Mark Jones' Blog

• Upgrading SharePoint Site Columns

  Mark Jones - Saturday, May 16, 2009

  Introduction

  In a previous post, I explained my findings with "Upgrading Content Types", but now I want to test out a few scenarios with upgrading Site Columns. On the whole, the test results for Site Columns were pretty similar to that of Content Types. Although, I wanted to test what we can do when it comes to updating site columns that contain data. If you don't want to read each test case, please check out the "Summary" at the end of this post.

  Test Cases – Removing a Site Column

  Can we remove a site column by deactivating the Feature that deployed it? Yes

  Test Steps:

  1.       Deploy a Site Column (via Feature and CAML)

  2.       Deactivate the Feature

  Outcome:

  1.       Site Column will be removed

  2.       Feature is deactivated

  Can we remove a site column (thats referenced by a List Column) by deactivating the Feature that deployed it? Yes

  Test Steps:

  1.       Deploy a Site Column (via Feature and CAML)

  2.       Add the Site Column to a List (as a List Column)

  3.       Deactivate the Feature

  4.       Recycle Application Pools

  Outcome:

  1.       Site Column will be removed

  2.       ...

  Full story

  Comments (3)

  Category: SAF

  Tags:: CAML Deployment SAF Best Practices

• Upgrading SharePoint Content Types

  Mark Jones - Saturday, May 16, 2009

  Introduction

  Well it's now Saturday afternoon and the family have been out shopping all day, so I have taken the opportunity to conduct some tests that I had been meaning to do for a long time now (geek I hear you say). I wanted to find specifically what happens if you want to make changes to Content Types, Columns and Lists that have previously been deployed using Features and CAML. I am going to split my findings up into several posts.

  I will detail each set of tests then summarise at the end what I think should be best practice if you want to update these.

  Test Cases – Removing Content Types

  Can we remove a content type by deactivating the Feature that deployed it? Yes

  Test Steps:

  1.       Deploy a Content Type (via Feature and CAML)

  2.       Deactivate the Feature

  Outcome:

  1.       Content type will be removed

  2.       Feature is deactivated

  Can a Content Type can be removed that’s in use by a List? Yes (and No)

  Test Steps:

  1.       Deploy a Content Type  (via Feature and CAML)

  2.       Reference it in a list

  3.       Deactivate the Feature

  Outcome:

  1.       Content Type is removed

  2.       Feature is deactivated

  3.       ...

  Full story

  Comments (4)

  Category: SAF

  Tags:: CAML Deployment Best Practices