SharePoint 2010 Usage Blob

A while back I wrote something about the existence of SharePoint usage information in Blob format, and Microsoft actually has a sample code on how to parse the blob. That blog entry can be found here. That’s actually for SharePoint 2007. Actually I was able to utilize that and build a small application that would output the SharePoint usage report. It’s been working pretty well actually.

Now with SharePoint 2010, I was not sure if it still has the usage information in Blob format. I tried to find some documentations online, but could not. So I just give it a try and test it. Happy to report that it seems SharePoint 2010 is still storing usage information in Blob format. The only thing that I am not sure about is whether or not Microsoft will continue to have this.

One thing to note is that one of the new big features that SharePoint 2010 has is the totally redesign usage reports from SharePoint 2007. I must say they look much better that SharePoint 2007 usage reports. In SharePoint 2007, it seems that usage report is an afterthought. But in SharePoint 2010, they seems to really think through the usage report feature well. I would really suggest to give it a looksie.

Related Posts:

• SharePoint Designer
• SharePoint Sample Usage Blob Parser Error

SharePoint Designer

If you are working with SharePoint Services or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), chances are that you have been working with SharePoint Designer.

SharePoint Designer can be use to push new pages or contents to SharePoint sites. In addition, we can also obtained SharePoint usage stats from SharePoint Designer. It can also be use to edit HTML, ASP.NET, CSS, XSL, etc. It is not as powerful as Visual Studio, but it should do a pretty decent job. It has a pretty decent What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editor. In term of its look and feel, SharePoint Designer is pretty similar to its predecessor, Microsoft FrontPage. The best part is that SharePoint Designer has been made available by Microsoft for free. Below are the links to Microsoft site to download SharePoint designer:

SharePoint Designer 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42

SharePoint Designer 2010 (32-Bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=d88a1505-849b-4587-b854-a7054ee28d66

SharePoint Designer 2010 (64-Bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=566D3F55-77A5-4298-BB9C-F55F096B125D&displaylang=en

Some notes:

• SharePoint Designer 2010 RTM (Release to Market) has just come out last month. It is no longer beta version.
• Unlike SharePoint Designer 2007, which only have the 32-bit version, SharePoint Designer 2010 has 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• According to the SharePoint Designer team blog site, we can have a side by side installation of SharePoint Designer 2007 and SharePoint Designer 2010.
• Also to my understanding, SharePoint Designer 2010 can not be use for MOSS 2007. So you still need to use SharePoint Designer 2007 to manage MOSS 2007.
  

If you are interested to learn more about SharePoint Designer, and also get development news in regards to SharePoint Designer, you might want to check out the Microsoft's SharePoint Designer blog. Microsoft's SharePoint Designer blog can be found under the following URL: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner/.

SharePoint Sample Usage Blob Parser Error

SharePoint Usage Report

If you have SharePoint sites, one of the things that you want to know is how users is using the sites. To get that information, you want to analyze the users’ usage. From there you can find out which sites and pages that are popular, users’ usage patterns and trends. You can use those information to improve your SharePoint sites.

There are several ways in which you can get SharePoint sites usage information. The most common one probably through SharePoint Designer. Alternatively, SharePoint also gives us the usage information in a blob format. Blob can be a bit challenging to work with. You will need to parse the blob. But fear not, Microsoft has provided us with a sample usage blob parser. It is Windows SharePoint Services: Usage Blob Parser, which can be found here. The Usage Blob Parser is a simple windows application written in C++.

Compilation Error

After I downloaded the Usage Blob Parser, I tried to open the project with Visual Studio 2008. When I first open the project with Visual Studio 2008, the Conversion Wizard appear. It asked whether I want to convert the project into a Visual Studio 2008 project, which I did and the conversion process went without a hitch.

However, when I tried to build and run the project, I got 2 errors. Both errors are pointing to the same line of code. It is pointing to line 126 of Form1.h file. Here’re the errors that I got:

error C3867: ‘GetUsageBlobSample::Form1::button1_Click’: function call missing argument list; use ‘&GetUsageBlobSample::Form1::button_Click’ to create a pointer to member

error C3350:’System::EventHandler’ : a delegate constructor expects 2 argument(s)

Solution

To fix the errors, here what I did. I opened Form1.h file and go to line 126. On that line, I see the following line of code:

this->button1->Click += new System::EventHandler(this, button1_Click);

All I need to do is to modify it to the following:

this->button1->Click += new System::EventHandler(this, &Form1::button1_Click);

Once I did that, I was able to build and run the project.

Some Additional Notes

• I came across this blog entry by Diego. He has written the SharePoint Blob Parser in C#. It was pretty good. I was able to download the code, made some minor tweaks and use it.