Adding Active Directory Users in WSS 3.0 Site using FBA

I was running into an issue while adding Active Directory users into WSS site configured as FBA. I was getting following error:

"No Exact Match found".

After digging into this issue and searching on the internet, I came across the following forum, which is talking about exactly the same issue:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/c2da032b-2346-4068-8936-6dbf4411eac1

I double checked and realized that site is running under application pool identity (user which was not a domain user, user was pointing to local group because site was running on the server which was not part of domain controller before and it had been added to domain controller later on).

So after performing the following operations I could able to add active directory users in wss site which is configured as FBA:

1- Give the permission on the content database to domain\user
2- Go to Central Admin --> Operations --> Service Accounts
3- Select Windows Service from the dropdown
4- Select Windows SharePoint Services Web Application (under web service)
5- Select Application Pool Account
6- Enter the domain\user and password

Note:- If you will change application pool identity from IIS manager only it will not work properly so you have to change it through Central Admin as mentioned above.

Hoping this will help someone !!!

BDC Association Error

I was doing association between 2 entities using business data catalog (BDC) in SharePoint but while importing meta-date file I was getting the following error:

Application definition import failed. The following error occurred: The IdentifierName Attribute of the TypeDescriptor named 'columnName' of the Parameter named 'returnParameter' of the Method named 'methodName' of the Entity named 'entityName' does not match any of the defined Identifiers for the Entity. Error was encountered at or just before Line: '157' and Position: '24'.

Another error which I was getting on the page sometimes as follow:

The Business Data Catalog is configured incorrectly. Administrators, see the server log for more information.

That error is found within the Servers Event Log:

A Metadata Exception was constructed in App Domain '/LM/W3SVC/1959965621/Root-2-128667808042048704'. The full exception text is: Could not find appropriate places on the root TypeDescriptor to read sub-identifier values for the Instance of Entity 'entityName'.

After digging into the error I found that while doing the association between 2 entities, identifier which is used in order to call the method in one entity, same identifier should also be present in other entity, otherwise association will never be successful and user will keep on facing aforementioned errors.

Note:- While performing the association between two entities, database schema should support the BDC association model and all the identifiers should be defined properly in all entities.

I am hoping that this will save time of someone in future.

Creating Site Collection from STP Template

I manally configured a site, saved that site as a template and was wondering that how can I create a site collection from that template.

For a moment I thought, it might not possible to create a site collection from the stp template then I realized there must be something or workaround to create the site collection from stp template.

After looking at the stsadm operations command I found the following command:
stsadm -o addtemplate -filename -title <title> [-description] <description>

When I tried above command to add my stp template, it did the magic for me. I was able to find my stp tempalte (while creating my site collection) under Custom tab with the same title as I provided in above command.

I hope this might be helpful for someone who is exactly looking for this kind of thing.

FBA Management in SharePoint

I was wondering how to manage FBA users in for WSS 3.0 /MOSS 2007 site and after looking at CodePlex, I could find following utitlity which does the magic in order to manage users for FBA.
http://fba.codeplex.com/

In order to get it working properly, make sure you have read all the "Issue Tracker" topics.