SharePoint Programming

Q. What is stsadm?

Ans. It is a Command-line tool used for administration of Office SharePoint 2007 (or MOSS 2007) servers and sites.


Q. Where is it located?

Ans. You will normally, find it under C:\Program Files\Common Files\ shared\web server extensions\12\bin.


Q. What permissions are required to perform stsadm operations?

Ans. You need to be a member of WSS_ADMIN_WPG group to perform deployments for sharepoint server. Also, you need to be added into administrators group on a computer on which SharePoint Server or WSS 3.0 is installed. In addition to this you definitely need access to the required sharepoint databases so that you should not get errors while deploying sharepoint solutions.


Q. How will you cancel a deployment if it is stuck at “deploying” or “Error”.

Ans. You can either try to force execute timer jobs using execadmsvcjobs command or can cancel the deployment using stsadm command
"stsadm –o cancaldeployment –id {GUID} command."
The Id here would be GUID of the timer or deployment job. You can get the Id from stsadm enumdeployment command. This will display all the deployments which are inprocess or are stuck with Error.


Q. Can you perform operations on File system or registry of the server with
stsadm ?

Ans. Stsadm does not allow you to access file system or registry. It is a tool to perform administrative tasks for SharePoint farms only.


Q. How do you backup and Restore sites with stsadm?

Ans. For backup use

stsadm -o backup -url "http://Siteurl" -filename C:\Backup\BackupSite.bak

For Restore :

stsadm -o restore -url "http://retsoredsite" -filename C:\Backup\BackupSite.bak


Q. How is stsadm backup\restore different from Import\export ?

Ans. Stsadm Backup\retsore allows you to backup either a site collection or web application. It will also overwrite the exiting site collection at the destination url.

Export\Import - This operation allows you to backup\restore a site, sub site or a SPWeb instance. You can move this site or sub site under any existing site in your farm, across multiple site collections.

Q. Will stsadm work in SharePoint 2010?

Ans. The new Power Shell 2.0 will replace the stsadm tool. Rumors however, says that stsadm will not be totally gone.


Q. What is preupgradecheck command?

Ans. This command allows you to check potential issues that may prevent an upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services 4 (WSS 4.0) or SharePoint Server 2010. IT actually uses a set of rules found in the 12\CONFIG\PreUpgradeCheck\WssPreUpgradeCheck.xml file to check your farm.