InfoPath 2007 and InfoPath Forms Services error about user name cannot be verified

Just today an old existing SharePoint 2007 environment was re-introduced into the InfoPath development process for my current client and this morning when trying to preview a form either through InfoPath 2007 designer or InfoPath Form Services and using the InfoPath function "UserName()" the below error was given (error when viewing through InfoPath 2007).
The full error message is

InfoPathYour user name cannot be verified because the form's security settings do not permit it.Error occurred during a call to property or method 'get-UserName'.

The problem started to happen when the "Domain" textbox on the "Preview" screen and "Enter the URL of a server that is running InfoPath Forms Services and can be used to verify compatibility" textbox on the "Compatibility" screen from the "Form Options" menu was set to point to the development SharePoint server. Below are visuals of the options that I'm talking about.

The error sort of took me back at first because there weren't any problems with any of the previous forms. Since this was a new form I was thinking that there was a setting that was not correct but that wasn't the case. While troubleshooting the issue I changed the form security to "Full Trust" from "Domain" and everything was working but I knew that wasn't the solution but it got me thinking in a different direction. It got me thinking that it wasn't an InfoPath problem after all. To further that theory I changed "Preview" and "Compatibility" values to point to production and when I previewed the form everything worked with no errors. This confirmed my theory in my mind that it wasn't an InfoPath problem and I started to think what else is tied into InfoPath.

So naturally I thought it could be an IE issue because we all know that IE is an integral part of InfoPath. The first thing that I did was open each SharePoint site that I was using in IE and looked at the security zone for each site. To my surprise there was a difference between them. The production site had "Local Intranet" and the development site had "Internet". You can easily tell this by looking at the bottom right corner of the IE 7 browser. After noticing this I added the development site to the "Local Intranet" zone and then tested my InfoPath form out again and there were no errors this time.

Cheers......!

Source:www.sharepointblogs.com

Information about the characters that you cannot use in sites, folders, and files in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or in SharePoint Server 2007

This article lists the characters that you cannot use in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site names, folder names, server names, and file names or in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site names, folder names, server names, and file names.

Site names, subsite names, or site group names
You cannot use the following characters anywhere in a site name, in a subsite name, or in a site or Active Directory group name:
• tilde (~)
• number sign (#)
• percent (%)
• ampersand (&)
• asterisk (*)
• braces ({ })
• backslash (\)
• colon (:)
• angle brackets (< >)
• question mark (?)
• slash (/)
• plus sign (+)
• pipe ()
• quotation mark (")
• You cannot start a site name, subsite name, or a site group name with an underscore (_) character or with the period character.
• You cannot use the period character consecutively in the middle of a site name, a subsite name, or a site group name.
• You cannot use the period character at the end of a site name, a subsite name, or a site group name.

Folder names
You cannot use the following characters anywhere in a folder name or a server name:
• tilde
• number sign
• percent
• ampersand
• asterisk
• braces
• backslash
• colon
• angle brackets
• question mark
• slash
• pipe
• quotation mark
• You cannot use the period character consecutively in the middle of a folder name.
• You cannot use the period character at the end of a folder name.
• You cannot start a folder name with the period character.

File names
You cannot use the following characters anywhere in a file name:
• tilde
• number sign
• percent
• ampersand
• asterisk
• braces
• backslash
• colon
• angle brackets
• question mark
• slash
• pipe
• quotation mark
• You cannot use the period character consecutively in the middle of a file name.
• You cannot use the period character at the end of a file name.
• You cannot start a file name with the period character.

Source : support.microsoft.com

Exploring The SharePoint Content Database

There are some cases when we need to look into and read from the content databases.We will begin with some of the basic tables and a very high level diagram on some of the relationships between them.

Features
Table that holds information about all the activated features for each site collection or site.

Sites
Table that holds information about all the site collections for this content database.

Webs
Table that holds information about all the specific sites (webs) in each site collection.

UserInfo
Table that holds information about all the users for each site collection.

Groups
Table that holds information about all the SharePoint groups in each site collection.

Roles
Table that holds information about all the SharePoint roles (permission levels) for each site.

AllLists
Table that holds information about lists for each site.

GroupMembership
Table that holds information about all the SharePoint group members.

AllUserData
Table that holds information about all the list items for each list.

AllDocs
Table that holds information about all the documents (and all list items) for each document library and list.

RoleAssignment
Table that holds information about all the users or SharePoint groups that are assigned to roles.

SchedSubscriptions
Table that holds information about all the scheduled subscriptions (alerts) for each user.

ImmedSubscriptions
Table that holds information about all the immediate subscriptions (alerts) for each user.


Source : www.sharepointblogs.com

Sharepoint Backup

Types of Backup in Sharepoint V3.

As Every product or any business Disaster Recovery is very importand and in similar way, Sharepoint has some very good options for the same. Below are the methods that can be used in WSS 3.0 only or also for MOSS 2007.

1. GUI mode from Sharepoint Central Administration.

This Method is very common and most of the Administrators use this Method.

Go to Sharepoint Central Administration page -> Operations Tab -> Backup Operations.

This method will need a UNC path to store the back. It automatically creates a folder starting which will have various files in it and the most important file is the .xml file which get created, which has all the information about the backup.

The .xml file will contain data about the backup ID, The type of Backup, the Components selected during the backup.

GUI Backup is the same like the stsadm -o backup [catostrophic]. Both work the same way and the backrgound process is the same. Only difference here is the GUI interface.

By Default this backup will take the entire Sharepoint Farm backup

2. STSADM -o backup

This method is a command line backup which needs to be run from the BIN folder of Sharepoint.

This method can backup any top level sites or site collections of a Web application.

You will need to specify the URL address of the site to be backed up.By default in this method the security or permissions are also backed up.

stsadm -o backup -filename c:\back.bak -url http://siteurl/

This is the standard command. It is not necessary to give the backup file extension as .bak, it can be anything or you may not even give any extension. Using this command you can backup only 1 top site at a time within the Web Application. If you want you can create a batch file which will include the commands having different URL's and schedule te batch file to run accordingly. It also includes other parameters for which you can use

stsadm -help backup

3. STSADM -o backup [catostrophic]

This method is similar to GUI Central Adminstration backup, its only Command line interface. You will need to manually specify the parameters and components to be backed up using this command. By default if the component is not specified, Enter Farm level backup is taken. Using this command as well a UNC path is to be given, where again and .xml file will be created.

stsadm -o backup -directory \\server\backup -backupmethod full [This will take the default Farm level backup]

You can use stsadm -o backup -showtree to see the list of the items in the Farm and then use stsadm -o backup -directory \\server\backup -backupmethod full -item

4. STSADM -o export

This method will help you to take backups of subsites separately which is not possible in any of the above backups. Using this method, subsites and top level sites backup can be taken but by default User permissions are not exported, you have to manually specific to export User permissions.

stsadm -o export -filename c:\exp.back -url http://siteURL -includeusersecurity

If you do not use -includeusersecurity, User permissions will not be exported by default.

5. SQL Database backup.

This method is the usuall maintenance method from SQL Management Studio. It is recommended to have the Sharepoint Content Databases backup from SQL as well, just in case Sharepoint Backup's don't work.