Pascal's blog » Free Software

Sharepoint Database Exporter HotFix

Pascal — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:18:05 +0000

A new version of the Sharepoint Database Exporter (1.1.0.3) is now available with the hotfix to export files with the same directory structure as it was in the document library.

For more details see this post: Sharepoint Database Exporter

Pascal.

Sharepoint Database Exporter Update

Pascal — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 04:18:56 +0000

I just updated the Sharepoint Database Exporter. It now supports Sharepoint 2007.

For more details, see the my original post here.

Watch Your Time (Time Logger Utility)

Pascal — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:00:41 +0000

Watch Your Time is a freeware application that helps you keep track of what you’ve done within a day. Its source code is also available under the GPL version 2 license.

Watch Your Time features:

It works without installation.
(you can run it from a USB key)
It performs time logging by asking what you are doing every x minutes.
It records your time data within an XML file.
It remembers your last tasks for a period of time of your choice.
It is able to aggregate what you’ve done by task, project and day.
It is FREE.

Screenshots:

Requirements:
It is built using the .NET Framework 1.1 and should run within any environment that is able to run the framework. I also succeed to run it in Ubuntu using Mono (without the system tray icon).

Download locations:

Watch Your Time v1.1.6.0 – Binaries only
Watch Your Time v1.1.6.0 – Srouces and binaries
Alternate location: Watch Your Time v1.1.6.0 – Sources and binaries on Softpedia
It has received the “100% CLEAN award granted by Softpedia” (quite normal for an open source software )

Additional notes:
Anyone interested in requesting a feature or contributing to the application is welcome to do so by posting a comment to this page.

Being a consultant, time is important since its the base for invoices. This is why we’re asked to fill up time sheets. It is quite common to enter some additional details to tell what we were working on. In addition to this, we’re also often asked by project managers to fill a project tracking sheet.

Depending on the project, project manager, company policies, etc., the level of documentation requested may vary. But even when you don’t need to enter much data, it is a good idea to keep an history of your time records in case of dispute.

In order to provide this information I realize really fast that it was a good idea to either enter your time in the systems ASAP, or keep a trace of it anywhere. Sometime, the systems are not very friendly, it becomes easier to track your time apart and fill the systems once a week.

For this purpose I wanted a lightweight software, that does not require installation to run it (since you may not have administrative rights on the computer you’re using). After some research, I found a free software called UUR on download.com. It was good to keep track of time by providing those features:

Works without an installation
pop-up every x minutes to ask you what you are doing and log this information

I enjoyed it for a couple of weeks until I thought I could do one that would save me more time. Yes UUR was logging my time data, but I had to do the aggregation myself. So I end up with the Time Logger that I decided to share here.

You can find the software documentation on the next page…

Sharepoint 2003 and 2007 Database Exporter

Pascal — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:26:48 +0000

Hi,

Some months ago I was experimenting with Windows Sharepoint Services and found out that my machine was not powerfull enough to run Windows 2003, SQL Server and Sharepoint at a decent speed. I had data in Sharepoint I wanted to keep so I did an SQL Server backup of the database. I tought that I would re-setup everything easily after a machine upgrade… I was wrong! I never succeeded to restore the database backup in a running Sharepoint environment (I learned the hard way that I should have used WSS backup utilities instead of relying only on a database backup).

From that moment I decided to explore how Microsoft stores its data within Sharepoint. I found out about Docs and UserData tables and I thought I could develop a little tool to extract my data. In the mean time I discovered the Sharepoint Database Explorer from James Edelen. I was happy that I would’nt have to code it myself … The tool is nice, but it didn’t allow me to export custom lists and metadata…

As a learning experience, I decided to build an exporter program. It happens that I find it usefull in a couple of situations… So I decided to share in case anybody would have the same needs than I had!

***** Updated (2010-02-01) *****

Features (v1.1.0.3):

Export attachments with the same directory structure than original document library. Thanks to Amrit for providing the code.

***** Updated (2009-01-28) *****

Features (v1.1.0.2):

Bug fix regarding the extraction of document librarie items. Some files where not “seen” and not exported (thanks to Finn Olesen for discovering the problem)

***** Updated (2008-02-21) *****

Features (v1.1.0.1):

It is possible to preview the pending version (checked-out and saved, but not yet checked-in) of a file.
(on both: WSS 2.0 and WSS 3.0) (see this screenshot)
Bug fix regarding the extraction of document librarie items when files are checked-out.

Features (v1.1.0.0):

Connects to either Sharepoint 2003 or Sharepoint 2007 database structure (automatic detection).
It is possible to preview the version history of a file and to export individually a previous version of a file.

Features (v1.0.0.1):

Connects to Sharepoint 2003 databases directly
Does not rely on a working Sharepoint environment… it only connects to the database
You can preview the list contents (see screenshots)
It is possible to export individual files from the preview window.
You can export custom list attachments and document library files
You can export metadata

Metadata is exported in an xml file. For attachments, you have the choice to export them in a folder or to embed them in the xml.

Known issues:

When a list is not customized (kept as-is — no additional fields added), Microsoft does not store the column mapping (Sharepoint field name mapping to SQL Server column name). They probably store them in a resource file so its faster to retrieve than querying the database. For us, that means we have to hardcode the mapping for each list type (Custom List, Contact List, Discussion List, Calendar, etc.). For this reason, some list types may not export well.

Screenshots:

Download (Latest Version):

Add-On:

XSL Transformation to convert output into an HTML Table
(use this to import to an older Excel spreadsheet that does not have native XML support)

Download (Previous Versions):

Final Notes:

This work is done on my free time, but I encourage to post bugs and feature requests so I can take a look when I’ll have time.

Also if you made your own modifications, feel free to post them back so I can integrate them, of course giving you the credits for what you’ve done…