Introducing MashPoint Beta II - Three Major New Features

In June of 2008, Bamboo Solutions unveiled MashPoint, a major new initiative to enable data integration in SharePoint.  Today, we are releasing MashPoint Beta II, adding critical components and significantly extending the MashPoint platform.  We have previously provided a number of working use cases for your reference and review.  With MashPoint Beta II, we are providing two more detailed examples to demonstrate the rapidly growing capabilities of the platform. 

The feature set delivered in MashPoint Beta II was strongly influenced by the SharePoint development community.  Many of you worked through the use cases provided with the first release and told us what additional functionality you needed to begin leveraging the platform in your SharePoint deployment.  We listened, and will continue to prioritize feature delivery based on your feedback and suggestions.  Please take time to voice your comments, questions and suggestions in the MashPoint Forum.

Key Features of MashPoint Beta II:

• The ability to update or write to an external data source.  This will be implemented using the "Action" method and will allow developers to write custom actions.  Are you using MashPoint to pull data from a legacy database into SharePoint?  With MashPoint Beta II, you can edit or update this data in SharePoint and automatically have those changes reflected in the source data system.
• Single Sign-On.  Enable automatic authentication to legacy data systems within the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) environment.  Read An Introduction to Bamboo Single Sign-On with MashPoint for a detailed overview of the new pass-thru authentication capabilities of MashPoint.
• The MashPoint Business Data Column.  This Web Part allows users to create a custom column that can pull data from an external data source into a SharePoint List.  Read Using the MashPoint Business Data Column in SharePoint Lists to learn how you can populate a SharePoint list with data from a legacy database, Web service or other external data source.

MashPoint Installation Guide

The first official MashPoint release can now be downloaded here.  Follow the installation instructions below to install MashPoint on your SharePoint server.

Important: If you are using MashPoint on Windows Server 2008 or on Vista, you need to manually register the Bamboo Single Sign-On Service with WSS by starting an elevated command prompt and running Bamboo.SSOService.exe /install.  Please refer to the installation guide for detailed instructions.

Upgrade Notes

If you are upgrading from the previous version of MashPoint, please follow these instructions:

1. Uninstall all beta Web Parts using the procedure in the section below.
2. Uninstall the previous MashPoint beta.  See the article How to Uninstall MashPoint from SharePoint Server for complete instructions.
3. Check and clean up web.config
4. Install MashPoint Beta II, following the instructions provided below.  Note that if you are upgrading from the previous beta, you do not need to recreate the Bamboo Shared Services Provider.  The existing Bamboo Shared Services and Web Application (where the Bamboo SSP is hosted) already exists and is still functional.
5. Install new Web Parts.

NOTE: If you are currently using the beta version of the Data-Viewer Web Part, Virtual Map View Web Part or the Silverlight Media Player Web Part, please download and install the new versions of those Web Parts.  The previous Web Parts are not compatible with the MashPoint Beta II release.  The latest versions of these Web Parts are available for free download on Bamboo Labs. 

How to Verify web.config

If you are upgrading you must make sure that you only have one version of the SafeControl entry for Bamboo.SharePoint.Portal. Go through your web.config files and delete any old versions, you should only keep the entry with version 0.6.0.0

1) Go to your VirtualDirectories folder

2) Check web.config in all WebApplication folders

If you see entries like these below (note the assembly version), you should delete them:

      <SafeControl Assembly="Bamboo.SharePoint.Portal, Version=0.5.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2cc91efae2d531be" Namespace="Bamboo.Sharepoint.Portal.WebControls" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />

      <SafeControl Assembly="Bamboo.SharePoint.Portal, Version=0.5.0.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2cc91efae2d531be" Namespace="Bamboo.Sharepoint.Portal.WebControls" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />

How to Uninstall Older Versions of MashPoint-Compatible Web Parts

With the first release of MashPoint we provided three free Web Parts for use in rendering data accessed via MashPoint.  These Web Parts included the Data-Viewer Web Part, Virtual Map View Web Part and the Silverlight Media Player Web Part.  For MashPoint Beta II, we are providing new versions of each of these Web Parts, updated to take advantage of the new capabilities of MashPoint Beta II.  However, you need to remove the older versions of these Web Parts as they are incompatible with MashPoint Beta II.  Follow the instructions below to uninstall the older versions:

1. Double-click the Setup.bat program included in the product download ZIP file.
2. From the Web Part Setup program screen, click the Web Part you are uninstalling under the Components section, and then click Install.
3. The program performs the system checks again. Once that has successfully completed, the program prompts you to Repair or Remove the solution. Select Remove, and click Next.

You can also use the following command to manually remove the web parts:

• Retract the solution from a Web Application: stsadm.exe -o retractsolution -name Bamboo.xxxx.wsp -immediate -url http://WebApplicationUri:455  (where Bamboo.xxxx.wsp is the solution you are currently retracting)
• Execute the job: (If you have multiple Web front-ends, then you must run the following on each front-end server.)  stsadm.exe -o execadmsvcjobs
• Delete the solution from the SharePoint Solution Store (only after the solution has been retracted from all Web applications, and the retract job is executed on each Web front-end): stsadm.exe -o deletesolution -name Bamboo.xxxx.wsp

By default, stsadm.exe can be found in [Drive:]\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN.

The solution package names for the MashPoint-compatible Web Parts are:

• Data-Viewer Web Part: Bamboo.SpGridView.wsp
• Virtual Map View Web Part: Bamboo.VirtualMapView.wsp
• Silverlight Media Player: Bamboo.BDAFileStream.wsp

How to Uninstall MashPoint Beta I

To use MashPoint Beta II, you must first uninstall MashPoint Beta I.  Follow the instructions below to complete this step:

1. Double-click the Setup.bat program included in the product download ZIP file.
2. From the Web Part Setup program screen, click the Web Part you are uninstalling under the Components section, and then click Install.
3. The program performs the system checks again. Once that has successfully completed, the program prompts you to Repair or Remove the solution. Select Remove, and click Next.

You can also use the following command to manually remove MashPoint:

• Retract the solution from a Web Application: stsadm.exe -o retractsolution -name Bamboo.MashPoint.wsp -immediate -url http://WebApplicationUrl:455
• Execute the job: (If you have multiple Web front-ends, then you must run the following on each front-end server.)  stsadm.exe -o execadmsvcjobs
• Delete the solution from the SharePoint Solution Store (only after the solution has been retracted from all Web applications, and the retract job is executed on each Web front-end): stsadm.exe -o deletesolution -name Bamboo.MashPoint.wsp

By default, stsadm.exe can be found in [Drive:]\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN.

How to Uninstall MashPoint Using Central Admin

1. Go to the Central Admin site, click on Operations>Solutions Management.


2. Click on bamboo.mashpoint.wsp.


3. Click on Retract Solution.  The solution will be retracted, you may have to wait a few minutes for the job to be completed.


4. Note that if you installed and deployed MashPoint into a specific Web application, you will have to select the specific application to retract.  Selecting "All content Web Applications" will not work, even if the message indicates that the solution in "retracting".  If you get into this situation, just cancel the retraction and try it again.




5. Once the solution is retracted, you can now select Remove Solutions.

 Known Limitations:

• Patch was released 8/8/2008 - (Deployment in a Farm (multiple WFEs) had some problems).
• Re-encryption has not yet been implemented.