One of the major tasks over looked during page performance issues trouble shooting is how many closed web parts are there on the page. SharePoint offer end users and administrator’s two options for removing web parts from a page: close and delete.

Closing a web part does not remove the web part from the page but rather sets it to invisible. The web part’s configuration and customization are rendered as part of the page but simple not visible to end users. During content authoring an author may add a web part to a page and close it in an attempt to clear the page and start over again. This may be repeated several times until he/she gets the configuration right. The caveat of this is that even though the web part seems to have been removed, it has only been set to invisible and all the multiple instances will still be rendered as page of the page when that page is requested. The feature has its benefits; in the sense that you may not need to reconfigure or customize a web part every time you remove and wish to add it back. It saves a lot of time especially when dealing with complex web parts.

So the take home message is that, at any point in time make sure only one web part exists on a page with either open or closed as its status. Delete any duplicates or multiples as the delete operation remove the web part and its configuration permanently from the page. There is no recycle bin for capability for web part customization so you need to be absolutely sure before deleting a web part.

To see all web parts on a page and their status use:  http://[url]/[page.aspx]?contents=1.

The web parts present of the page will be listed and their status (closed / open) stated. I will urge you to remove or multiple closed instances of a web part and see the immediate of your page load time decrease immediately.

If you have too many closed web pages on multiple pages to remove. Use the power shell script below. Given the root site collection or any site collection, this script will iterate through the sub sides and all their pages and permanently remove all closed web arts. Script has not yet been tested on 2010 but  it should work.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————

[void][reflection.assembly]::Loadwithpartialname(“Microsoft.SharePoint”) | out-null

[void][reflection.assembly]::Loadwithpartialname(“Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb”) | out-null

[void][reflection.assembly]::Loadwithpartialname(“Microsoft.Office.Server.Search”) | out-null

[void][reflection.assembly]::Loadwithpartialname(“Microsoft.Office.Server”) | out-null

# Returns the SPSite at the specified URL

function get-spsite ([String]$webUrl=$(throw ‘Parameter -webUrl is missing!’))

{

return New-Object -TypeName “Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite” -ArgumentList “$webUrl”

}

# Returns the SPSite object from the specified URL

function get-spweb ([String]$webUrl=$(throw ‘Parameter -webUrl is missing!’))

{

$site = New-Object -TypeName “Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite” -ArgumentList “$webUrl”

return $site.OpenWeb()

}

# Returns the SPList object from the specified URL and list name

function get-splist ([String]$webUrl=$(throw ‘Parameter -webUrl is missing!’),

[String]$listName=$(throw ‘Parameter -listName is missing!’))

{

$site = New-Object -TypeName “Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite” -ArgumentList “$webUrl”

$web = $site.OpenWeb()

return $web.Lists[$listName]

}

function GetHiddenWebParts ([String]$sourceWebUrl=$(throw ‘Parameter -sourceWebUrl is missing!’))

{

$writer.writeline(” Page URL; Closed WebPart Name “)

$sourceWeb = Get-SPWEB $sourceWebUrl

foreach($sourceWeb in $sourceWeb.Webs)

{

RecursivelyCheckForWebSites $sourceWeb.url

}

$SourceWeb.Dispose

}

function RecursivelyCheckForWebSites( [String]$sourceWeburl)

{

GetHiddenWebPartInfo $sourceWeburl

if($sourceWebUrl)

{

$sourceWeb = Get-SPWEB $sourceWebUrl

if($sourceWeb.Webs.Count -gt 0)

{

foreach($tempsourceWeb in $sourceWeb.Webs)

{

RecursivelyCheckForWebSites $tempsourceWeb.url

}

}

$SourceWeb.Dispose

}

}

function GetHiddenWebPartInfo ([String]$sourceWeburl)

{

if($sourceWebUrl)

{

$currentWeb = Get-SPWEB $sourceWebUrl

if($currentWeb.Lists["Pages"])

{

$SourceWebPagelist = $currentWeb.Lists["Pages"]

foreach($currentPage in $SourceWebPagelist.items)

{

try

{

$webPartManager = $currentWeb.GetLimitedWebPartManager($currentPage.url,

[System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.PersonalizationScope]::Shared)

$currentPageWebParts = $webPartManager.WebParts

foreach($WebPart in $currentPageWebParts)

{

if($WebPart.IsClosed)

{

write-host $currentWeb.url’/'$currentPage.url   $WebPart.title

$writer.writeline($currentWeb.url+”/”+$currentPage.url+” ; “+$WebPart.title)

//delete webpart

currentPageWebParts.Delete(WebPart.StorageKey);

}

}

}

catch

{

#Page does not exist

}

}

}

$currentWeb.Dispose

}

}

$File =”[path]\ DeletedWebPartResult.txt”

$writer = new-object System.IO.StreamWriter($File)

$mainsite = ‘[site collection]’

GetHiddenWebParts $mainsite

$writer.Close()

In previous versions of SharePoint, web parts were added to pages via predefined web part zones. Customization of this predefined layouts for displaying we parts were very difficult and tedious to do.

The current SharePoint 2010 server provides the ability to add web parts into content areas and positioned by modifying the html view of the content area. Customization and personalization efforts could be achieved within minutes using this technique.

Good news is that the old web part page templates still exist and could be utilized for small to medium jobs that do not require a lot reorganizing and customizing.

In create an empty content page in SharePoint 2010, follow these steps

1. Navigate to the specific site you wish to add the new page
2. Go to the Site Actions Menu, Select New Page
3. Enter name for the new page and then click create
4. Click the web part button on the Ribbon
5. Select the web part by drilling down to category
6. Select where to add the web part
7. Click Add button

The page could then be modified by navigating to the html view of the content area.

However, if you wish to create a web part page with predefined web part zones, see below for the steps. Remember that it is not easy to modify the layout of web part pages once created so it is advisable to select a template that has 4 or more columns and has several more zones. This will provide a lot more possible combinations.  Upon page request, an empty web part zone is not rendered as part of the page. Therefore, a four column web part page with one unused column will be rendered with only three columns. This behavior affects performances in a very positive way.

The steps are as follows:

1. Navigate to the site where you wish to add the page
2. Select View All Site Content from the Site Action drop-down
3. Click on create at the top of All the Site Content page
4. Chose page from the filter
5. Select the web part page icon
6. Click the create button
7. Name the web part page
8. Choose a layout template
9. Select the document library to save the page
10. Click create button
11. Click the add web part button in the zone you wish to add the web part into
12. Select web part by drilling down category
13. Click the Add button

In SharePoint Server 2007, solutions could be deployed at the farm level by farm administrators only.  This practice was not conducive and posed a threat to the overall health of the farm as a fatal exception occurring in one application could bring the whole farm down.

Microsoft addressed this limitation by providing a new feature called the Sandboxed solutions or User solutions. Sandboxed solutions are only deployed to site collections and are only available to the site collection to which it was deployed. It can also be automatically disabled if its resource consumption crosses the defined threshold.

Sandboxed solutions sit in the solution library of each site collection. The solution store is located in the Galleries section of the site collection settings page.

To deploy a Sandbox Solution:

1. Navigate to the site collection where the solution will be installed
2. Click on the Site Actions menu and choose site settings
3. Under Galleries section click on solutions
4. Click the Solutions tab in the Ribbon and choose upload solution
5. Upload your solution
6. Click activate on the solutions tab.

Microsoft SQL Server 2011 CTP1 (Community Technology Preview) was released last year. This is basically the public beta of the upcoming version of SQL Server. Microsoft is referring to this release as SQL Server Code Named “Denali”. In the latest release of SQL Server, there is a significant number of BI enhancements in addition to many other enhancements. With this new release customers will benefit from the following added investments:

• Enhanced mission-critical platform: A highly available and scalable platform designed to with greater flexibility, lower TCO, ease of use, and the performance required by the most mission-critical applications.
• Developer and IT Productivity: New additional tools will help developers build innovative applications with reduced time-to-market while IT professionals benefit from greater operational control and ease of use.
• Pervasive Insight: Stunning new managed self-service experiences for end users and holistic data integration and management tools will help deliver consistent, credible data to the right users at the right time.

To read about what is new in SQL Server code-named ‘Denali’ – Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP1) click here

BIDS is the Business Intelligence Development Studio for the Microsoft BI toolset (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS). Coming from an App Developer background, I am a strong supporter of documentation.  Being a consultant, many of my engagements start with reviewing and assessing the clients’ existing BI solutions. Believe it or not, documentation is usually nonexistent.

I am not going to write about all the benefits of documentation in this post as the goal of these 5 Minutes Series is to be short and straight to the point. This episode is about SSIS Annotations.

SSIS Annotations are a great way to document SSIS packages. There is a property on almost all SSIS components called ‘Description’, which is intended to also document SSIS packages. However, it is  somewhat hidden(as well as many others SSIS components properties anyways) and many developers are not even aware of it being available .

One advantage of using Annotations over the Description is in their visibility.

You can go as far as describing the process and also providing a better insight to what is going on under the wood of such components like Execute SQL Tasks.

One undocumented little trick with SSIS Annotations is the CTRL+ENTER short keys combination that allows you to hop to the next line.

That’s it for today’s 5 Minutes of BI. If you have questions or comments, please go ahead and let’s discuss.