The custom app parts in SharePoint add-ins (SharePoint hosted) gives bad performance when adding them into a custom page in the hosted site.
Is there a solution for this problem?
The slow performance is most likely caused by the way the app parts are placed on the SharePoint page - each app part is contained within it's own iFrame which points to the app web. When the page loads, another full HTTP call has to be performed for the content from each app part placed on the page. Unfortunately - this behaviour is a part of the Add-in model and cannot be changed. Source: How to add SharePoint-hosted add-in as an app part
It has it's positives, as it allows to display content from provider-hosted apps in a web-part like manner. The biggest downside is - it treats SharePoint-hosted apps the same way.
To boost the performance I would suggest (if possible) switching to the SharePoint Framework, which is client-side only, doesn't use internal app webs and renders directly inside the page's DOM without being wrapped with any iFrames. Take a look here: Build your first SharePoint client-side web part
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I am an experienced .NET Developer acting as interim SharePoint Developer, and am new to SharePoint. After determining that I need to go with an application page instead of a site page for a new project due to it's complexity and need of custom code behind. Before developing the entire solution, I wanted to tie up the loose ends of my understanding of application page deployments. I need to add this page as a URL on the left side of a Site Collection page (kind of like what happens when adding a subsite to a site page.) I have read about the modules, which seems extremely hacky to me. There must be a better way to develkop a custom page on top of SharePoint without the page being accessible to anyone on the entire site.
EDIT
The application I am wanting to develop on top of SharePoint exists purely for data entry and reporting purposes.
Have you considered using a Webpart?
With a visual webpart which is essencially a usercontrol wrapped in a webpart you can add as much complexity as you want and you also have code behind to hook to events etc.
The benefit of using a webpart is that you can then drop it on a page, and use all OOB sharepoint access controls.
You mention that you want to develop a data entry reporting app. So something you can do is to create a subsite. Look all access to modify pages except to owners. Create all your screens by adding pages to the subsite and dropping webparts on it with the logic you require for each screen.
Also make sure you deploy the werbparts via a web feature that only is activated in your subsite, this way the webparts are only available in that particular subsite.
There are two types of pages in sharepoint. Application and site pages. In site pages if we want to customize them, are we not able to use the server side code? If so why? I saw an article related to this in MSDN.
Generally what is meant by customized here. Adding a webpart through the code is customization? Please explain me any one.
Without a web.config modification (not recommended), Site Pages do not support server side code (either inline or in a code behind file). This is primarily for security and performance reasons. Unlike Application Pages, Site Pages can be added or modified in SharePoint Designer and, in a limited fashion, through the browser.
Normally, there are many more users with these privileges than those users that have access to the web server. I'll leave it to your imagination to consider some of the insecure or inefficient server side code some of these users could create.
In addition to custom web parts, see Where's the code-behind for sharepoint aspx pages? for server side code options within Site Pages.
When you're doing application page, you're storing the aspx with the 12 / 14 hive (SharePoint installation directory) and you're free to use any code behind class / component that you want to use. The original aspx file will stay in the physical folder of the Web Frond End
On the other side, when you're creating site pages, you're adding a new entry within the content database and not on the file system. Even if you have a site page template, you need to add safe entries to your web.config to trust the assemblies.
For the site pages, it is suggested to work with WebParts. They will allow you do do any business / core logic with the actual page, list, web, site.
When they talk about customization, they talk about modification done to the site pages that will alter the original definition. A site page provisioned through a web definition will stay "uncustomized" (ghosted) in the file system until it is being edited.
I realise that Sharepoint in asp .net based but I have a PHP application that a user wants me to include in a Sharepoint site.
So is it possible to use PHP code inside sharepoint?
danit, when you say 'include' in the site, would it mean to be part of the site chrome (like inside the same menus etc) or just live connected with links would suffice?
I ask that because you can run php code under an IIS site but that would only keep the pages separated inside the same virtual host. if you need to actually join the functionalities you can:
Fake it with an iFrame (Page Viewer Web Part pointing to the php site for example).
you'll have to use some interop like webservices. It really comes down to what you want to do and not to if it is possible.
This is also possible by creating a web part page and adding a page viewer web part. You can link to the page, making it visible within the Sharepoint site, but it won't offer any interaction with Sharepoint itself.
Sharepoint treats the page as a shared document, however, so you can restrict access to it. I have done this in order to offer access to 'view only' content such as reports, but you can also use it for custom php apps that rely on a database other than the one(s) Sharepoint is using.
I have a requirement to select some data from a table in a database (SQL Server) and display it on a page in a SharePoint site (MOSS 2007).
I have a little bit of experience of MOSS, so I know I have a couple of options:
BDC
SSRS
or possibily even a custom ASPX page.
I've never really worked with any of these. Can anyone advise on the +/-'s of each?
It all depends on what functionality is required once the table is displayed in SharePoint. Do you need extra bells and whistles or is a dump of the data adequate? (Think about the future as well.) Here's some thoughts...
Business Data Catalog (BDC)
If you want to nicely integrate the SharePoint look and feel with your data as well as get some cool functionality, BDC is a good solution. There is no need to program anything and these are the features you get. However if this data will only be used once in one way then it is probably overkill.
You would need to roll your own XML description of the data so SharePoint knows how to pull it from the database (or use something third party like Lightning Tools). As Colin mentioned it requires the Enterprise license of MOSS.
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
If Reporting Services is already available for use then this is the quickest and simplest solution. It works well but can get painful as more advanced features are required in your reports.
You should be able to use the Report Designer wizard to point to your table and set everything up for you. There are SSRS web parts that can be used within SharePoint, or indeed you can run SSRS inside SharePoint using SharePoint integration mode.
Application Page
This method Steven mentioned lets you integrate an ASP.NET application into SharePoint (such that it can be accessible by a URL within your SharePoint site). This allows anything that ASP.NET does, and the code-behind will be aware of SharePoint so you can tap into that if needed as well. The cons here are code access security and deployment.
See this webcast for how to do it.
Web Part
Similar to developing an application page but much more integrated with SharePoint. A custom web part is very powerful and allows you to integrate ASP.NET code on a SharePoint page. As you would know web parts can be dragged to whatever location and give a consistent properties pane. Again, code access security and deployment needs to be considered.
If you like designer view in Visual Studio then be aware this isn't the approach that Microsoft push. You can however use something like SmartPart where you would develop your custom app as a user control and the SmartPart wraps it into a web part. I'm used to doing it the MS way now and actually prefer the additional control this gives, however it can take more time.
Page Viewer Web Part
If you don't want to touch your SharePoint installation at all then have a look at this web part. It takes a URL as parameter and displays an IFrame containing the page that would be your report, either in SSRS or standard ASP.NET.
The downside from this lack of integration is problems with sizing the IFrame, and possible security warnings from the browser if accessing the URL in a different domain.
Don't forget the DataView Webpart. It has a pretty small developement footprint and works really well as a first "cut" if you are unsure as to how hardcore you need the final result to be.
It renders using XSLT, giving you full control of the final HTML, so it can do some pretty things with Javascript and co.
For a very simple example of charting.
Have you ever used the .NET Framework do develop webpages?
MOSS 2007 uses this framework for master / template files.
So your best choice would be to create an ASPX template file to display the results on the webpage.
BDC is the way to go if you want to keep it "strictly Sharepoint". The problem is, it is only included in the Enterprise edition of SharePoint. If you have the Standard edition, you could go for SSRS and the SSRS webpart, or, create your own webpart. That way you can use your data display anywhere in your site and it's also ASP.NET compatible.
As Nat said - if all that is needed is to display some data from a database on a page - the DVWP is a great solution. Just open your page in SharePoint Designer, add the database connection, and drop the web part on your page. You can use any of the several pre-formatted layouts, or design/tweak your own so the data is displayed as you need.
Relatively straightforward, lots of HowTos online, and far faster/easier to setup than something like BDC.
I'm presently working on a large intranet mashup that uses sharepoint to aggregate content from several other internal servers such as:
moss.myapp.internalserver.local - The MOSS portal
ssrs.myapp.internalserver.local - SQL Server reporting services reports
app.myapp.internalserver.local - Custom ASP.NET MVC forms
The moss portal invokes the MVC forms using iframes in jQuery dialogs (boxy to be precise), which in turn call back into the moss page with javascript for various things, including closing the jQuery dialog.
This would obviously fail the same origin policy on the browsers (and therefore not allow javascript to call into the frames/windows from different sources), so I've worked around this by setting document.domain = "myapp.internalserver.local" in the MOSS master pages and the app forms pages, which allows cross domain scripts to run fine between moss and app content.
So, that's working great, until I add an SSRS report into the mix using a report viewer web part (sharepoint's default one, plus a couple of third party ones including my own which just use the ASP.NET report viewer component).
The report viewer seems to require a handler that returns html into the page. However, The resultant report viewer content seems to render and script into some iframes, but it doesn't give us any way to set document.domain on those iframes, and so the scripts fail.
At best this means we get the little yellow javascript error icon in the status bar, and at worse, where dynamic rendering is used, the "rendering report" progress wheel just animates and never delivers a report.
Has anyone seen this before and if so, how did you get around it?
Thanks,
Tony
Typically to get the SSRS web parts to behave in SharePoint you will want to enable Kerberos, if you want to pass the same reports (using the same security context) you will need to grant your SharePoint app pool account rights to retrieve/run the reports. You could also consider installing SSRS in "integrated" mode but this is quite a difficult process as the sql server will need to host SharePoint as another farm member, with SharePoint fully installed.
I ended up solving this by using sub-frames as per this blog post:
http://www.deepcode.co.uk/2009/11/overcoming-cross-domain-issues-between.html