Posts Tagged ‘development environment’

Sometimes I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t listen to anyone. I also don’t read manuals or bother with tech support. If I can’t figure a system out in a few minutes then I assume it’s so wonky or complicated then it’s not worth my time. It’s a finely tuned skill I’ve progressed over the years and I have to say that I haven’t come across anything too bad that I can’t handle.

I have a system with several VirtualPC images. One of those images is for the new SharePoint 2003 version. It’s an all inclusive system: AD Domain Controller (SharePoint needs one and in a development environment, it’s not nice to hijack the corporate one without asking), SPS, MSDE, Visual Studio.NET, etc. When you do an install of SPS on a domain controller, it does not give you the option of installing MSDE (because its not a supported configuration). They assume that you will have a SQL server on another box. So I decided to install MSDE ahead of time and avoid the problem. The install took a while (with all that software don’t plan anything with the wife for the night). After it was done, it was time to create a new portal. It churned and churned and churned, but in the end blew up and spat out a Portal Creation error. Grrrrr. Arrgh.

Poking around the MSKB I found some possibilities:

• Make sure SQL (or MSDE) is installed with collation set to Case Insensitive. Yeah, got that.
• Make sure there are no anti-virus tools on the server that aren’t built with SharePoint in mind. Check, got that.
• Make sure SQL (or MSDE) is using TCP/IP. Huh? Nope. So I changed it. Churn, churn, churn as it created the site. There was much rejoicing.

So the moral of the story: unless time is not important to you, when they say unsupported, listen to them.

I was in a mist when I posted the new SimExplorer information. Yes, it does work with Makin’ Magic the latest EP. I had looked up at my collection and the last one on the rack was Superstar but it has been tested with MM so no worries there.

For those that care, the Developer Challenge I put on at work was me locking 3 teams of 5 people each into a room for a day. Their mission was to take an existing app based on legacy technology and rewrite it using .NET. It’s a way to get the company closer to the .NET world and get the developers motivated for success. It was a huge event with testers, co-ordinators, all kinds of people on call in case the teams needed anything. Basically a perfect development environment for writing an app, no red tape and everything you need at your fingertips. The teams knocked out 3 new .NET apps that we’ll be deploying in the new year.