Sharepoint 2010 interview questions

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is a browser based document collaboration platform given by Microsoft. Actually SharePoint is an application framework as much as it is an application as its own. It is a platform where user can share Data, Collaborate and people can also take this platform and customized platform as per their requirements.

What is sharepoint crawl?
Crawling has to do with making the contents of pages/uploaded documents available in SharePoint's search. the administrator can decide the content to be included in the search. Along with it, it also provides way to decide the order of results in search. Like according to the number of hits, the search order changes automatically.
SharePoint Console allows you to crawl and index items from a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) or Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) site or site collection. It also allows you to crawl a list of MOSS or WSS sites specified by an RSS feed. Crawling SharePoint items into your portal requires the configuration of a content source, a crawler, and a job. Depending on your needs, more than one content source and/or crawlers may need to be created.

A SharePoint content source is configured with authentication information and default click through behavior. The authentication information is the Windows credentials necessary to access the desired SharePoint site or site collection. If multiple sites are accessible with the same authentication credentials, only one SharePoint content source is required. If sites require different authenticating credentials, create a SharePoint content source for each set of credentials.

Each SharePoint content source can have one or more SharePoint crawlers associated with it. A SharePoint crawler describes which SharePoint site or site collection is to be crawled, what to crawl on that SharePoint site, and where the crawled items should be put. Note that the crawler does not import the SharePoint items themselves, but rather indexes them within the portal.

what is difference between equals() and == operator

Both are used for comparison and boll returns the boolean value (true/false)

but in case a and b both are different datatype then also a.Equals(b) can be used to compare
but incase of == we cant event compaile the code if a and b are different data type


Example :
int a=0;
string b="o";

if(a.Equals(b))
{
//do some thing
}

//above code will compile successfully and internally the int b will convert to object type and compare

if(a==b)
{
//do some thing
}
//above code will give you the compilation error

2. by using == we cant compare two object
but Equals method will able to compare both the object internally

What is Content Editor Web part?

Content Editor Web part is a universal plug in adapter. It is used to connect SharePoint pages to the rest of the world. User can use content editor web part to add html/CSS/JavaScript, embed videos or widgets, formatted text, tables, hyperlinks, images, and display content from other SharePoint sites to a web part page.

 What is the use of Sharepoint 2010 delegate control?

Using the delegate control a developer can customize the SharePoint site controls without editing or even touching the master page.
Note: We are not customizing the existing (default) delegate control but we are creating our own control loading onto the SharePoint site.

What are the compliance, standards and integrations involved in Sharepoint 2010?

- Sharepoint 2010 comes with some pre-built tools that are integrated in it like MS Office and other office suite components.

- Sharepoint 2010 uses MS OpenXML document standard to standardize the format of the MS Office suite. The metadata of the document is being stored in this format.

- Sharepoint 2010 is in compliant with many application programming interfaces that deals in client-side or server-side. It also uses the REST/SOAP interfaces to develop the application and to deploy it.

- Sharepoint 2010 achieve compliance with document retention, record management and documents that are related to the sites made up with Sharepoint 2010.

- Sharepoint 2010 support the Content Management system and Interoperability standards to meet certain requirements of the accessibility for the designer’s tool.

Why are pages useful in Sharepoint 2010?

- Sharepoint 2010 uses pages to display the information to the end-users and they have three primary content types for the pages.

- Wiki pages are the pages that consist of detailed information with the external links on the website.

- Web-part pages are made of sections that provide access to features like search and provide the user interface widgets.

- Publishing pages are the pages used to display the end result or the output on the website for the end users to see.

- These pages are useful as it provides free-form editing using a ribbon toolbar and it is possible to insert the web-parts into any page of any kind and publish it.

What are the roles defined of Lists and libraries in Sharepoint 2010?

- Sites use list and libraries to store some information that have some properties to be used during the customization.

-List is a collection of pieces of information that can be used to contain some properties like name, description and URL of an item and display it on the store front.

- List has many features like workflows, list-level permissions, versioning, and history tracking system.

- Library consists of the list that is stored in a file in Sharepoint 2010 and it has the same behavior or but extra features then list.

- Library is having the ability to be configured and customized by using a compatible WebDAV client that is used in Windows Explorer.

- The examples of list and libraries that is contained in Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 are: Discussions Boards, Document libraries, Blogs, Pages, Surveys, Tasks, etc.

What is the function of Web-parts used in Sharepoint 2010?

- Web-parts are the sections that are used in a page in Sharepoint 2010. These are in relation to the sites that are being executed in the end.

- The sections that are used in the web-parts are the user interface widgets and it is used to display the content defined in the settings.

- The sections also display the items after taking it from the list/libraries and ready to customize in the Sharepoint 2010 only.

- Web-parts provide the access to many features like search in Sharepoint 2010 platform.

- Web-parts are uploaded by the end user as a packaged and sandboxed feature. The vendors that provide web-parts for intranet sites are from 3rd party only.

What is the use of site in Sharepoint 2010?

- Sites: this is a collection of pages, lists and libraries and these are configures for the purpose of showing something on the web front.

- This can consists of sub-sites and they can be divided further in a hierarchical fashion.

- The site can be created according to pre-defined templates and the functionalities provided with it or it can be created from scratch.

- The site can be in the form of a blog or a team collaborative site or document workspace or any other groupwork sites.

- Sites have all the functionality that is given in a normal web page. It has navigation, themes, permission, workflows and ability to configure and customize.

How is it possible to integrate the service applications in Sharepoint 2010?

- Service application can be integrated directly to Sharepoint 2010 by using the SOA bus.

- REST/SOAP web service application programming interface (APIs) can be used too to integrate the service application.

- Client Object Model API can be used to integrate the service application that works with the JavaScript and Silverlight as well.

- Application-to-Application integration method can be used with the Sharepoint 2010 to show the extension’s functionality.

- Web parts can be used as it allows to provide and show the new functionality when a page is added.

How is the custom add-ons integrated in Sharepoint 2010?

- Custom add-ons are the features and solutions in Sharepoint 2010 and provide customized code that can be installed on a farm level.

- Custom add-ons use Global Assembly Cache (GAC) on the server but it sometimes become difficult to deploy.

- These are also integrated as Sand-boxed solutions that are being uploaded by the end users.

- Sand-boxed solutions consists of permissions to upload the solutions through the easy to use the web-interface.

- The solutions are very secure and restricted to allow only few people that pass the authentication and it is governed by farm infrastructure.

What is the use of Extranet, Internet and Intranet sites in Sharepoint 2010?

- Intranet Site in Sharepoint 2010 provides the management of the documents and files within the same location and provides a centralized access to the applications.

- Extranet Sites in Sharepoint 2010 provides password protected access to the people and information and it also uses the web technology to make it easier for people to use it.

- It supplies business process and provide a shared collaboration to people and enterprises.

- Internet sites in Sharepoint 2010 use the publishing feature and provide a way to manage the larger public information and websites.

- It is used to manage the large database and provide the information to the larger public that is being attached to it.

Why is Sharepoint 2010 preferred over other platforms?

Sharepoint 2010 is preferred over other platform due to the fact that it provides:

- Sharepoint 2010 provides an Intranet portal that allows centralized access to, the enterprise information, and provide an, application friendly environment.

- It acts as a tool to help manage the database and applications that are built easily using only one platform.

- It deals in the management of the information and provides enterprise solutions.

- It stores and tracks the documents and files that is being created with different versions and does the management of the complete system.

- Sharepoint 2010 provides a centralized location for storing and collaborating on documents that reduces the work significantly.

Explain the architecture of Sharepoint 2010?

- Sharepoint 2010 is a very flexible platform having n-tier service oriented architecture (SOA).

- This architecture can be very dynamically operated according to the requirements and can be changed from one machine to another machine.

- The architecture is deployed across several machines and it is very effective when all the machines are in synchronization with each other.

- The architecture provides lots of features to be used in accordance with the management that is provided with the machine.

What are the use-cases involved in Microsoft Sharepoint 2010?

- Use-cases are the pre-defined applications that are used when a service is requested to provide the functionality.

- Sharepoint 2010 provides the use-case like process integration, and system integration to make it more useful for the users to use and program in it.

- Sharepoint 2010 have the processing power for workflow automation through which the load on particular services gets distributed.

- It provides core infrastructure for the third party solutions like ERP, CRM and other social media that helps user to integrate it easily and in very less time.

- It process more complex functionality by providing the enterprise package to build the web applications.

 

How can a user add content to the content editor web part?

There are three ways to add content to the content editor web part. Rich Text Editor: It allows user to add formatted text automatically without prior knowledge of HTML syntax. Source Editor: The source editor is a plain text editor and it is intended for users who are familiar with HTML syntax. It allows user to add scripts, HTML and styles to a web part page. Content link: It is used to link existing content by entering a hyperlink to a text file that contains HTML source code.

If multiple css files are used in the same master page then how can a developer order the files to be applied to the master page?

The ordering of the css files can be done with the help of the CssRegistration class. Suppose if there are four css files to be linked namely 1.css, 2.css, 3.css and 4.css then the “after” attribute of the CssRegistration class can be used. Firstly, apply 1.css and use after attribute with value Corev4.css and then link 2.css file and use after attribute with value 1.css and so on.

67. What is CAML?

CAML stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language and is an XML-based language that is used in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to define sites and lists, including, for example, fields, views, or forms, but CAML is used to define tables in the Windows SharePoint Services database during site provisioning.

68. Why would a developer use LINQ over CAML for data retrieval?

Unlike CAML, with LINQ to SharePoint provider, developers are working with strongly typed list item objects. For example, an item in the Announcements list is an object of type Announcement and an item on a Tasks list is an object of type Task. Developer can then enumerate the objects and get the properties for their use. In addition, developer can take benefit of LINQ syntax and the LINQ keywords built into C# and VB for LINQ queries.

69. What are the Disadvantages of Using LINQ in the Code?

LINQ translates the LINQ queries into Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) queries thus adding an extra step for retrieving the items. 

70. What does AllowUnsafeUpdates do?

If developer is trying to modify Windows SharePoint Services data using code, developer may need to allow unsafe updates on the Web site, without requiring a security validation. For this, developer needs to set AllowUnsafeUpdates property to true. 

What are the key differences between Site template and site definition?

Site Definitions Site Templates Site Definitions are the foundations on which all sites and user templates are built. Site Definition is collection ox XML and .aspx file. Site Definitions are predefined components needs to be included when a site was created in SharePoint server.Site Definition contains information of Web Part , Lists, Features and navigation bars to be included in the site Site template approach for SharePoint Site Creation is easier, and just requires the use of the Web interface and occasionally Microsoft FrontPage. Content can be saved with site template Files are on disk, better performance. Files are in content database, less efficient. Highly customizable and extensible (XML and .NET code is much more flexible than UI) Not easily extensible (users are limited by what UI offers) Can provision multiple webs Can only provision one web.

SharePoint Search Questions

24) What is a content source in relation to SharePoint search? What’s the minimum amount of content sources?
A content source is a set of options that you can use to specify what type of content is crawled, what URLs to crawl, and how deep and when to crawl. You must create at least one content source before a crawl can occur.

25) What is a search scope?
A search scope defines a subset of information in the search index. Users can select a search scope when performing a search.

26) What is a federated location with SharePoint search?
Federated locations provide information that exists outside of your internal network to your end-users.

27) How does managed metadata affect search?
Enhances the end-user search experience by mapping crawled properties to managed properties. Managed properties show up in search results and help users perform more successful queries.

28)  What is query logging in SharePoint 2010?
Collects information about user search queries and search results that users select on their computers to improve the relevancy of search results and to improve query suggestions.

29) What authentication type does the SharePoint crawler use?
The crawl component requires access to content using NTLM authentication.

Services Architecture Questions

30) Please describe what a Service Application is in SharePoint 2010.
Service applications in SharePoint 2010 are a set of services that can possibly be shared across Web applications. Some of these services may or may not be shared across the SharePoint 2010 farm. The reason these applications are shared is the overall reduction of resources required to supply the functionality these services cultivate.

31) Please provide an example of one of these service applications.
Any of the below are acceptable answers:

Access Services Business Data Connectivity service Excel Services Application Managed Metadata service PerformancePoint Service Application Search service Secure Store Service State service Usage and Health Data Collection service User Profile service Visio Graphics Service Web Analytics service Word Automation Services Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service

32) What are Service Application Groups used for?
Just provides a logical grouping of services that are scoped to a particular Web Application.

33) How are Service Applications deployed in terms of IIS (Internet Information Services)?
They are provisioned as a single Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site.

34) Explain how connections are managed with Service Applications.
A virtual entity is used that is referred to as a proxy, due to label in PowerShell.

35) What are some common examples of SharePoint 2010 services architectures, and what are the advantages of each design?
The three most popular designs are single farms with either a single service application group or multiple service application groups, or Enterprise services farms.

Single farms with a single service application group are generally the most common, and have the advantages of easy deployment, simple service application allocation, effective resource utilization and cohesive management.

Single farms with multiple service application groups is less common, and have the advantage of potential individual management of service applications as well as allowing data isolation, and while being more complex to deploy and maintain allows targeting of sites to particular service applications.

Enterprise Service Farms is pretty uncommon as it is a complete farm dedicated to Service Applications but promotes autonomous management and high levels of data isolation.

36) Are there any other type of relevant service architectures?
Depending on the environment requirements, a specialized farm can also be used in order to deploy specific services tailored to the organizational requirements which can aid in scaling out and conservation of resources.

37) What is the User Profile service?
Allows configuring and managing User profile properties, Audiences, Profile synchronization settings, organization browsing and management settings, and My Site settings.

38) What are User Profiles?
Aggregates properties from diverse identity content sources together to create unified and consistent profiles across an organization, used throughout the SharePoint environment.

39) What is Excel Services?
Allows sharing, securing, managing, and using Excel 2010 workbooks in a SharePoint Server Web site or document library. Excel Services consists of the Excel Calculation Services (ECS), Microsoft Excel Web Access (EWA), and Excel Web Services (EWS) components.

40) What is PerformancePoint Services?
Allows users to monitor and analyze a business by building dashboards, scorecards, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

41) What is Visio Services?
Allows users to share and view Microsoft Visio Web drawings. The service also enables data-connected Microsoft Visio 2010 Web drawings to be refreshed and updated from various data sources.

42) What is Access Services?
Allows users to edit, update, and create linked Microsoft Access 2010 databases that can be viewed and manipulated by using an internet browser, the Access client, or a linked HTML page.

43) What is the Secure Store Service (SSS)?
A secure database for storing credentials that are associated with application IDs

44) What is Content Deployment?
Content deployment enables you to copy content from a source site collection to a destination site collection.

Backup / DR Questions

45) Describe how redundancy can be built into a SharePoint environment. Please be specific in regards to any auxiliary components.
Multiple front-end web servers (WFE’s) can be deployed and correlated through Windows NLB or anything approach. Application servers can be deployed into the farm for a variety of purposes, depending on organizational requirements. Databases can be clustered or mirrored, again depending on requirements and environment.

46) From a basic standpoint, what is the difference between SQL clustering and mirroring?
Clustering provides a failover scenario whereby one or more nodes can be swapped as active depending on whether a node goes down. In mirroring, transactions are sent directly from a principal database and server to a mirror database to establish essentially a replica of the database.

Governance Questions

47) What Is Governance in terms of SharePoint 2010?
Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that guide, direct, and control how an organization’s business divisions and IT teams cooperate to achieve business goals.

48) What are some useful, OOB features of SharePoint that aid with governance of an environment?
Any of the below are acceptable answers. There are some others but these are the major ones that I generally look for from a candidate:

Site templates – consistent branding, site structure, and layout can be enforce a set of customizations that are applied to a site definition.

Quotas – limits to the amount of storage a site collection can use.

Locks – prevent users from either adding content to a site collection or using the site collection.

Web application permissions and policies – comprehensive security settings that apply to all users and groups for all site collections within a Web application.

Self-service site creation – enables users to create their own site collections, thus must be incorporated into a governance scheme.

Monitoring Questions

49) Describe the monitoring features that are baked into SharePoint 2010.
Diagnostic logging captures data about the state of the system, whereas health and usage data collection uses specific timer jobs to perform monitoring tasks, collecting information about:

• Performance Counter Fata
• Event Log Data
• Timer Service Data
• Metrics For Site Collections and Sites
• Search Usage Data

General Workflow Questions

50) What is a declarative workflow? Can non-authenticated users participate in workflows?
Workflows created by using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, the default setting enables deployment of declarative workflows. Yes, however you do not give non-authorized users access to the site. The e-mail message and attachments sent from notifications might contain sensitive information

What is My site?

My Site is the individual mini sites and acts as a central location to view and manage all of a user’s documents, tasks, etc. My Sites enables users to easily share information about themselves and their work. This sharing of information encourages collaboration, builds and promotes information about expertise, and targets relevant content to the people who are interested.  

26. What is Blogs?

Blogs is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, description of events, or other material such as graphics or video. It can be used to post ideas, observations, thoughts and expertise on which comments can be done. 

27. What is Enterprise wiki?

An enterprise wiki is a publishing site for sharing and updating large volumes of information across an enterprise. Enterprise wiki can be used as a central repository for large organizations to store and share unstated information.

28. What is Tagging?

Tagging is the ability to tag documents that enables user to search document easily with keywords. Tags cloud webparts enable users to display tagging keywords.

71. What does RunWithElevatedPrivileges do?

There are certain object models that call another model that require site-administration privileges. To bypass access-denied error, we use RunWithElevatedPrivileges property when a nonprivileged user initiates request. We can successfully make calls into the object model by calling the RunWithElevatedPrivileges method provided by the SPSecurity class.

72. How is a Content Type created?

We can create column and content types in three ways: Using the SharePoint Foundation user interface. Using the SharePoint Foundation object model. Deploying a Feature that installs the content type based on an XML definition file.

73. How is a Content type deployed?

Content Type can be deployed and associated with list using feature. Inside the Feature, the feature.xml file contains references to all the element manifests within that Feature. Content type definitions are element manifests.

74. What is the scope of a content type?

A site content type becomes available to lists and document libraries within the site in which the content type is created and to the lists and document libraries in any child site.

75. What is an ancestral type and what does it have to do with content types?

An ancestral type is the base type that the content type is deriving from, such as Document (0x0101). The ancestral type will define the metadata fields that are included with the custom content type.

What are the various types of views?

Standard: This view displays list items or files like a traditional list on a Web page. Standard view is the default for most types of lists and libraries, and user can customize it in several different ways.

Calendar: This view displays the calendar items in a visual format that is similar to a desk or wall calendar. User can apply daily, weekly, or monthly views in this format. For example, user can create a calendar to track the team's deadlines for a project or holidays for the organization.

Datasheet: This view provides data in a format that user can edit, such as a table in a database or spreadsheet. This view can be helpful if user need to perform large editing tasks or customization, or export data to a spreadsheet or database program. Datasheet view requires a control or program that is compatible with Windows SharePoint Services, such as Office Access 2007, and ActiveX control support.

Gantt: This view provides a visual view of data, with bars that track progress, if data is based on a time interval. A Gantt view can help user manage projects and see a quick overview of the data. User can use this view, for example, to see which tasks overlap each other and to visualize overall progress.

76. What is ghosted page and Un-ghosted page ?

Ghosted page: is a page in SharePoint website which is not stored in the database instead it reference to a file which exists in the server’s file system. These reference files are common for all the website/site collection within that SharePoint server, i.e., if user modify a reference file then that change will reflect in all the websites/site collections within that SharePoint server automatically. Un-ghosted page: changes done in an un-ghosted page will not reflect in other websites within that SharePoint server.

What is Content Type?

A content type is a reusable collection of metadata (columns), workflow, behavior, and other settings for a category of items or documents. Content types enable user to manage the settings for a category of information in a centralized and reusable manner. A content type defines the attributes of a list item, a document, or a folder. Each content type can specify properties to associate with items of its type

10. What is Picture library?

A Picture library allows users to easily store, upload, share, collaborate and track images or digital pictures. Users can also store the properties related to images called metadata to make the images easily searchable. 

11. What is Check-out?

Check-out ensures that only one person can edit a document at a time. To edit a document, a user would first have to check out a document. This prevents anyone else from editing the document until that user check the document back in. During the period that the document is checked out, other users can only view a read-only version of the document. 

12. What is Check-in?

Check in a file means that user is uploading the modified file to the library and it is now available for edit by other users. Once the document is checked in, the document becomes available again to be checked out by someone else. In addition, all changes made by the person who checked in the document are now visible to others. 

13. What is Versioning?

Versioning allows updates, restoring and tracking of the items in a list or in a library when they are changed. Versioning makes use of version numbers to keep track of changes. 

14. What is Site Columns?

A site column is a reusable column definition, or template that user can assign to multiple lists across multiple SharePoint sites. Site columns are useful if user organization wants to establish some consistent settings across lists and libraries. 

77.Can web parts and web zones be added to an Application page?

No, since Application pages does not support edit mode so web part zones and web parts cannot be added using SharePoint. However, static web parts can be added by editing then in Visual Studio, as web parts are nothing but controls with some extra functionality.

78.How to create a custom master page?

There are multiple ways to create custom master page files By copying and editing existing master page. By SharePoint Designer. By editing minimal.master using editor.

79. How to apply a custom master page?

There are two ways to apply a custom master page 1. Custom Master Page can be deployed using SharePoint Feature by which master page gets uploaded to the master page gallery. 2. Custom master page can be uploaded directly in master page gallery library and apply the same master page using site and system master page option in Site Settings page by selecting Master Page option.

80. Can developer use the custom master page with the application pages in SharePoint 2010?

With 2010, developer can now set whether the pages under _Layouts use the same Master Page as the rest of the site. Developer can enable or disable this functionality through the web application settings in Central Administration. This however, is not applicable to the custom application pages. If developer wants the custom application page to inherit the site master page, he must derive it from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.LayoutsPageBase class.

81. How to link the custom CSS file in the master page?

Custom CSS files can be linked to the master pages with the help of a class called Sharepoint:CssRegistration.

82. What is the best method on working with CSS?

The best method to work with css is to create a new css file, store the file in any document library, and then provide the alternate CSS URL to the site by navigating to the master page option in the Look and Feel.

83. If a developer creates a new CSS file then where should the file be stored?

The css file can be stored in two locations, either in the document library or in the layouts folder.

84. How will user deploy a CSS file in SharePoint 2010?

The most preferable way to deploy files in SharePoint is by using the solution package. In SharePoint 2010, developer can create an empty project with VS 2010 and then add a new SharePoint Mapped folder in it. This will give the desired location in 14 hive where developer can then add a file to deploy.

What does safe control means?

SharePoint application runs in Full Trust mode. For Web Parts to work properly in SharePoint Sites, its entry in web.config file assures Full Trust to SharePoint Site as it is registered in the file as safe

What is User Control and how to use in SharePoint 2010?

User controls are created using a designer’s tool, having file extension as “.ascx”. User controls cannot be shared across web applications. Suppose there is a user control MyControl.ascx. This file has to be deployed to the SharePoint server along with its binary. If developer is using a Smart Part, the ascx file must be copied to a folder called User Controls located in the root of the web sites folder (by default c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80. I recommend creating of own web part to host the user control that will work with any application. SharePoint itself puts all user controls in the TEMPLATES folder in the 14 hive (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\14).

 

What is a Manifest.xml File in SharePoint 2010?

Manifest.xml file contains the Meta data of a solution package. At the time of deployment, SharePoint inspects manifest.xml file to determine which template files it needs to copy into the SharePoint root directory.

 

What is Elements.xml file in Feature in SharePoint 2010?

Elements.xml file contains the actual feature element. It can contain elements like ListInstance, Field, ContentType, ListTemplate, Workflow, WorkflowActions etc. 

What are the minimum files required for a feature?

Every feature directory should contain at least one file namely feature.xml and should be placed in the root of the directory. But a feature directory can contain one or more xml files as well as resource files such as image files, css files or js files. A feature.xml file contains attributes like Id, Title, Description, Version, Scope, Hidden, and ImageURL.

What is the difference between feature definition and feature instance?

The feature definition is the set of source files in the Visual Studio 2010 project that is deployed using a solution package. Once deployed, a feature definition is a set of template files and components that reside on each front-end Web server. A feature instance is what is created when a user activates the feature definition

Can Developer modify the Out-of-Box workflows in SharePoint 2010?

In SharePoint 2010, developer has an option to customize the Out-of-Box workflows. The four most popular workflows in SharePoint Server 2010 — the Approval, Collect Feedback, Collect Signatures, Publishing Approval workflows — have been completely rebuilt as declarative reusable workflows, meaning that they are now fully customizable in SharePoint Designer 2010.  

What is the scope of feature activation?

Feature can be activated or deactivated at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances, such as farm level, web application level, site collection level, web level, etc. 

What are the different management concepts used in Sharepoint 2010?

The different management concepts used in Sharepoint 2010 are as follows:

- Communities: main part of the Sharepoint 2010 as it supports the formation of the communities that is related to an organization and includes teams, projects, clients and other related information.

- Content: this is to provide the files, documents and other information in the form of files to the web browser or server.

- Search: Sharepoint 2010 have good range of search abilities that includes the documentation and other contents that are related to it.

- Insights: this is used for data integration, crawling and designing of reports to allow the business design to be made in an easy way and at the same time scale up as well.

- Composites: provides an application platform that allow no-code configuration of business solutions and provide the provision to use the custom code solutions as well.

How is Sharepoint 2010 capable to handle multiple organizations on a single server?

- Sharepoint 2010 provides n-tier scalable with the server farm that runs the multiple organizations on a single server.

- Sharepoint 2010 gives an additional functionality to setup the platform that can be used for cloud computing as the part of the Business.

- It allows the development to be done on a single server so that multiple organizations can be setup in synchronization with each other.

- It provides the provision to build a site that is designed to be run on a server and used by other users at the same time.

- It has a central location for management and performs activities that can be given in an organization.

What is the main purpose of Microsoft Sharepoint 2010?

- Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 provides an application platform that allows building web content management systems.

- It allows the configuration to be done in an easy way and provide the solution areas for web applications and document management systems.

- It is a multi-purpose design that allows the use of design, management, scaling and provisioning to be done for business applications.

- It consists of layers that is managed and abstracted from the web server to enable the business users to take the advantage of the technical aspects of web development environment.

- Its purpose is to provide pre-defined applications with proper functionality like intranet portals, extranets, websites and file management applications. 

How Does SharePoint work?
The browser sends a DAV packet to IIS asking to perform a document check in. PKMDASL.DLL, an ISAPI DLL, parses the packet and sees that it has the proprietary INVOKE command. Because of the existence of this command, the packet is passed off to msdmserv.exe, who in turn processes the packet and uses EXOLEDB to access the WSS, perform the operation and send the results back to the user in the form of XML.

How will you cancel a deployment if it is stuck at “deploying” or “Error”.
You can either try to force execute timer jobs using execadmsvcjobs command or can cancel the deployment using  stsadm command
“stsadm –o cancaldeployment –id {GUID} command.”
The Id here would be GUID of the timer or deployment job. You can get the Id from stsadm enumdeployment command. This will display all the deployments which are inprocess or are stuck with Error.

What permissions are required to perform stsadm operations?

You need to be a member of WSS_ADMIN_WPG group to perform deployments for sharepoint server. Also, you need to be added into administrators group on a computer on which SharePoint Server or WSS 3.0 is installed. In addition to this you definitely need access to the required sharepoint databases so that you should not get errors while deploying sharepoint solutions.

Difference between Master page and Page Layout?

Master pages and page layouts dictate the overall look and feel of your SharePoint site.
Differences are
1) Master pages contain controls that are shared across multiple page layouts,
such as navigation,search, or language-preference for multilingual sites.
Page layouts contain field controls and Web Parts.
2) Page layouts can be used by all page instances that are based on that
page layout.Master pages can be used by all page instances in a site.

What is the difference between Site Definition and Site template?

1. To create or use site definition you need server admin access, but site template can install from web UI by site owners.
2. Site definition supports feature stapling, but for site template additional features must be activated in gallery.
3. Site definitions are stored in hard disk, but site templates are stored in content DB.
4. Site definition can provision multiple webs, but site templates for single web only.
5. Creating site definition is relatively complex then site template creation.

Difference between Features, Feature Definition and Solutions

Using Features and Solutions will help customize sites and site templates.
Features: It helps sites to reuse functionality from one site to other sites without requiring to copy and paste XML. It is also an instance of Feature Definition.
Solutions: It helps to package Features in a cabinet (.cab) file along with meta data.
Feature Definition: It hides feature manifest contained in a feature directory and are installed at farm level.

What are the minimum software and hardware requirements to install SharePoint 2010?
Operating system: microsoft windows server 2008 or microsoft windows server 2008 r2, but for development purpose you can install sharepoint 2010 on windows 7 and microsoft windows vista sp1/sp2. All operating system should be 64 bit.

Database: sharepoint 2010 requires database of Microsoft sql server 2005 sp3 or Microsoft sql server 2008 or r2. Also all should be 64bit.
Application server: sharepoint 2010 requires iis7 +.

.net framework: sharepoint 2010 requires Microsoft .net framework 3.5 and sp1 is preferable

3. What are sharepoint 2010 main features?
Sites: ribbon ui, sharepoint workspace, sharepoint mobile etc.

Communities: tagging, tag cloud, rating, social networking feature, my sites, blogs and wikis, my profile etc.

Content: enterprise content type, metadata and navigation, document sets, remote blog storage, audio and video content types, list enhancements etc.

Search: fast search integration, social relevance.

Insights: excel services, visio services, web analytics, sql server integration etc.

Composites: business connectivity services, info path form services, external lists, workflows, sharepoint designers, visual studio, rest etc.

How will you backup and restore entire farm ?

There are various methods to backup and restore SharePoint entire farm in SharePoint. Two main methods that you can use to back up and restore are:

* Using SharePoint Central Administration Web site – This toolenables you to perform backups and restorations from the user interface. When you use this method, you can back up the server farm, Web applications, and any or all of the content databases in your server farm. You can use the Stsadm command-line tool to view backup and recovery history and to view backup and recovery job status.

 Stsadm command-line tool - Stsadm command-line tooloffers a faster and more flexible command-line-based approach to farm backup and recovery. This method for backing up and restoring data does not require SQL Server 2000 tools or SQL Server 2005 tools. However, to perform this method of backup and recovery, you must be a member of the administrators group on a computer on which SharePoint Server or WSS 3.0 is installed.

Other methods to Backup are :

* Backup Farm by using SQL server Tools – You can perform Full, Differential and Transaction baclups from SQL server studio.

* Third Party Tools – You can also use other Backup and Restore tools such as DocAve for taking daily backups.

What is a SharePoint Feature? What files are used to define a feature?

A SharePoint Feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances.
Scopes include

• Farm
• WebApplication
• Site (site collection)
• Web (site)

Features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature is

• installing
• uninstalling
• activated
• deactivated

The element types that can be defined by a feature include

• menu commands
• link commands
• page templates
• page instances
• list definitions
• list instances
• event handlers
• workflows

The two files that are used to define a feature are

• feature.xml
• manifest file(elements.xml)

The feature XML file defines the actual feature and will make SharePoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.
Common stsadm commands associated with feature are

• stsadm -o installfeature
• stsadm -o uninstallfeature
• stsadm -o activatefeature
• stsadm -o deactivatefeature.

4. What is sharepoint central administration?
This is designed to administer and monitor a sharepoint server farm. Here you can configure servers and servers’ roles, define farm topology, and create new web applications and site collections. This basically a sharepoint site. The main features included here are: application management, monitoring, security, general application settings, system settings, backup and restore, upgrade and migration and configuration wizard.

5. What is a site collection and web application?
A site collection is a logical container that holds a set of websites, hosted in a web application. If you want to publish internet or intranet web site then you need at least a web application and one site collection.
To create a new site collection we need a parent web application.

6. What are the site templates available in sharepoint?
There are 5 different site templates available in sharepoint 2010, from which you can create sites. And they are:

Collaboration: it has templates for team site, blank site, document workspace, blog, group work site etc.

Meetings: it has templates for basic meeting workspace, blank meeting workspace, decision meeting workspace, social meeting workspace, and multipage meeting workspace.

enterprise: it has templates for document center, records center,powerpoint broadcast site, business intelligence center, enterprise search center, my site host, basic search center, and fast search center.

Publishing: it has templates for publishing portal and enterprise wiki custom: here you can define your own custom templates.

What is a SharePoint list?
Everything is stored in SharePoint in form of list. They are similar to database. Lists have item, fields and views. Items are like a row in a table. Fields are like columns in a database table. Views display information from list.

What is the difference between a document library and a form library?

Document libraries consist of your core documents. An example would be a word document, excel, PowerPoint, visio, pdf, etc… form libraries consist of xml forms. Like InfoPath

What are list forms and form library forms?

SharePoint list forms store data directly in a SharePoint list.  Each control (e.g. text box) in the form is bound to a column in the list. SharePoint list forms are directly connected to the list, which means that you don’t have to worry about setting up the publish and submit locations.
Form library forms store data in XML files in a SharePoint form library. This means they are more flexible and you can do more with them. For example, they can be configured to save drafts and submit to different locations. However, they are more complex to work with and require more decisions to be made during configuration.

Difference between library vs list?
library is used to store the document and lists are the container of similar items in form of rows and columns. In library you can create core document like word, excel, powerpoint. But in list you can not create document, instead of that you can attach document in a particular list.

What is a workflow?

Workflows are the way an organization functions, a series of actions that correspond to a work process, such as the process for purchase orders.sharepoint 2010 helps you automate these workflows, thereby increasing the efficiency and productivity of the organization

What is different with sharepoint 2010 workflows ?
Some of the additions in workflow model are :
1. Sharepoint 2010 workflows are build upon the the workflow engine provide .net framework 3.5.
2. In addition to the sharepoint lists we can now create workflows for sharepoint sites as well.
3. Sharepoint designer 2010 also has a new graphical workflow designer for designing workflows and deploying them directly to sharepoint.
4. Another improvement in sharepoint designer 2010 is that it now allows you to edit the out-of-the-box workflows that come with sharepoint.

What are the types of workflow that you can design in sharepoint 2010.

You can design list workflows, reusable list workflows and site workflows using sharepoint designer 2010.

What reusable list workflows and site workflows ?

Reusable list workflows -

You can create a reusable list workflow (reusable workflow) in the top-level site in the site collection, and that workflow can be made globally reusable — meaning that the workflow can be associated to any list, library, or content type in the site collection. You can also create a reusable workflow in any subsite in the site collection; this workflow is available for reuse in that particular subsite.

Site workflows - a site workflow is associated to a site — not to a list, library, or content type. So unlike most workflows, a site workflow is not running on a specific list item. Because of this, many of the actions that are available for items not available for site workflows.

What is windows powershell ?

Windows powershell is a new windows command-line shell designed especially for system administrators. In the sharepoint administration context, windows powershell is another administration tool that supersedes the existing stsadm.exe.

How is windows powershell different from stsadm ?

Unlike stsadm, which accept and return text, windows powershell is built on the microsoft .net framework and accepts and returns .net framework objects. In addition to that it also gives you access to the file system on the computer so that you can access registry,digital signature certificate etc..

What has changed in sharepoint 2010 object model?

Ans. Microsoft has replaced the “12 hive” structure that we had in sharepoint 2007 with “14 hive” structure in 2010.

It has apparently added four new folders to its hive.

The folders are:
* policy
* usercode
* webclients
* webservices

What is a SharePoint Solution File? How does it differ from WebPart .cab files in legacy development? What does it contain?
A SharePoint solution file is essentially a .cabinet file with all a developers custom componets suffixed with a .wsp extension that aids in deployment. The big difference with SharePoint solution files is is that a solution:
allows deployment to all WFE’s in a farm
is highly manageable from the interface allowing deployment, retraction, and versioning
Can package all types of assets like site definitions, feature definitions (and associated components), Webparts, etc.
Can provide Code Access Security provisioning to avoid GAC deployments
And much more..

What is the difference between method activity and event activity in workflow?
A method activity is one that performs an action, such as creating or updating a task. An event activity is one that runs in response to an action occurring.

2 . Whats New with webparts in Visual Studio 2010?

 A developer can create two types of webparts using Visual Studio 2010.

1. Visual Webparts - Allows you to Drag and Drop the controls from the Toolbox to WebPart Design surface. You can of course write your custom code in the code file. You can also package and deploy your webparts directly to Sharepoint from VS by pressing Clt+F5. Visual studio 2010 also provides you with three different views for developing webparts. The views are split view, design view and Source view(as we have in SharePoint Designer 2007).

2. ASP.Net WebParts - Where a developer can build up User Interface and logic in a class file. You do not have designer for drag and drop of controls. This webpart inherits from standard ASP.Net webpart. For Deployment we can again use ctrl+f5 to deploy this webpart.

What are Managed Accounts?

To reduce the load of managing various service accounts in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, the concept of managed accounts has been introduced. Much like managed accounts in Windows Server 2008, they allow SharePoint Server to take control of all the service accounts you use. After SharePoint Server has control of these accounts, it can either manage their passwords — automatically changing them as necessary — or it can notify you when an accounts password is about to expire, allowing you to make the change yourself.

What are the Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint.

 Visual Studio 2010 includes SharePoint-specific project types and project item types, and includes powerful packaging, deployment, and debugging features that help increase your efficiency as a SharePoint 2010 developer.

Some of the Templates avaiable are :
1.Visual Web Part project template.
2. List defination template.
3. Content Type template.
4. Empty Project template.
5. Event Receiver template.
6. some workflow template.
7. the Site Definition template etc.

What are SharePoint Sandboxed soultions ?

SharePoint 2010 provides a new sandboxed environment that enables you to run user solutions without affecting the rest of the SharePoint farm. This environment means that users can upload their own custom solutions without requiring intervention from administrators, and without putting the rest of the farm at risk. This means that the existing sites\pages or components will not be effected by the newly added soultion. Users can deploy the below four things as sandboxed soultions :
1. WebParts.
2. Event Receivers.
3. List Definations.
4. Workflows.

What is a .ddf file and what does it have to do with SharePoint Solution creation?
A .ddf file is a data directive file and is used when building the SharePoint solution bundle specifying the source files and their destination locations. The important thing for someone to understand is that the .ddf file will be passed as a parameter to the MAKECAB utility to orchestrate construction of the SharePoint solution file.

 What Changes are made in SharePoint 2010 to enforce Referential Integrity?

In SharePoint 2010, Referential Integrity is enforced by using two options available with Look-up columns. While creating a Look-up column, you have two options :
1. Restrict Delete
2. Cascade Delete
These options define a relationship between the Look-up list and the list containing the look-up Column.

 What is Ribbon in SharePoint 2010?

 The Ribbon Bar, is one of the finest improvements that Microsoft added to Office 2007 . SharePoint 2010 follows the same path. The ribbon basically, is a toolbar that appears across the top of each page in SharePoint.

The top-level elements in the Ribbon are tabs. Each tab organizes a set of groups (like Edit.Browse) and contains a set of controls. The controls inside the groups include buttons, drop-down menus, check boxes, combo boxes, split buttons, and galleries. In short, the users now can see the options like checkOut,Check In, Edit Page,Publish Page, delete page under edit tab, on the top of the Page itself.

 Whats New with SPAlerts in SharePoint 2010?

 · In SharePoint 2007, alerts were send only through e-mails, but in SharePoint 2010 users can also send an alert to mobile devices as SMS Message. A New property DeliveryChannels is introduced to indicate, whether the alert is delivered as E-mail or as an SMS Message.

 What has changed with SSP in SharePoint 2010.

 · In SharePoint 2010 Shared Service Providers (SSP's) are replaced by Service Applications. Services are no longer combined into a SSP. They are running independent as a service application. The service application architecture is now also built into Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, in contrast to the Shared Services Provider (SSP) architecture that was only part of Office SharePoint Server 2007. A key benefit here is that all services are installed by default and there is no SSP setup.

What are content types?
A content type is a flexible and reusable wss type definition (or we can a template) that defines the columns and behavior for an item in a list or a document in a document library. For example, you can create a content type for a leave approval document with a unique set of columns, an event handler, and its own document template and attach it with document library/libraries.

What are the types of input forms that can be created for a workflow ?
You can create four different types of input forms including
1. An association form
2. An initiation form
3. A modification form
4. A task edits form.

What is web part page life cycle?

OnInit – Configuration values set using WebBrowsable properties and those in web part task pane are loaded into the web part.

LoadViewState – The view state of the web part is populated over here.

CreateChildControls – All the controls specified are created and added to controls collection. When the page is being rendered for the first time the method generally occurs after the OnLoad() event. In case of postback, it is called before the OnLoad() event. We can make use of EnsureChildControls() - It checks to see if the CreateChildControls method has yet been called, and if it has not, calls it.

OnLoad

User Generated Event – for e.g. button click on the web part.

OnPreRender – Here we can change any of the web part properties before the control output is

drawn.

RenderContents – Html Output is generated.

SaveViewState - View state of the web part is serialized and saved.

Dispose

UnLoad.

What is the webpartmanager sealed class? What is its purpose?
The webpartmanager sealed class is responsible for managing everything occurring on a webpart page, such as the webparts (controls), events, and misc. Functionality that will occur in webpartzones. For example, the webpartmanager is responsible for the functionality that is provided when you are working with moving a webpart from webpartzone to webpartzone. It is known as the “the central class of the web part control set.”

What does allowunsafeupdates do?
If your code modifies windows sharepoint services data in some way, you may need to allow unsafe updates on the web site, without requiring a security validation. You can do by setting the allowunsafeupdates property.

 What does runwithelevatedprivileges do?
There are certain object model calls models that require site-administration privileges. To bypass access-denied error, we use runwithelevatedprivileges property when request is initiated by a nonprivileged user. We can successfully make calls into the object model by calling the runwithelevatedprivileges method provided by the spsecurity class

What does spweb.ensureuser method do?
Checks whether the specified login name belongs to a valid user of the web site, and if the login name does not already exist, adds it to the web site.
E.g spuser usr = myweb.ensureuser("hitenders");

What is a spsite and spweb object, and what is the difference between each of the objects?
The spsite object represents a collection of sites (site collection [a top level site and all its subsites]). The spweb object represents an instance sharepoint web, and spweb object contains things like the actual content. A spsite object contains the various subsites and the information regarding them.

What does a spwebapplication object represent?
The spwebapplication objects represents a sharepoint web application, which essentially is an iis virtual server. Using the class you can instigate high level operations, such as getting all the features of an entire web application instance, or doing high level creation operations like creating new web applications through code.

Would you use spwebapplication to get information like the smtp address of the sharepoint site?
Yes, since this is a web application level setting. You would iterate through each spwebapplication in the spwebapplication collection, and then use the appropriate property calls (outboundmailserviceinstance) in order to return settings regarding the mail service such as the smtp address.

How do you return sharepoint list items using sharepoint web services?
In order to retrieve list items from a sharepoint list through web services, you should use the lists.asmx web service by establishing a web reference in visual studio. The lists.asmx exposes the getlistitems method, which will allow the return of the full content of the list in an xml node. It will take parameters like the guid of the name of the list you are querying against, the guid of the view you are going to query, etc.

What is caml, and why would you use it?
Caml stands for collaborative application markup language. Caml is an xml based language which provides data constructs that build up the sharepoint fields, view, and is used for table definition during site provisioning. Caml is responsible for rending data and the resulting html that is output to the user in sharepoint. Caml can be used for a variety of circumstances, overall is used to query, build and customize sharepoint based sites. A general use would be building a caml query in a sharepoint webpart in order to retrieve values from a sharepoint list.

What are event receivers?
Event receivers are classes that inherit from the spitemeventreciever or splisteventreciever base class (both of which derive out of the abstract base class speventrecieverbase), and provide the option of responding to events as they occur within sharepoint, such as adding an item or deleting an item

When would you use an event receiver?
Since event receivers respond to events, you could use a receiver for something as simple as canceling an action, such as deleting a document library by using the cancel property. This would essentially prevent users from deleting any documents if you wanted to maintain retention of stored data.

What deployment mechanism can you use to instigate code access security attributes for your webparts?
Sharepoint solution files can add in order to handle code access security deployment issues. This is done in the element in the sharepoint solution manifest.xml, which makes it easier to get assemblies the appropriate permissions in order to operate in the bin directory of the web application.

If I wanted to not allow people to delete documents from a document library, how would I go about it?
You would on the ItemDeleting event set: properties.Cancel= true.

What is the difference between an asynchronous and synchronous event receivers?
An asynchronous event occurs after an action has taken place, and a synchronous event occurs before an action has take place. For example, an asynchronous event is ItemAdded, and its sister synchronous event is ItemAdding

What is the difference MOSS & WSS

Both WSS and MOSS are superb tools for collaboration and sharing of information

• Both are developed by Microsoft.

• While WSS is free, you need to buy license for using MOSS.

• MOSS has more features and sits atop WSS.

• WSS is suitable for small and medium businesses, while MOSS is suitable for large organizations.

What is the difference between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 have identical feature functionality. While the feature functionality is similar, the usage rights are different. If you are creating an Internet, or Extranet, facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites which does not require the purchase client access licenses. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition can only be used for Internet facing websites and all content, information, and applications must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an Intranet Portal scenario. See the previous section on licensing for more information on the usage scenarios.

What are the actual advantages of SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) over SharePoint Team Services (STS)?
SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has MUCH better document management. It has check-in, check-out, versioning, approval, publishing, subscriptions, categories, etc. STS does not have these features, or they are very scaled back. SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has a better search engine, and can crawl multiple content sources. STS cannot. STS is easier to manage and much better for a team environment where there is not much Document Management going on. SPS is better for an organization, or where Document Management is crucial.

Can web parts be connected? if so, how?
Web Parts can be connected by Modifying the Shared Part and providing the connection with the correct fields to share.

What is an STP file?
The file extension that applies to site templates.

How does SharePoint support MS Outlook integration?
Via Web Parts available at the Microsoft Web Component Directory. Oh yeah and Active X Controls.

What is an FWP file?
The file extension that applies to SharePoint sites that have been backed up.

What is a personal view and what is a shared view?
Personal views are specific to a user while Shared View is common across all users.

Are there any browser recommendations?
Yes. Microsoft recommends using the following browsers for viewing and editing Windows SharePoint Services sites: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 with Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 6.2 or later.

Can SharePoint compare two document versions?
"In Word 2003, you can compare documents side by side. Open two documents. Then, from the Window menu of one of them, select the Compare Side By Side command. If you have only two documents open, the command will automatically choose to compare them. If you have three or more documents open, you'll have to select which document to compare with the current file. A floating toolbar with two buttons will open. If the button on the left is selected, Word will scroll both documents at the same time. Press the button on the right side of the toolbar to return to where the cursor was located when you started comparing."

What is moss?
Moss stands for Microsoft office share point server. Moss is a portal based platform for complete management of documents & web services. It is a platform for creation of customized web based applications & portals like blogs, wiki etc. Moss provides security features and can be configured to return separate content based on the fact that the user has logged on using internet, intranet or extranet.

Moss provides extra features as compared with wss

consolidation of all the team sites within the organization

enterprise search : search through different sources within the organization with one

interface (portals, mail, erp, crm ...)

Central personnel data base with extended search capabilities, linked (or not) to

internal personnel management.

Business data catalog (bdc): default link to external systems (e.g. Crm/erp)

report center : central management of all reports and data connections.

Excel services : provides excel features in the web browser.

Creation of web-based e-forms, full web-browser access.

What is stsadm command?
stsadm command is used to perform all administrative work. For e.g. Backup, restore, installing feature, adding web part to site etc.

What is the command to take backup and restore for sharepoint site?
Ans backup command:

stsadm -o backup -url http://moss:4002/ -filename c:\bkupsite.bak

to restore :

stsadm -o restore -url http://moss:4004/ -filename c:\bkupsite.bak

What is a farm?

A sharepoint farm is a collection of one or more sharepoint server which having a single configuration database

What is a site?
Site is a collection of web pages which is used to store information in organised way.
Site stores list of documents, discussion, events, task and many other types of information.
Site provides controlled access to share information among user. I.e. only authorize users are allowed to access shared information.

What are web parts in sharepoint?
Webparts are smallest component in sharepoint. Web parts are used to give more functionality to the page.

You can create a custom web part by using visual studio
various web parts available in sharepoint web part gallery are:
data view web part, content editor web part, form web part, excel web access web part, image web part etc.

What is web application in sharepoint?

 In sharepoint webapplication is a iis website. Each web application is associated with one iis website. For each web application, content database is created.

What is BCS?

SharePoint 2010 provides a new set of technologies known as Business Connectivity Services for retrieving, editing, updating, and deleting data from external systems(for e.g. data from ERP or CRM database).

What is bdc?

 Bdc i.e. Business data catalouge. It is a middleware for your sharepoint site and back end data such as sap, siebel and any other line of business application.
In bdc you can not modify data from your sharepoint list. It will be available to your site in read only.
In sharepoint 2010 it is named as bcs (business connectivity services). Bcs is two way, i.e. Data can be edit from sharepoint list as well from the back end data base.

What is workspace?

 A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on web pages, lists and document libraries.

For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project,collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.

What is a meeting workspace?

A meeting workspace is a place to store information, attendees, and tasks related to a specific meeting.

What is a document workspace?
Document workspaces consist of information surrounding a single or multiple documents

What is the difference between an internet and an intranet site?

 An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g., www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password.

An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on the web, can only be accessed by people who are members of the network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator

What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?
A user can be assigned one of the following roles
readers - has read-only access to the web site.

Contributor - can add content to existing document libraries and lists.

Web designer - can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the web site.

Administrator - has full control of the web site.

What are the types of authentication available for SharePoint 2010 ?
Claims
windows
forms-based authentication

Claims is a new authentication method that sharepoint 2010 can utilize. This allows a single authentication store for multiple types of authentication (windows ntlm, sql fba, ldap, etc) which allows all of these types of authentication to access SharePoint under a single url.

Claims create a small token based on the sign-in, that contains the user’s identity.

Classic authentication supports nt authentication types like kerberos, ntlm, basic, digest, and anonymous. Claims based authentication uses claims identities against a against a trusted identity provider.

What are the steps to implement forms authentications in SharePoint?

1.      Setup the membership data store

2.      Add a new user to the membership data store

3.      Configure SharePoint Central Administration web.config

4.      Configure the SharePoint site's web.config

5.      Enable Forms authentication on the SharePoint site

6.      Authorize the Forms-based user to access the site

7.      Login

What is linq to sharepoint ?

Linq is a feature of the programming languages c# 3.0 and visual basic .net

linq adds, to each of the languages, a sql-like syntax and vocabulary for querying data sources.

Linq to sharepoint allows developers to use sql-like syntax to query lists and libraries in sharepoint.

Linq to sharepoint internally converts the linq query to a caml query to fetch records

advantage:

 Intellisense,strongly typed access to the entities of the list,faster development,simplify complex queries

Disadvantage :

 If the new columns are added or its datatype changed, the datacontext class used by linq is no longer valid and may break the code

Explain types of SharePoint sites
Types of SharePoint sites:

wiki: this is usually where everyone is allowed to add/change content for a common knowledgebase.

Blog: this type of site is for posting specialized articles or information for everyone to read.

Publishing site: this site is used to approving particular content before it’s published to everyone.

Document library: a site mainly used for document management purposes.

Download site: this type of site helps in monitoring the count of downloads and track them.

List or forum: the idea is to have specific people post a topic and then allow others to comment on the posts.

Survey: usually a site that’s accessed by everyone for conducting a survey.

Dashboard: the idea of a dashboard is for business executives to gain information and perform reporting tasks.

 What is a sandboxed solution?

When user writing custom code then it is not trusted, its failure causes on entire site. So the sandbox solution concept is used. In that case program is only written for particular site & solution is uploaded in the same site. The solution size limit is decided at the time of site creation & if size increases or code showing bad performance then it is easy to administrator to stop the working of solution.

We can create sandbox solution for particular site but not for the entire site collection or farm. It is not applicable for farm solution. There is some restriction while creating the sandbox solution.

Which are default master pages in Sharepoint 2010?

1. v4.master - This is default master page.
2. default.master - this is used to support the 2007 user interface
3. minimal.master
4. simple.master- it is used for accessdenied.aspx, confirmation.aspx, error.aspx, login.aspx, reqacc.aspx, signout.aspx & webdeleted.aspx pages.

Which is faster a webpart or a user control?

A webpart renders faster than a user control. A user control in sharepoint is usually loaded by a webpart which adds an overhead. User controls however, gives you an interface to add controls and styles.

how can debugging share point application and timer jobs ? with steps?

Steps 1:build application place .dll into gac and reset iis
steps 2:On the Debug menu, select Attach to Process
steps 3:select the Show processes from all users check box.
steps 4:select W3W.exe and OSWTIMER.exe can attach
steps 5:refresh sharepoint site point break point

What is a Timer Job?

Many applications need to be able to specify some kind of recurring processes that are run in the background to handle batch processing, execute long running operations, or handle cleanup routines. In SharePoint 2010, these operations are written as SharePoint Timer Jobs.

Timer Jobs are recurring background processes that are managed by SharePoint. If you navigate to the Central Administration site, click on the Monitoring link from the main page, and then choose the Review job definitions link under the Timer Jobs section, then you’ll see a list of scheduled timer job instances

A timer job really consists of three parts: Timer Job Definitions, Timer Job Instances, and Timer Job Schedules.

A timer job definition is a .NET class that inherits from the SPJobDefinition class and defines the execution logic of the Timer Job. Since it is just a .NET class, the Timer Job Definition has all of the things that you would expect a class to have: properties, methods, constructors, etc.

A timer job instance, as you may have guessed, is an object instance of the .NET Timer Job Definition class. You can have multiple instances of a timer job definition, which allows you to define a Timer Job Definition once, but vary the way it operates by specifying different property values for each Timer Job Instance. Whether you need one or many instances of a Timer Job Definition depends entirely on what you are trying to accomplish.

A timer job schedule is the last part of the puzzle. SharePoint exposes a series of pre-defined scheduling classes that derive from the SPSchedule class. A timer job instance must be associated with one of these schedules in order to run, even if you only want to run the timer job instance once.

 What is the advantage in using Windows PowerShell over stsadm in SharePoint 2010 ?

Unlike stsadm, which accept and return text, Windows PowerShell is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and accepts and returns .NET Framework objects.Windows PowerShell also gives you access to the file system on the computer and enables you to access other data stores, such as the registry and the digital signature certificate stores etc..

What are Application Pages in SharePoint?

Unlike site pages (for example, default.aspx), a custom application page is deployed once per Web server and cannot be customized on a site-by-site basis. Application pages are based in the virtual _layouts directory. In addition, they are compiled into a single assembly DLL.
A good example of an Application Page is the default Site Settings page: every site has one, and it's not customizable on a per site basis (although the contents can be different for sites).
With application pages, you can also add inline code

What is REST ? How is it used in SharePoint 2010 ?

REST (Representational State transfer) is a protocol (powered by ADO.NET services) which is used for getting data out of sharepoint via Url. It is mostly used to access data from sharepoint even when you are not in the sharepoint context.

Q. How does Client object model works?

Ans. When we use SharePoint client API’s to perform a specific task, the SharePoint Foundation 2010 managed client object model bundles up these uses of the API into XML and sends it to the server that runs SharePoint Foundation. The server receives this request, and makes appropriate calls into the object model on the server, collects the responses, forms them into JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and sends that JSON back to the SharePoint Foundation 2010 managed client object model. The client object model parses the JSON and presents the results to the application as .NET Framework objects (or ECMAScript objects for ECMAScript).

How many types of Client Object model extension are available in 2010 and when would you use one or the other.

Ans. To develop rich client side solutions, three set of client-side APIs has been introduced in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Client namespace. The three APIs are targeted for three different types of clients.
1. .net Managed applications – These are used when we have to create console applications or window applications, web applications which are not running inside SharePoint Contex.
2. For Silverlight applications
3. ECMAScript – It is a client object model extension for using with JavaScript or JScript. This is used for creating applications which are hosted inside SharePoint. For example, web part deployed in SharePoint site can use this JavaScript API for accessing SharePoint from browser using JavaScript.

Q. What is difference between Load() and LoadQuery() methods ?

Ans. Load method populates the client object directly with what it gets data from the server i.e. a collection object like ListItemCollection etc. but LoadQuery returns the data as a completely new collection in  IEnumerable format. Other major difference is that the Collections that you load using the Load() method are eligible for garbage collection only when the client context variable itself goes out of scope where as, in  these collections go out of scope at the end of  IEnumerable list.

Q. How can you write efficient and better performing client object applications ?

Ans. You can always use Lambda expressions in your queries to return only specific properties that will be used in your block. You can also use LoadQuery() method and specify multiple levels of properties to load for e.g. while returning specific properties of the lists using LoadQuery(), you can also specify the fields to return from each list to optimize the data access.

How do you access ECMAScript object model API’s ?

The ECMAScript library is available in a number of JS files in the LAYOUTS folder. The main file among number of .js files is SP.js. When you include this file in the APSX page using a ScriptLink control, all other required JS files are loaded automatically. By linking SP.js to your page, the SP namespace gets registered. SP is the SharePoint namespace that contains all objects. For debugging purposes every js file also has a ‘debug’ equivalent in the same folder.

Client Object Model vs Server Object Model in SharePoint 2010 ?

using Client Object Model we can access the data from the system where sharepoint server is not installed on the machine via Web Services , API , JavaScript etc

Where as In Server Object Model is like a Production Server Environment to access the data where sharepoint server installed on the machine .

Purpose of Client Object model is to access SharePoint data from systems where the SharePoint is not installed like web services.

Server object model is used to access data only SharePoint installed systems.

If I want to access data from production environment and I'm not having access to that machine, in this scenario I will use Client object model or web services.

Client object model is similar to Server object model with few limitations, we can't access WebApplication and Farm objects, we can write our own web service or WCF or REST services to

What is Authentication and Authorization.

An authentication system is how you identify yourself to the computer. The goal behind an authentication system is to verify that the user is actually who they say they are.
Once the system knows who the user is through authentication, authorization is how the system decides what the user can do.

What are the two base classes a WebPart you are going to use within SharePoint 2007 can inherit from?

There are two base classes that a WebPart which is going to be consumed by SharePoint can inherit from, either the
SharePoint WebPart Base class or the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class.
When inheriting from the SharePoint WebPart Base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart. When inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart. It is considered good practice to use the ASP.NET WebPart base class since the old base class is meant for backwards compatibility with previous version of SharePoint, however there are four exception when it is better to leverage functionality from the SharePoint WebPart base class:
Cross page connections
Connections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zone
Client-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)
Data caching infrastructure

What are New Features and Enhancements in SharePoint 2010 

1.       New User Interface including Ribbon

2.       Built-in Silverlight Support

3.       Rich and Improved Theming Support

4.       Multiple Browser Support

5.       Rich Media support and Digital Asset Management

6.       SharePoint Workspace

7.       Sandboxed Solutions

8.       Stsadm command-line tool is superseded by Windows PowerShell 2.0

9.       Redesigned Central Administration web site

10.    Shared Service Provider (SSP) no more exists (SharePoint 2010, all services are running as independent Service Application. You can select and configure from available services to run on an application server. You can also select and configure only required services for a particular web application)

11.    Business Connectivity Services (BCS)

12.    Developer Productivity Enhancements

13.    SharePoint Designer Enhancements

14.    Business Intelligence Enhancements

15.    Enhancements related to Large List Handling

16.    Workflow Improvements

17.    Social Networking Capabilities

18.    Deployment Advancements

I felt that doing this would enable a person who understood SharePoint 2007 get a grasp of 2010 in one shot, rather that go through the maze of documentation that available.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007	SharePoint Server 2010
Office client required to view and edit documents uploaded to document libraries (Download and open)	Office Web Application enables Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Visio documents, using Silverlight or HTML with JavaScript (Depending on Browser Support)
No Co-Authoring Capability	Co-Authoring Capabilities available for Word, PowerPoint (with client software) and Excel (Available over the web)
Lot of post backs	Fewer post backs for default actions – more Ajax usage
No inherent support of Ajax or Silverlight	Fully supported
Static themes. You just pick a theme and its applied across the site, no preview	You can select a theme , customize it and preview before applying it on the site
No bookmarking, tagging or rating capability	Its all there
Content Types scoped to site collections	New concept of having a Content Type hub which can be shared across web applications
Media files would have to be downloaded before playing	Progress download feature available (not streaming)
BDC used to store info in SharePoint	BCS reads data real-time (with some caching for performance)
5 million item limit in document library	10 million
Views are CAML driven	Views XSLT based
To query a list we had to use CAML	Queries via LINQ, JavaScript and Silverlight API’s
No restriction for installation	Ability to prevent people from installing SharePoint (Managed at the AD level)
Shared Services scoped to Farm	Shared Services architecture changed to make it more flexible and ability to share across farm
Profile synch could be done by anyone	Additional permission check for account to carry out profile synch
Basic web Analytics	Web analytics capability enhanced
Search results are static	Clicking on a search result affects the search results for the other searches for the same keyword
To limit issues with rogue code that could bring down the server, CAS had to be defined /maintained for different applications. This was not easy to do and Admins used to say – no code allowed	Sandbox available that restricts the scope of code. Deployment is also easy, the code just needs to be uploaded by the site admin, no need for intervention from the SharePoint farm admin to run scripts on the server
People with contribute access could upload .aspx pages in a document library. It was possible to restrict, however it would restrict everyone from uploading .aspx pages	People with contribute access cannot load .aspx pages
Contributors could edit tool pane parameters	Not editable by contributors
Explorer view on browser	Opens up Windows explorer with web dav access
Simplistic Mobile Page OOTB	Able to create richer mobile pages using OOTB features
Usage of outlook for offline access	SharePoint Workspace used for offline access – more capability eg. ability to synch up lists (even external content from BCS)
Not possible to have a common document ID that is associated with a document regardless of which document library it moves into	Document ID can be defined and associated to the document regardless of where it is located(within the site collection)
To upload a document or page, one needs to go to that appropriate site/subsite and library and upload	Content organizer moves document to appropriate libraries based on metadata rules which can be defined
When a file with a same name is uploaded, it creates a new version	Option to have another version or append a unique ID to the document being uploaded
Fixed layout with defined web part zones where web parts can be placed	More “Fluid” UI; ability to place web parts without having web part zones
Retention policy allows only delete or invoke workflow by default	Multiple other options – eg send to another library etc
EBS – to store docs out side SharePoint, possible but not easy to configure	RBS - managed by SQL
Requires Server OS to install(32 or 64)	Can be installed on Win 7 (64 bit) and Win 2008 (64 bit)
No field validations	Field validations available
Workflows created in SPD or VS.Net – not possible to move a workflow developed in SPD to VS.Net	Workflows can be defined in Visio, Imported to SPD with rules added and then moved to VS.Net
Table based layouts	Div Based layouts (better for accessability)

What is the use of SharePoint_Config database?

SharePoint 2010 uses SharePoint_Config database to store farm configurations and contents. This database gets automatically created whenever you deploy the farm for the first time.

What is a Content database?

SharePoint 2010 uses content database to stores content for one or more Site Collections. Content can be items, documents, documents versions, pages, images etc.

You can deploy multiple Content Databases for a single web application.

Content databases

A SharePoint web application can have multiple content databases; each content database equals one SQL database. This allows the amount of data to scale and at the same time keep the SQL databases at a size manageble for disaster recovery. Using administration tools, it’s possible to move a site collection between content databases; something that is not possible for a single site. This functionality can be important in balancing your load across several databases.

What sharepoint databases are created during the standard install?

Ans. The databases that are automatically created when you run the sharepoint products configuration wizard for sharepoint server 2010, standard edition -
1. Secure store database - the secure store service application database stores and maps credentials, such as account names and passwords. Prefixed with "secure_store_service_db_".
2. State database - the state service application database stores temporary state information for infopath forms services, the chart web part, and visio services. Prefixed with "stateservice".
3. Web analytics staging database - the staging database temporarily stores un-aggregated fact data, asset metadata, and queued batch data for the web analytics service application. Prefixed with "webanalyticsserviceapplication_stagingdb_"

4. Web analytics reporting database - the reporting database stores aggregated standard report tables, fact data aggregated by groups of sites, date and asset metadata, and diagnostics information for the web analytics service application. Prefixed with "webanalyticsserviceapplication_reportingdb_"
5. Search service application administration database - the administration database hosts the search service application configuration and access control list (acl), and best bets for the crawl component. This database is accessed for every user and administrative action. Prefixed with "search_service_application_db_".
6. Search service application crawl database - the crawl database stores the state of the crawled data and the crawl history. Prefixed with "search_service_application_crawlstoredb_'.
7. Search service application property database - the property database stores information that is associated with the crawled data, including properties, history, and crawl queues. Prefixed with "search_service_application_propertystoredb_"
8. User profile service application profile database - the profile database stores and manages users and associated information. It also stores information about a user's social network in addition to memberships in distribution lists and sites. Prefixed with "user profile service application_profiledb_".
9. User profile service application synchronization database -the synchronization database stores configuration and staging data for use when profile data is being synchronized with directory services such as active directory.prefixed with "user profile service application_syncdb_".
10. User profile service application social tagging database - the social tagging database stores social tags and notes created by users, along with their respective urls.prefixed with "user profile service application_socialdb_".
11. Managed metadata database - the managed metadata service application database stores managed metadata and syndicated content types. Prefixed with "
managed metadata service_".
In addition to all the databases created with standard edition, enterprise addition install adds two more databases:
1. Performancepoint service application database - the performancepoint service application database stores temporary objects, persisted filter values, and user comments. Name prefix "performancepointserviceapplication_.."
2. Word automation services database - the word automation services database stores information about pending and completed document conversions.name prefix "wordautomationservices_..."

note : you do not have to use these naming conventions. You can either specify database names when you create them, or change the database names after they have been created.