Apps has SP1-or-later applied while SharePoint Server 2010 remains on the RTM version, you must install the following two updates before you install SP1 for Office Web Apps:

      • 2510639 Description of the SharePoint Server 2010 update: April 12, 2011

      • 2510648 Description of the Office Web Apps update: April 12, 2011

    Here are the download links:

    Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office Web Apps 2010 (KB2460073)
    http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26639

    Downloadable list of issues that the service pack fixes
    http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/0/D/B0D1540B-6CF6-4674-9C8E-7A45FD91C163/Microsoft%20SharePoint%202010%20and%20Office%20servers%20Service%20Pack%201%20Changes.xlsx

    SharePoint Foundation 2010 June 2011 CU (UPDATED)
    http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbln=en-us&kbnum=2536601

  • SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 is here!

    Today Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 which is a rollup of all previous Cumulative Updates through April 2011, which means that deploying directly on top of RTM bits supported, as well as number of stability, performance, and security enhancements based upon customer feedback.  There is a detailed white paper that about the Service Pack that can be found at this location.​ ​

    CAVEAT: Microsoft strongly recommends installing the June 2011 Cumulative Update immediately after the installation of Service Pack 1. The June Cumulative Update includes several important security and bug fixes that are not included SP1.

    Here is the list of of the new features in SP1:

    · Support for SQL Server Code Name “Denali”

    anyone who has read any of my tweets or articles has probably noticed that I am a fan of Denali, so this is a huge feature for me

    · Shallow copy functionality

    this new feature allows sites with externalized blobs to be moved from one contentdb to another without having to reinternalize the blobs using the Move-SPSite powershell cmdlet. 

    The white paper states​:

    Prerequisite
    In order to use shallow copy, you must have installed the Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Remote Blob Store. The Remote Blob Store is included in the Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 SP1 Community Technology Preview Feature Pack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/LinkId=221775).

    There are a couple of things that jump out at me here that are concerning:

    1. The link doesn’t work
    2. SP1 supports functionality that is only available in SP1 CTP?  RBS is supported in SQL 2008 R2, does it work with that? (I fully intend to test this and post back, but it is a concern that I felt was worthy of raising)

    I’m not getting all nervous about this just yet since this all just released today.  It will be interesting to see what comes of this over the next couple of days/weeks, but it is a VERY exciting feature if it works as advertised.

    · Site recycle bin

    Great feature to allow self recovery of Site Collections and Sites without having to revert to backups or third party tools.

    · Improvements to storage management (StorMan.aspx)

    Storage Space Allocation is huge when dealing with quota enforced sites.  This page, which was available in versions prior to 2010, allows end users to view their large files and determine what fat to trim to keep within their quotas.

    · Cascading filters for Performance Point services

    Quoted from the white paper: “New cascading filter support enables you to pass the value of one filter to another.”

    · Additional browser support

    Better support for Chrome

    One more piece of really useful information to come out of the white paper:

    Updated Windows PowerShell Commandlets

    · NEW: Get-SPDeletedSite (SharePoint Server 2010)

    · NEW: Remove-SPDeletedSite (SharePoint Server 2010)

    · NEW: Restore-SPDeletedSite (SharePoint Server 2010)

    · Move-SPSite (RBSProviderMapping parameter added) (SharePoint Server 2010)

    Here are the download links:

    Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010 (KB2460058)
    http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26640

    Service Pack 1 for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2460045)
    http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26623

    Downloadable list of issues that the service pack fixes
    http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/0/D/B0D1540B-6CF6-4674-9C8E-7A45FD91C163/Microsoft%20SharePoint%202010%20and%20Office%20servers%20Service%20Pack%201%20Changes.xlsx

    SharePoint Foundation 2010 June 2011 CU (UPDATED)
    http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbln=en-us&kbnum=2536601

    SharePoint Server 2010 June 2011 CU (UPDATED)
    http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbln=en-us&kbnum=2536599

  • SQL Server Default Trace

    In every version since SQL 2005 there has been a “background trace” enabled by default on all SQL Server installations.  This was a bit of a shocking revelation to me, as I am not a DBA, since every time I have called Microsoft dozens upon dozens of times and talked to tier 3 support / product team members for SQL Server and none of them have mentioned this fact when we have been diagnosing issues in SQL.  We have always had to set up a new trace.

    Use the following command to validate that the default trace is enabled:

    image

    This will return something that looks like:

    traceid

    property

    value
    1 1 2
    1 2 E:MSSQL10_50.instanceMSSQLLo​glog_560.trc  
    1 3 20
    1 4 NULL
    1 5 1

    From MSDN we get a legend that helps us under stand the above output:

    Column name Data type Description

    traceid

    int

    ID of the trace.
    property int

    Property of the trace:

    1= Trace options. For more information, see @options in sp_trace_create (Transact-SQL).

    2 = File name

    3 = Max size

    4 = Stop time

    5 = Current trace status. 0 = stopped. 1 = running.
    value sql_variant Information about the property of the trace specified.

    The question I have heard most often since this discovery is “What does it matter?  Microsoft has it turned on by default so that must mean they intended it that way.  It must not cause a performance impact.  Right?”

    After I stopped laughing at the idea that because Microsoft turned it on by default it must be ok (see Windows 2000 and before where everything was turned on and wide open upon install) I explained that the default trace is dropped into the installed Logs directory.  This cannot be changed.  You can stop the default trace and create your own, but that will break some of the built in reports that rely upon it.

    The key is knowing that this is there.  While it may be lightweight and designed to be non-impactful, if you have anything else with a write intensive load directed at the same spindles you can expect to see some contention.

    The positive of it is that now that we know it is there, it is extremely useful in troubleshooting.  The default trace can be queried by using the following command to pull back the most useful data (querying * pulls back WAY too much data for my taste):

    image

    Enjoy!