Developing Sharepoint 2007 Webpart with Visual Studio 2005

Althought Sharepoint contains a lot of webpart out of the box however there are times that you will need to develop a custom webpart base on the business need. I will try to keep the writing short and show you the steps that you need to get started developing a Sharepoint web part.

Development Environment

First of all you will need the following things on your development environment:

1. Windows Server 2003, x32 bit (Sharepoint needs to be install on Windows Server and not Will not work on Windows XP)

2. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Service Pack 1

3. Visual Studio 2005, Service Pack 1

4. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, version 1.1

5. A SharePoint site that you created

Download the latest Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions 1.1. Currently the latest version is 1.1. You can download it from this location.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3E1DCCCD-1CCA-433A-BB4D-97B96BF7AB63&displaylang=en

2. To download the latest user guide go to this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A8A4E775-074D-4451-BE39-459921F79787

If you attempt to installed Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows XP or in an environment without Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) then you might get this error: "This product can only be installed if Windows Sharepoint services 3.0 has been installed first". So ensure you have satisfied the above requirement.

SSIS Converting float data type to DT_R8 or DT_R4

When using data conversion component in dataflow becareful that the data you trying to convert to is valid, otherwise you may get an error like this:

1. Error 1 Validation error. Data Flow Task: No update required [22340]: input column "gms_valueConverted" (23080) has a datatype which cannot be joined on

The following datatype is not supported by lookup:

o DT_R4
o DT_R8
o DT_TEXT
o DT_NTEXT
o DT_IMAGE

To convert a float datatype in the database to DT_R8 you will have to do the following. You will have to convert the field in the database to numeric and you will have to convert the input in SSIS to numeric.

Use the data Data Conversion Transformer to convert the data to type numeric [DT_NUMERIC].

Then in the lookup component cast the value to numeric in the SQL statement. eg (SELECT customerId, CAST(customerAsset_Value AS numeric(18,3)) AS customerAssset_Value FROM tbl_Customer)

Mapping Integration Services Data Types to Database Data Types

You can find more about the type conversion in SSIS here

Data type mapping
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms141036.aspx

Sequel casting
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa226054(SQL.80).aspx