SQL Server Cluster Instance/Node Command

xp_cmdshell 'cluster group'

Email users limit in MOSS 2007

Microsoft Internet Explorer has a maximum uniform resource locator (URL) length of 2,083 characters. Internet Explorer also has a maximum path length of 2,048 characters. This limit applies to both POST request and GET request URLs.

If you are using the GET method, you are limited to a maximum of 2,048 characters, minus the number of characters in the actual path.

However, the POST method is not limited by the size of the URL for submitting name/value pairs. These pairs are transferred in the header and not in the URL.

STSADM backup/restore

Backup

stsadm -o backup -url http://SiteCollectionURL -filename //SharedDrive/Directory.dat -overwrite

Restore

stsadm -o restore -url http://SiteCollectionURL -filename //SharedDrive/Directory.dat -overwrite

Things to know as a Tech Consultant !!

IT Expertise:

Core

IIS 6/7
Windows Server 2003/2008
DNS/WINS (Name Resolution)
TCP/IP & other network considerations
SQL Server 2005 Advanced Administration (Backup, Monitoring, Logshipping or Database Mirroring)
Basic Firewall rules and Proxy
IT Infrastructure Design
Hardware Acquisition (RAM, CPU, Disk I/O, and other hardware considerations)
Performance Monitoring
Capacity Planning
Growth Management
Workflow (Windows Workflow Foundation)
Client Troubleshooting & Support: IE, Firefox, Safari, Office XP, 2003, 2007, etc...
HTML & Client side scripting (Javascript, AJAX, DHTML, XSL, XSLT, XHTML)
Exchange and SMTP integration (Inbound and Outbound email including contact objects)
High Availability: Microsoft Cluster Services, Windows Network Load Balancing
Storage: Appliances, HBAs, SANs, Archive Storage
Backup Solutions: Various Tape, Hardware and software snapshots, software nearline and offline storage (soon to add DPM 2007)
Hardware load balancing, ISA Secure Web Publishing
IAG (Internet Application Gateway) Whale Communications
Single Sign on integration
Connection Monitoring & Troubleshooting (ADO.NET, Web Services, CDO)
Global Deployments - Multi farm deployments
Dev, Test, Staging, Production - Staged deployments
MOF, ITIL, MSF Frameworks and strong understanding of the development life cycle
Virtualization - Virtual Server 2005, Virtual PC, VMWare

Solutions:

Internet Publishing
Internet Community Portal
Intranet Central Search Portal
Intranet Departmental Dashboard Portal
Intranet Collaboration
Business Process Management
Extranet Collaboration
Document Management
Records repository
BI Solutions
Search Center or Intranet and Internet Search Solutions
Reports Center
Mobile Solutions
Remote employee solutions
Multi lingual solutions
Project Server
Web 2.0 Solution: Blogs, Wikis, Social Networking (Profiles & My Sites)

Extended

AD (Group Policies, Security Groups, DLs, Contacts, authentication, and attributes for profile import)
Desktop Management (IE settings, Office deployment, storage and collaboration considerations)
MOM Systems Center Operations Monitoring of performance and system health of servers and dependencies
WAN and Network performance testing and considerations, (minimum performance levels) caching
File Services & (extremely light... policy SMS and Patching considerations)
Antivirus management solutions like Forefront
Presence Integration (LCS, Office Live Communication Server, SMTP and SIP)
Understanding and supporting Dev: ASP.NET, C#, Assemblies, GAC, Bin, web.config, web parts, web part connections, missing assemblies
MIIS in cross forest or resource forest scenarios or dynamic security groups
Migration Skills: Public Folders, Documentum, Lotus Notes, CMS, WebSphere
Interop and Integration

Office Interoperability (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook)
Project Server deployment
Microsoft Dynamics (CRM, ERP, AXAPTA, GreatPlains, etc...)
Infopath forms troubleshooting and basic design skills (XML, HTML)
Visio integration
Biztalk
SharePoint Designer for workflows, CSS, Design, etc...
Reporting and Analysis Integration: SQL Reporting Services, SQL Analysis Services
SAP integration with Duet
BDC Siebel web services integration
Oracle Financials integration in BDC and Excel Services
Other ADO.NET BDC connections: includes various CRM, ERP, DBMS
Commerce integration in Internet sites
Web Services integration
Documentum, WebSphere
Search/Indexing Integration
Data warehouses RDBMS
Single Sign on solutions and integration with client certificates, smart cards, and 2 factor auth
N tiered web apps, web services, and stores
Samba and NFS?

What Great .NET Developers Ought To Know

Everyone who writes code

Describe the difference between a Thread and a Process?
What is a Windows Service and how does its lifecycle differ from a "standard" EXE?
What is the maximum amount of memory any single process on Windows can address? Is this different than the maximum virtual memory for the system? How would this affect a system design?
What is the difference between an EXE and a DLL?
What is strong-typing versus weak-typing? Which is preferred? Why?
Corillian's product is a "Component Container." Name at least 3 component containers that ship now with the Windows Server Family.
What is a PID? How is it useful when troubleshooting a system?
How many processes can listen on a single TCP/IP port?
What is the GAC? What problem does it solve?

Mid-Level .NET Developer

Describe the difference between Interface-oriented, Object-oriented and Aspect-oriented programming.
Describe what an Interface is and how it’s different from a Class.
What is Reflection?
What is the difference between XML Web Services using ASMX and .NET Remoting using SOAP?
Are the type system represented by XmlSchema and the CLS isomorphic?
Conceptually, what is the difference between early-binding and late-binding?
Is using Assembly.Load a static reference or dynamic reference?
When would using Assembly.LoadFrom or Assembly.LoadFile be appropriate?
What is an Asssembly Qualified Name? Is it a filename? How is it different?
Is this valid? Assembly.Load("foo.dll");
How is a strongly-named assembly different from one that isn’t strongly-named?
Can DateTimes be null?
What is the JIT? What is NGEN? What are limitations and benefits of each?
How does the generational garbage collector in the .NET CLR manage object lifetime? What is non-deterministic finalization?
What is the difference between Finalize() and Dispose()?
How is the using() pattern useful? What is IDisposable? How does it support deterministic finalization?
What does this useful command line do? tasklist /m "mscor*"
What is the difference between in-proc and out-of-proc?
What technology enables out-of-proc communication in .NET?
When you’re running a component within ASP.NET, what process is it running within on Windows XP? Windows 2000? Windows 2003?

Senior Developers/Architects

What’s wrong with a line like this? DateTime.Parse(myString);
What are PDBs? Where must they be located for debugging to work?
What is cyclomatic complexity and why is it important?
Write a standard lock() plus “double check” to create a critical section around a variable access.
What is FullTrust? Do GAC’ed assemblies have FullTrust?
What benefit does your code receive if you decorate it with attributes demanding specific Security permissions?
What does this do? gacutil /l | find /i "Corillian"
What does this do? sn -t foo.dll
What ports must be open for DCOM over a firewall? What is the purpose of Port 135?
Contrast OOP and SOA. What are tenets of each?
How does the XmlSerializer work? What ACL permissions does a process using it require?
Why is catch(Exception) almost always a bad idea?
What is the difference between Debug.Write and Trace.Write? When should each be used?
What is the difference between a Debug and Release build? Is there a significant speed difference? Why or why not?
Does JITting occur per-assembly or per-method? How does this affect the working set?
Contrast the use of an abstract base class against an interface?
What is the difference between a.Equals(b) and a == b?
In the context of a comparison, what is object identity versus object equivalence?
How would one do a deep copy in .NET?
Explain current thinking around IClonable.
What is boxing?
Is string a value type or a reference type?
What is the significance of the "PropertySpecified" pattern used by the XmlSerializer? What problem does it attempt to solve?
Why are out parameters a bad idea in .NET? Are they?
Can attributes be placed on specific parameters to a method? Why is this useful?

C# Component Developers

Juxtapose the use of override with new. What is shadowing?
Explain the use of virtual, sealed, override, and abstract.
Explain the importance and use of each component of this string: Foo.Bar, Version=2.0.205.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=593777ae2d274679d
Explain the differences between public, protected, private and internal.
What benefit do you get from using a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA)?
By what mechanism does NUnit know what methods to test?
What is the difference between: catch(Exception e){throw e;} and catch(Exception e){throw;}
What is the difference between typeof(foo) and myFoo.GetType()?
Explain what’s happening in the first constructor: public class c{ public c(string a) : this() {;}; public c() {;} } How is this construct useful?
What is this? Can this be used within a static method?

ASP.NET (UI) Developers

Describe how a browser-based Form POST becomes a Server-Side event like Button1_OnClick.
What is a PostBack?
What is ViewState? How is it encoded? Is it encrypted? Who uses ViewState?
What is the element and what two ASP.NET technologies is it used for?
What three Session State providers are available in ASP.NET 1.1? What are the pros and cons of each?
What is Web Gardening? How would using it affect a design?
Given one ASP.NET application, how many application objects does it have on a single proc box? A dual? A dual with Web Gardening enabled? How would this affect a design?
Are threads reused in ASP.NET between reqeusts? Does every HttpRequest get its own thread? Should you use Thread Local storage with ASP.NET?
Is the [ThreadStatic] attribute useful in ASP.NET? Are there side effects? Good or bad?
Give an example of how using an HttpHandler could simplify an existing design that serves Check Images from an .aspx page.
What kinds of events can an HttpModule subscribe to? What influence can they have on an implementation? What can be done without recompiling the ASP.NET Application?
Describe ways to present an arbitrary endpoint (URL) and route requests to that endpoint to ASP.NET.
Explain how cookies work. Give an example of Cookie abuse.
Explain the importance of HttpRequest.ValidateInput()?
What kind of data is passed via HTTP Headers?
Juxtapose the HTTP verbs GET and POST. What is HEAD?
Name and describe at least a half dozen HTTP Status Codes and what they express to the requesting client.
How does if-not-modified-since work? How can it be programmatically implemented with ASP.NET?
Explain <@OutputCache%> and the usage of VaryByParam, VaryByHeader.
How does VaryByCustom work?
How would one implement ASP.NET HTML output caching, caching outgoing versions of pages generated via all values of q= except where q=5 (as in http://localhost/page.aspx?q=5)?

Developers using XML

What is the purpose of XML Namespaces?
When is the DOM appropriate for use? When is it not? Are there size limitations?
What is the WS-I Basic Profile and why is it important?
Write a small XML document that uses a default namespace and a qualified (prefixed) namespace. Include elements from both namespace.
What is the one fundamental difference between Elements and Attributes?
What is the difference between Well-Formed XML and Valid XML?
How would you validate XML using .NET?
Why is this almost always a bad idea? When is it a good idea? myXmlDocument.SelectNodes("//mynode");
Describe the difference between pull-style parsers (XmlReader) and eventing-readers (Sax)
What is the difference between XPathDocument and XmlDocument? Describe situations where one should be used over the other.
What is the difference between an XML "Fragment" and an XML "Document."
What does it meant to say “the canonical” form of XML?
Why is the XML InfoSet specification different from the Xml DOM? What does the InfoSet attempt to solve?
Contrast DTDs versus XSDs. What are their similarities and differences? Which is preferred and why?
Does System.Xml support DTDs? How?
Can any XML Schema be represented as an object graph? Vice versa?

Registering .NET assembly for COM usage

The steps to register a dot net component is:

The command line instruction to create a strong name.

sn -k ComInterOp.snk.
Strong name is a unique name created by hashing a 128-bit
encryption key against the name of the Assembly (ComInterOp
in our case). The strong name is created using SN.exe, that
would create ComInterOp.snk file, which we would use while
creating the DotNet Assembly.

The command line instruction to create an assembly using
the strong name

vbc /out:ComInterOp.dll /t:library /keyfile:ComInterOp.snk

Assembly Registration Tool.

The Assembly Registration Tool (Regasm.exe), reads the
metadata within an assembly and adds the necessary entries
to the registry, which allows COM clients to create DotNet
Framework classes transparently. The Assembly Registration
tool can generate and register a type library when you
apply the /tlb: option. COM clients require that type
libraries be installed in the Windows registry. Without
this option, Regasm.exe only registers the types in an
assembly, not the type library. Registering the types in an
assembly and registering the type library are distinct
activities.
The command line instruction to create and register
ComINterOp.tlb(Type Library) is

regasm ComInterOp.dll /tlb:ComInterOp.tlb.

The DotNet Services Installation Tool (Regsvcs.exe)

The command line instruction to install ComINterOp.dll in
GAC is

Gacutil -i ComInterOp.dll.

Running IE7 in IE8

To run a webpage in IE7 mode in IE8, open Tools –> Developer Tools or use the F12 key to launch developer tools for a open tab.

In the Developer Tools, click on the Browser Mode and select Internet Explorer 7 from the list, the webpage should now reload and behave like it would do in IE7.

Pretty neat feature, IE8 is definitely looking good, keep tuned to know more about IE8.