MOSS Interview Questions & Answers

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Event receivers allow responding to events as they occur within SharePoint, such as adding an item or deleting an item. They inherit from the SpItemEventReciever or SPListEventReciever base class

Event receivers respond to events, thus used for something as canceling an action, e.g. deleting a document library by using the Cancel property. This would prevent users from deleting any documents if you wanted to maintain the data.

An asynchronous event takes place after an action has taken place, and a synchronous event occurs before the action has take place.

A .ddf file: Data Directive File. It contains the metadata like the source files and their destination locations. The .ddf file is passed as a parameter to the MAKECAB utility to orchestrate construction of the SharePoint solution file.

A SharePoint solution file is compressed file that contains custom components. It is suffixed with a .wsp extension that aids in deployment.

Differences between the .cab and the SharePoint solution files are:

Solution files allow easy deployment to all Web Front End's.
Solution files are highly manageable from the interface.
Solution files can provide Code Access Security to avoid GAC deployments.

A solution file contains: aspx files, DLLs, resource files, definition files.

ClassResources are defined in the SharePoint solution file. It is a helpful directory to use in order to deploy custom images. In ASP.NET 2.0, objects (images) are referenced by embedding them as resources within an assembly. ClassResources allows us to eliminate recompiles to change small interface adjustments or alterations to external JavaScript files. Just saving the files can work.

WebPart properties are just like ASP.NET control properties, they are used to specify the characteristics of a webpart and by specifying the attributes with the desired values by a user. Some of the attributes are WebDescription, WebDisplayName, Category, Personalizable, and WebBrowsable.

Impersonation is the concept of providing functionality in the context of a different identity, for example letting a user access the system with anonymous access. You would use impersonation in order to access resources on behalf of the user with a different account, that normally, that would provide just the very basic rights to access the system.

CAML: - Collaborative Application Markup Language.

It is an XML based language and provides data constructs used to build up the SharePoint fields and is also used for table definition. CAML is used to build or customize SharePoint based sites and construct a CAML query in a WebPart to retrieve values from a SharePoint List.

Create a reference to the SharePoint Lists.asmx web service by appending “/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx” to the end of a site name. One can use this url to add a service reference in Visual studio there onwards. This will query the WSDL for the Lists.asmx service.

Next step is to configure the security to be able to call the service methods. You can do this by altering the bindingConfiguration to indicate the transport uses NTLM authentication, which is the default.

We can then iterate through all the lists.

e.g:

ServiceReference1.ListsSoapClient proxy = new ServiceReference1.ListsSoapClient();

proxy.ClientCredentials.Windows.ClientCredential = new NetworkCredential();

XmlNode node = proxy.GetListCollection();

XPathNavigator nav = node.CreateNavigator();

XPathNodeIterator iter = nav.SelectDescendants("List", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/", false);

while (iter.MoveNext())

{

string title = iter.Current.GetAttribute("Title", string.Empty);

string id = iter.Current.GetAttribute("ID", string.Empty);

Messagebox.Show ("title:" + title + “ and id:” + id);

}

writer.Flush();

The SPWebApplication class consists of various methods and properties to perform various manipulations on web applications. i.e. Perform backups, add content databases, add site collections, set alert settings, change the web.config file etc. The class simply represents the IIS load balanced web application that is installed on the server farm.

Difference between SPSite and SPWeb object

SPSite
The SPSite object represents a collection of sites, i.e. Site Collection, a top level site and all its sub sites.

SPWeb
The SPWeb object represents an instance of a SharePoint Web, and the SPWeb object contains things like the actual content

SPWeb.EnsureUser method validates whether the specified login name belongs to a valid user of the website or not. If the login name does not exist then it adds the login name to the website.

Eg:

Dim instance As SPWeb

Dim loginName As String

Dim returnValue As SPUser

returnValue = instance.EnsureUser(loginName)

AllowUnsafeUpdates allows updates on a GET request. It basically allows code to bypass security validation while making changes to Sharepoint objects which are not executed within a HTTP POST request.

Comparison of UserControl and WebPart

Advantages of UserControl:

Developers are already familiar with user controls which reduce the learning curve.
UserControls can be used with other ASP.NET applications. Hence reusable.
Developing user controls using Visual studio is much faster than building it through code as in the case of WebParts.

Disadvantages of UserControl:

There is a performance overhead as usercontrol use a shim as a wrapper to work with Sharepoint.
Deployment is a bit messy.

Advantages of WebPart:

Everything is available and customizable, i.e. toolbar, behavior, content etc.
Better performance as there is no shim wrapper.
Provide a structured deployment mechanism.

Disadvantages of WebPart:

Developers are unfamiliar so learning curve is steeper.
They are strictly for Sharepoint and won’t work with other ASP.NET applications. Thus not reusable.

The WebPartManager sealed class manages everything in context of a WebPart page, i.e. WebParts controls, events, functionality in WebPartZones etc. It is also known as the central class of the WebPart control set.

Authentication methods supported by Sharepoint:

Classic-mode authentication methods

Anonymous
Basic
Digest
Certificates
NTLM
Negotiate (Kerberos or NTLM)

Claims-based authentication methods

Windows

Anonymous
Basic
Digest
Certificates
NTLM
Negotiate (Kerberos or NTLM)

Forms Based

LDAP
SQL Database or other databases
Custom or third party membership and role providers

SAML token-based authentication

Active directory federation services 2.0
Windows Live ID
Third-party identity providers

RunWithElevatedPrivileges executes code as the System account. This basically then means that the code that you supply as a delegate to the method, has full permissions to modify SharePoint objects in question.

One can create custom application pages to add GUI components in Sharepoint. Unlike site pages, an application page is deployed only once per Webserver. Application pages cannot be customized based on sites, and are based on virtual _layouts directory. Application pages are all compiled together into a single dll and are also used across all sites within a server farm. They are preferred to site pages because of their performance benefits over them and they also support inline code.

Sharepoint Websites exist in a hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy is a Top-Level website. There can then be multiple sub sites under this top-level website and sub sites under sub sites. The entire structure is then called a site collection.

Administrators can decide who can create sub sites under the top level website. One can see the list of sites and sub sites below the top level site by using the Sites and Workspaces web page. The list shows only one level at a time.

The Sharepoint Team Services provides an efficient text based search capability to find documents and information.

Features of search component:

Consistent and familiar search experience.
Increased relevance of results as a result of a search.
Search for people and expertise
Ability to index and search data in other business applications using business connectors.
Improved manageability and extensibility.

MOSS provides enhanced document management including document authoring, business document processing, web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing.

Content management is divided into 3 categories:

Document management: Manage documents in the Document Center, Manage translation documents and processes, Convert documents on the server, and Integrate document management on the server and the client.

Records management: Implement information management policies, Limit actions on files that are downloaded from sites, Manage records retention in the Records Center, and Manage e-mail records.

Web content management: Improve the consistency and efficiency of your site design, Customize sites with Office SharePoint Designer 2007, Publish SharePoint sites more systematically, Create and update pages from the Web-based content editor, Create and update pages from 2007 Office release client programs, Create and maintain variations of a site, Manage site navigation more easily, and Manage sites more effectively.

The Sharepoint Site Server has search capabilities which are more advanced using SharePoint. It uses digital dashboard technology, which provides a nice interface for creating web parts and also allows showing them on dashboards pages. Site Server on the other hand, does not have anything as advanced as that. The biggest difference would be Sharepoint Portal Server’s document management features which also integrate with web folders and MS Office.

A collection of sites along with the top level site is known as a single site collection in Sharepoint. While creating a new Web Application, one has to follow creating a site collection to specify the content of the web application. A web application can thus even contain thousands of site collections. The web application is needed to host those site collections. Web application is the logical & physical partition/container within IIS to create portals.

Advanced features of MOSS 2007:

My site personal site: Provides users an opportunity to aggregate information into “for me, by me, about me”.
User profiles and profile store: Enables every user to store profile information.
Audience targeting: Allows use of Webpart based pages, Web parts, and content to target distribution lists and groups.
Infopath forms services: Enable designing web based forms and distribute them on intranets, internet. User can use the forms in a browser, or even mobile devices supporting browsers without any client components.
Business data catalog: Allows for integration of external data into MOSS. This provides the users with a consistent GUI experience. Enhanced workflow engine
Provides BI and reporting capabilities
Provides records management capabilities.