I am taking a class on Microsoft SharePoint architecture this week. I learned today in the class that the next version of SharePoint will be 64 bit only. If you are going to be buying new server hardware, get 64 bit hardware.

Not only does SharePoint run better on 64 bit hardware, so does MS SQL Server and ColdFusion. You can also take advantage of much more RAM. I believe that 32 bit hardware is limited to a maximum of 2-4 GBs. 64 bit hardware can go up to 256 Terabytes in theory.

SQL Saturday is coming to Jacksonville on Saturday May 3rd, 2008. The conference will be held at the UNF campus.

The SQL Saturday conferences encompass one hour sessions on SQL Server and technologies used in conjunction with SQL Server.

I will be giving a couple of presentations this year at this conference. You can go and register now, and the registration is free.

I have been developing a lot of windows workflows and web services in .NET recently. I came across a need to convert a WMF file (Windows Meta File) into a gif file. SQL Server Reporting Services can not display WMF files.

.NET 2.0 can convert and resize images natively. Here is how I converted the WMF files. First I added the following using statements;

InfoPath saves images as Base64 strings, and .NET treats this as a byte array. So I had to convert the WMF byte array to a gif byte array.

I have been developing custom Sharepoint workflows in Visual Studio 2005 over the past year. It can be fustrating developing for Sharepoint 2007 because Microsoft has done a lousy job documenting the Sharepoint API.

The SendMail activity in the workflow tools does not allow for email attachments. I found a good work around is to use the .NET email API in a custom code activity.

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2007 has been an exiting year for me because of many changes in my life. The ColdFusion 8 launch was very exiting and has been successful for Adobe. I wish I had more time to devote to the JaxFusion user group this year to cover all of the new features.

I also started a new job working as a technical consultant. I did that to get more hands on experience using the BI features in SQL Server 2005. I also have had the opportunity to work with Microsoft Sharepoint and .NET this year. It has been great to learn new things related to these other products.

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy and safe new year.

I recently came across a nasty bug in Sharepoint 2007. When a custom workflow uses an intiation form to collect data for the start of a workflow, it will only collect this form when the workflow is run manually.

Workflow intiation forms can be created using InfoPath or aspx pages to collect data that can be used in the workflowProperties.InitiationData property. This form is only presented to the user when the workflow is run manualy in Sharepoint 2007. If you set the workflow to start automatically when an item is created or changed, Sharepoint will not present this form to collect the InitiationData.

There are a couple of work arounds you can use to get around this bug. One is you can set the InitiationData using an Association form when the workflow is first added to the Sharepoint list. You can also just make sure not to select the 'Start this workflow when a new item is created' or the 'Start this workflow when a new item is changed' check boxes.

I am working on project now where we are creating reports and saving them to a document library in Sharepoint 3. I am automating this by using .NET code to create the subdirectories and files in the document library. I have not seen a lot of good code examples on how to do this on the internet, but this is how I am doing it in C#.

When I add a folder to the document library I used the following code;

To add a file from a filestream, I used the following code;

I have been building Sharepoint Custom workflows this year and came across a nasty problem when I tried to reference the workflowProperties field in the onWorkflowActivated activity. I kept on getting a System.ArgumentNullException. The problem was actually a simple one to fix. I had not set the onWorkflowActivated property correctly to use the workflowProperties field. By the default when you replace this activity, it does not highlight that the workflowProperties need to be set to a field or property in your workflow.