I'm still alive!

It's been a while since my last post, I just looked and it's from September 2011, wow, that's along time...

Hopefully that's going to change, let's see ;-)

For now, I just want to highlight this great service from the guys at CloudShare, I just found out that they are offering a trial of a full Sharepoint 2013 environment, with 3 machines, AD+SQL+MOSS2013. And also 2010 if you want a quick access to a 2010 server.

The remote access is done via java applet, it's a bit slow and weird but it does the job, and if you don't have access to a 2013 RTM ISO, this is a nice way to get to know the platform.

I found about CloudShare, by the great SP guru Andrew Connell, and Critical Path Training. The post is from March 2012 so this isn't fresh news, but the 2013 part should be 'kinda' fresh :)

I haven't seen this type of service, at least for free (even for this small amount of time, 14 days for 2010 and 2 days for 2013) anywhere, and if there are more around, please do share!

If you do not care for the 2010 trial, just go to CloudShare site and create a trial account and fire up Sharepoint 2013, have fun!

Log Parser

Just found out about Log Parser 2.2 from Microsoft, and while I was at it, i grabbed Visual Log Parser from CodePlex for a nice GUI (who likes cl right?)

This is simple app that I found out while trying to understand by IIS was recycling too many times and browsing this post.

It looks like you can query your EventViewer and a ton of other Log repositories just like a regular SQL database:

Select top 100 *

from \\server\System where SourceName = 'W3SVC'

and EventID in (1009;1010;1011;1074;1077;1078;1079;1080;1117)

order by timegenerated desc

Better than scrolling up and down right? You can even build up some VBS or something else to have some real time data from your logging. And this will work for different log platforms.

Remote Log4Net

You probably know this already, or this might not come as a surprise but enabling log4net to log to a remote place is really simple.

We had a scenario of only one front end with custom systems using log4net, but we needed to add a second front end, and with that the question about what to do about logging.

I wasn't aware how simple is to enable remote logging on log4net. So, heads up if you were like me:

Get log4net Remove Logging Service at CodePlex (you can get the source and change at your will), after install this will create a listener service where you want to store your remote log repository.

Then, at your local clients just change the appender to something like this

<appender name="remotAppend" type="log4net.Appender.RemotingAppender" >

<sink value="tcp://remoteserver:port/Log4netRemotingServerService" />

<lossy value="false" />

<bufferSize value="10" />

<onlyFixPartialEventData value="true" />

</appender>

At your Remote repository use your favorite appender, RollingLogFileAppender or whatever.

Remember to add the hostname property to your layout type: (%-10property{log4net:HostName}).

Something like this:

<appender name="RollLogAppender" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">

<file value="C:\LOGS\MYAPP.log.txt" />

<appendToFile value="true" />

<rollingStyle value="Date" />

<encoding value="UTF-8" />

<datePattern value="'.'yyyy'.'MM'.'dd'.'HH'.log.txt'" />

<lockingModel type="log4net.Appender.FileAppender+MinimalLock" />

<layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">

<conversionPattern value="%date (%-10property{log4net:HostName}) [%thread] %-5level %logger - %message%newline" />

</layout>

</appender>

Maybe you could do without this Codeplex service, but since it was so simple and the component is working fine I didnt waste any time looking for alternatives.

If you dont agree, please comment, shed some light :) Thank you.

Full documentation on:

http://log4netremotelogging.codeplex.com/

http://logging.apache.org/log4net/index.html

Another tool for BDC

Just found out about a new tool from Simego for BDC Application Definition Files, MOSS BDC Design Studio($200) is cheaper than Metaman($1200) and it seems that it does some things Metaman doesnt.

More reviews here and here.

PS: I'm on a small project working with BI, SSAS and SRS with SharePoint, mostly setting up the envorinment and found out the value of SQL Profiler ;)

Oh and its nice to work with Reports inside Sharepoint, real fun.

Also designing some simpler than Visual Studio Workflows on SPD, a bit weird at first but after you get it its pretty straight forward.