SharePoint 2010 feature receiver not working

Problem: Feature receiver is not firing.

Hypothesis: It's hard to debug feature receivers but it can be setup, however my feature receiver was never getting called.  Implemntation via VS2010 must be wrong.

Resolution: I created a new feature and added a feature receiver, this was working.  The screen shot below shows the differnce in my features that was cause when I renamed the feature.

Number of Accounts needed for SP2010 & Managed service accounts

Problem: How many accounts are required for SharePoint 2010?
Hypothesis: In MOSS I used 7 accounts for farm installs using my default slip-steamed medium/large farm install.  It really depended on what you needed to run.  You can use service accounts to run services in SP2010.
Resolution: SP2010 introduces managed service accounts, that are used for running SharePoint services.  You don't need to know password and it changes the account passwords per your SharePoint policy so a better option in my opinion so I have used them on my 2 installs.  Also pretty nice to only require the 3 accounts for install as shown below:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepoint2010general/thread/a740e3ee-6f2d-473e-a63b-d97e52513754
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662513(office.14).aspx

Summary:
Need AD accounts

1. Administrator account (Admin on local SP boxes, needs domain user account permissions, pref db owner
2. Farm service account/database access account (needs domain user account permissions)
3. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 search service account (needs domain user account permissions)

Reusable content in SP2010 issue

Problem:
1.> Reusable content is added to an html field control as shown below

2.> Under the "Reusable Content" inserted into the page inside the same field contrl, add any OOTB web part.
3.> When you save or publish the page, the html gets mixed around and displays incorectly.

Hypothesis: I have to think this is a bug as each item can be added individually.
Possible Resolution:

• Use different page layouts with more field controls or
• programatically retrieve the reusable content and display it or
• Use a dataview WP with custom xslt to display the reusable content.

Tip: Reusable content is not available inside web parts. So like in MOSS, you cannot insert reusable content inside the OOTB content editor web part. Reusable content is only available in field controls.
Tip: Reusable content is similar to what it was in MOSS, it is available if the SharePoint Server Publishing feature is activated in both the "Site Collection Features" & "Manage Site Features".

Additional info:  Serge Luca confirmed this issue.

Retrieving Publishing Columns using a CAML Query

Overview: LINQ is easy and strongly type however, occasionally we need to get data in an optimised fashion or LINQ won't do the job i.e. inefficient queries, Publishing fields and we need to revert to a CAML query.

Code Example:

Explanation:

1. Perform a CAML query, U2U still works on SP2010 and I use it to work out my CAML query.
2. Add code that performs the query, optimise it (you don't need every field returned by CAML, you can look at the query results without the "ViewFieldOnly" & "IncludeMadatoryFields" setting and you will see how many fields are returned which for big queries isn't good).
3. Using the SPListItem retrieve the field data from the publishing fields.

Andrew Connell explains how to extend SPMetal
Tobias Zimmergrin's blog has good Linq to SharePoint 2010 info, his blog on showing the CAML generated by LINQ to SharePoint queries is invaluable to work out what SPMetal is generating.
Update: 09/10/2010 Extend SPMetal to retrieve list attachments

Update 27/10/2010 - A re-hash of Tobias Zimmergrin's blog describing retrieving the CAML generated by a LINQ to sharePoint Query.

MCTS and SP version comparison

MS version comparison for SP2010
Exams:
Mike Smith's Blog on 70-573
SharePoint 2010 Application development 70-573
70-573 Exam notes
Exam 70-576: PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications

Best Practice Sharepoint 2010 coding tips

1.> SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool - Run the SP Dispose Checker Tool on all custom code you write.
SPSite & SPWeb object has a big load and we need to ensure dispose is always called. 2 easiest ways to ensure Site and web objects are always disposed are shown below:
SPSite site;
try
{
site = new SPSite("http://demo1"); // Create the SPSite object
...
}
finally
{
if (site != null) // Check if the SPSite object exists
{
site.Dispose(); // Clean up the SPSite object as it has not be disposed of
}
}
Alternatively I prefer to use using statements
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(http://demo1/))
{
.... // SPSite.Dispose method will be called always
}
Run the SPDisposeCheck tool on all code before deploying outside of you development environment, this can be automated into VS 2010.
2.> Have at least 3 environments i.e. don't send code from the developers machine straight into production. Sandboxed solutions alleviates this risk to some degree but use a UAT, pre-prod, QA environment. Your deployment environment must mimic production as closely as possible i.e. ensure there is a separate SQL DB, all versions of software are identical, load balancing is setup. Have documented change control. Try perform changes through scripts not manual changes if possible. Web.config changes need to be replicated to all servers on the farm so doing the change manually is not the best option. Change the web.config via code to ensure it is done through the configuration database so they are changed on all web.config's in the farm.
3.> Error handling, catch errors as specifically as possible, die gracefully and appropriately, log the errors, check the production error logs periodically.
4.> Deploy code using wsp solutions. Ensure code is not in debug mode when compiled, it runs slower and potentially can crash/holdup your production environment. Implement CAS, deploy to bins if possible and apply CAS security policies to custom coding. Perform peer code reviews, it ensures coding standards are being followed, developers learn from each other, bugs are often picked up pre-testing and it increases team members knowledge that reduces maintenance costs.
5.> Develop using source control no matter how smal the dev project is. Preferably TFS 2010 but VSS 2005 is even fine, failing this use CVS, IMB/rationals ClearCase for source control. Also have bug tracking with TFS the integration is excellent between the bugs and the source control. I.e. use TFS if possible.
6.> SharePoint projects are often very good candidates to SCRUM or other agile methodologies. Use them if it's appropriate. Traditional formal SDLC / waterfall approaches tend to work well on the larger SharePoint projects.
7.> Use the developer dashboard.
8.> Unit testing - don't test SharePoints API, test your custom code. In MOSS Type Mock isolator was a great product for SharePoint I presume this is still the way to go. Andrew Woodward is a good blogger on SP unit testing.

SharePoint 2010 Claims based security & Security notes

Non-Active Directory users in MOSS could support Forms Based Authentication (FBA) so can use SQL to authenticate users, or other providers.
Claims based model decouples authentication from SharePoint.  You can declaratively setup multiple providers. Using Claims Based Authentication (CBA) you can now mix multiple users from different sources in a single zone/site.
In MOSS needed a separate web.config for each set of users.
Using claims based providers can logic/meta-data to provide different users rights depending on rights.
SAML - security access markup language, used instead of Windows identity security tokens. SAM is better in that the token is extendable to give additional authority/claims. I.e. can give additional info on the security token.
CBA allows use to authenticate internal Windows users and external FBA users in the same web app.
Note: Once a claim is validated, the user is added to the SPWeb properties: Users, AllUsers & SiteCollectionUsers before they are authorised.  So as long as they have been authenticated they are added to the properties shown above.

More Info:
Claims explained on Channel 9