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Not too much time to blog today, but several folks have been asking about the slide deck from my metadata talk at SharePoint Saturday in Kansas City.

Please download the slides from the link below.

Metadata Briefing Slide Deck – SPSKC

I should have some time coming up in the next week or two to start blogging a little more frequently. 

I’ll also throw a teaser out there and let you know that I am working on a cool SharePoint content aggregator site that should be live by the end of the year.  Nothing fancy, just a single place to go to get a lot of SharePoint information that is currently somewhat scattered throughout the blogosphere.  Hopefully, I have not said too much - I know there are lots of people out there with more brains and free time than myself.  I would hate for someone to steal and implement my idea, since I would not do well in prison. <grin />

I have had multiple clients over the past couple of years task me with getting external RSS feeds on their WSS sites.  While MOSS comes with an RSS Feed web part, and while there are other RSS Feed web parts out there for free or a nominal fee, I though I would make a post about the two most common ways I have implemented RSS Feeds onto a WSS page or site.

Method 1 – The XML Web Part

1.  Navigate to the page where you would like to show an RSS Feed.

2.  Click on Site Actions, then Edit Page.

3.  Click the Add a Web Part link in the zone where you would like to add the RSS Feed.

4.  Under All Web Parts | Miscellaneous, select the XML Web Part and then click the Add button.

5.  Click the open the tool pane link in the web part.

6.  Enter the RSS Feed URL in the XML Link field.

7.  Click the XSL Editor button.

8.  Add the following code:

 
<xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8">
<xsl:stylesheet><br version="1.0" />
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    exclude-result-prefixes="xsl">
    <xsl:output indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes" method="xml" />
    <xsl:template match="/">
           <xsl:apply-templates select="rss/channel" />
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="rss/channel">
        <xsl:variable select="link" name="link" />
        <xsl:variable select="description" name="description" />
<ul><xsl:apply-templates select="item" /></ul>
 
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="item">
        <xsl:variable select="link" name="item_link" />
        <xsl:variable select="description" name="item_title" />
<li>
            <a title="{$item_title}" href="{$item_link}"><xsl:value-of select="title" /></a><xsl:value-of select="description" />
        </li>
 
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
 

9.  Expand the Appearance node and enter your desired web part title in the Title field.

10.  Click the OK button.

11.  You are done.  The RSS Feed should not be displayed on the page as a series of bulleted items.

Method 2 – Using the Data Source Library and DataForm Web Part in SharePoint Designer

1.  In SharePoint Designer, open the page where you would like to add the RSS Feed.

2.  Click on the name of the web part zone where you would like to add the RSS Feed.

3.  In the Data Source Library dialog, expand the Server-side Scripts node and click on Connect to a script or RSS feed…

4.  On the General tab, enter a Name and/or Description.

5.  On the Source tab, enter the RSS Feed’s URL in the Enter the URL to a server-side script field.

6.  If authentication is required for your RSS Feed, enter the authentication information on the Login tab.

7.  Hover over your newly-formed Data Source, click the down arrow to enable the hover menu, and select Show Data.

8.  Browse down to the Item node and select the title field.  Hold down the Ctrl key and then select the description field.

9.  Click on the Insert Selected Fields As button and then click Multiple Item View.

10.  You are done.  The RSS Feed should now be displayed on the page.

NOTES: 

You can click the small arrow in the top right of the newly-created DataFormWebPart and then select Change layout to choose different display options for the web part.  I normally use the second one on the list, as that is a slightly cleaner display. 

You can also make it a little more practical by enabling the title to link to the original post on the site that generated the RSS Feed.  Do this by hovering over the title of the first RSS Feed entry and clicking the small arrow and then selecting Hyperlink in the Format as field.  In the Hyperlink dialog, make sure that the Text to display field says {title} and the Address field says {link}. 

The last tweak is to get rid of the “description:” text – remove it with your keyboard for the first RSS Feed entry and it will be removed for all entries.

I hope this is a little useful to some of you.  Thanks.

Gmail saved me from some mild embarrassment earlier tonight.  At first, I was pretty impressed by the sheer idiot-proof-ness of it…until I realized that without it, I would have looked like an idiot.  I guess that is how idiotproofing works…but it was more than a little disconcerting that I was the idiot beneficiary in this case.

First things first, I love Gmail and can’t stand working with e-mail in anything other than the thread view now.  I will admit that it was originally a little painful, but only because I fear change and I am, as I briefly intimated in the prior paragraph, an idiot of the highest order…or perhaps “lowest order” is the appropriate turn of phrase in this instance.  Zoho mail takes this to the next level by enabling the user to expand and collapse threads on the main Inbox page, which is the goods…and one of the reasons why there will probably be a future blog post entitled “How I Migrated From Gmail to Zoho”.

OK – back to the geeks at Google saving my bacon.  I was trying to accomplish something that should be very simple to do without looking like an idiot…sending an e-mail with an attachment.  Here is an except from the body of the e-mail.  Notice the part that I have underlined.

So, I finished typing the message, and being of questionable intelligence, I clicked the “Send” button without actually attaching the ZIP file I referenced in the e-mail.  Gmail told me, in a very unobtrusive and non-condescending way, that I may have been an idiot, or at least committed an act of questionable intelligence.  Here is what I saw next on my screen.

I clicked “Cancel”, attached the file as originally intended, and clicked “Send” once again.

This kind of simple solution to a simple problem is what makes the difference between products that people love and products that make people mad…kind of like how my being self-aware enough to know I am an idiot makes me somehow higher up the evolutionary curve than a baboon…although if the lyric genius Danny Alexander is to be believed, I might just be on pretty solid footing with my fellow humans as well.

“I know I’m stupid so I must be smarter than you…”   -- D. Alexander

Since the response was so great to our articles regarding using the QueryString to pass information to PageViewer web parts, I have decided to make both web parts available, as SharePoint features deployed at the Site Collection level.

You can download the web parts at my company web site:  www.theportalgroup.biz

Just click on “Downloads”, register for free, and they are all yours.

UPDATE:  Registration is no longer required…and in an unrelated note, special thanks to the over 200 new registered users with a username of “asdf”…I really appreciate it. <grin />

In case you have not read the blog posts yet (and don’t want to), here is the basic overview:

• QueryString Pass-Thru Web Part.  The first web part will pass through the entire QueryString from the parent Web Part Page, append it to a Base URL, which the user can configure in the tool pane, and display the contents at the concatenated URL in the PageViewer web part.  This is especially useful when you want to link to display content from several external pages that are all part of the same site, with a URL format that looks something like this:  http://intranet.company.net/Default.aspx?pageid=420.  If you wanted to display the contents of 40 different pages in SharePoint using the standard PageViewer web part, you would need 40 separate web part pages, each hard-wired to the target URL.  Using the QueryString Pass-Thru Web Part, you can just set up one Web Part Page, and pass it a QueryString parameter with the pageid every time you want to use that page.
• QueryString Parameter Pass-Thru Web Part.  This web part will pass through a QueryString parameter called ‘Url’ (‘url’ and ‘URL’ will work as well), which contains a properly formatted URL, to a PageViewer web part that will display the contents at that URL.  This is useful for a situation where you want to display content from several different external pages that are specific and separate pages, not just differentiated by the QueryString (e.g. http://intranet.company.net/hr/Deafult.aspx, http://intranet.company.net/finance/Default.aspx, etc.)  The benefits are the same as the QueryString Pass-Thru Web Part…you only need one web part page that you can use to connect out to any page, vice needing a separate web part page for every connection, if you were using the standard PageViewer web part.

There are a few caveats to keep in mind as well.

• QueryString Pass-Thru Web Part.  You cannot use a QueryString parameter named ‘id’.  SharePoint will think it needs to look for an ID of its own with that value, and you will get an error on the page.
• QueryString Paramter Pass-Thru Web Part.  Be careful of the characters you are using in your ‘Url’ parameter.  It is a good idea to use the HTML character escape sequences.  For instance, if you want to pass a URL that has a query string, you will need to use the escape sequence for the question mark and ampersand(s) or else the code with think the ‘Url’ parameter has ended before you wanted it to end.

Hope you enjoy the web parts, and please feel free to let us know what you think.

Oh – one more thing.  If you are interested in expanding on these or otherwise developing them yourself, you can get to the blog posts at the links below.  The first one even has a Screencast that might help those without a lot of SharePoint development experience.

Passing Through the Entire Query String

Passing Through a Single Parameter in the Query String

 

If you are like me and do a lot of demos, especially ones that are running within a virtual environment (Virtual PC, VMWare Server, etc.) you have probably struggled with the best way to demonstrate the e-mail capabilities of whatever you are going to demo.  In my case, Microsoft SharePoint is what I am trying to show, and although there are a few integration touch points only present in Microsoft Exchange, it is a resource hog and kind of a pain to install and maintain, especially if you are not an Exchange administrator.

Enter AXIGEN mail server.  First things first, I have never played around with the “pay” versions of AXIGEN, but according to their web site, the free “Office Edition” is essentially their full-featured product, with a restriction of 5 users and 1 domain…more than enough for a small office, or a demo VPC or VM.

On their web site, they claim that you will have a 10-minute install, which is true…although if you are going to install and use their Active Directory extension, you can probably add another 5 minutes or so.  All told, the very first time I used it, it took around 20 minutes from the time I started the download until I was up and running, with integration to my Windows Server 2003 Domain (Active Directory) and robust full-featured web mail running on a custom port of my choosing.  The second time I set it up, it took me all of 6 or 7 minutes, start to finish.

I have not played around with AXIGEN versions for any other operating system than Windows, but if my experience on Windows is typical of how it works on other operating systems, then you should have nothing to worry about.

I cannot say enough positive things about this little product.  In fact, some time in the next few months, Mack is going to start bringing a lot of his stuff “in house”, as in having a home office with one or 2 “server class” machines, getting a block of static IP addresses, and starting to do a lot of my own hosting for certain domains that I manage, including e-mail.  After my first exposure to AXIGEN, Microsoft would probably have to pay me to install and use Exchange.

Feel free to download the product and try it out yourself.  You will NOT be disappointed.

http://www.axigen.com

One more thing I would be remiss if I did not mention – it installs and runs on non-server Windows operating systems as well.  Couple AXIGEN with Bamboo Solutions’ WssOnVista, and I can do a full-featured demo within my host operating system, instead of even worrying about Virtual PC or VM Ware.  Now THAT’S something worth telling people about!

So, as I was working away, setting up a Links list in SharePoint to take advantage of the QueryStringPageViewer Web Part discussed in my last blog post, I came upon a situation where I needed to do something slightly different.

The QueryStringPageViewer Web Part allows a user to configure the Web Part with a Base URL attribute, then fills up the web part’s IFRAME by concatenating the Base URL with the query string of the web part page, using Page.Request.QueryString.  The best use for this web part is when you have a bunch of pages you want to link to on a different server, where the URL format of those pages looks something like this:  http://intranet.company.com/Default.aspx?pageid=4563

But what about a situation where the existing pages are all distinct, such as:  http://intranet.company.com/Finance.aspx, http://intranet.company.com/HR.aspx, http://intranet.company.com/Manufacturing.aspx, etc.?  Let’s say you had 40 of those pages that you wanted to expose within SharePoint in an effort to incorporate existing content sources.  If you were going to use the standard PageViewer Web Part, you will need to create 40 separate Web Part Pages, each with a PageViewer Web Part wired up to the URL of one of the 40 pages.

So, what about making a generic web part that uses a query string parameter from the web part page, a la my previous blog post referenced above, to dynamically set the source of a PageViewer web part?  What if you could deploy that simple web part on a “generic” web part page and reference it anywhere in your SharePoint implementation that you need to use a PageViewer web part?  Would you rather have 40 instances of the PageViewer web part in your environment or one instance of this new web part, called the DynamicPageViewer web part?

As you would expect, the code is very similar to the code from my last blog post, as we will be using the Page.Request.QueryString object once again.  Here are the steps you need to take to change that code to perform this new function.  More detailed instructions on creating the project, deploying the web part, etc., can be found in the last blog post.

Here are the steps required:

• Get the code from the previous version, where we use the entire query string.  It is located here:  http://www.themackpage.com/files/Dynamic-PageViewer-Web-Part.txt
• Find and remove this code: 

  //Set custom attribute to allow user to specify Base URL in Tool Pane
  private string _baseURL = "";
  [WebBrowsable(true),
  Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.Shared),
  Category("Base URL Settings"),
  WebDisplayName("Base URL"),
  WebDescription("Supply the Base URL for the page viewer query string web part.")]
   
  public string baseURL
  {
      get
      {
          return this._baseURL;
      }
      set
      {
          this._baseURL = value;
      }
  }

• In the RenderWebPart method, replace this code: 

  NameValueCollection queryString = Page.Request.QueryString;
  string URL = this.baseURL;
  int paramCount = 0;
   
  if (queryString.Count > 0)
  {
      // Set up URL as having a Query String
      URL += "?";
   
      // Loop through QueryString collection and add all name/value pairs to 'URL'
      foreach (string qsName in queryString)
      {
          // Add name/value pair for current key to the URL
          URL += qsName + "=" + queryString[qsName];
   
          // Add ampersand for all but the last query string parameter
          paramCount++;
          if (paramCount < queryString.Count)
              URL += "&";
      }
  }

with this:

NameValueCollection queryString = Page.Request.QueryString;
string URL = "";
if (queryString.Count > 0)
{
    // Loop through QueryString collection
    foreach (string qsName in queryString)
    {
        if (qsName.ToLower() == "url")
            URL = queryString[qsName];
    }
}

See?  I told you it was super simple!

Once you get the web part deployed and on a web part page, type in any random query string at the end of the URL for the web part page, making sure to include a parameter called url that actually contains a valid URL (note the use of "ToLower()" in the code, so url, URL and Url are all supported). For example, replace http://intranet.company.com/TestSite/Pages/WebPartTest.aspx with http://intranet.company.com/TestSite/Pages/WebPartTest.aspx?pageid=1999&red=green&url=http://autos.msn.com&napster=bad

The custom web part should be blank, and then when you add the query string with the url parameter, it will fill up with the MSN Autos page.

ADDENDUM:

In certain situations, you will need to use url escape codes in the ‘url’ parameter.  For instance, if the URL you are targeting has a query string, you need to use the escape code for the “question mark” (%3F) to start the query string and use the escape code for the “ampersand” (%26)to delimit the parameters.  If you fail to use the escape codes, you will not achieve the desired results.  Using the escape code for “equals” (%3D)is not required, although it might make sense to adopt a standard convention where you use the escape code for all eligible characters within the ‘url’ parameter.

Hopefully, all of you have read and implemented my guide to installing a SharePoint development environment for free.  If not, you can find the link here:  http://www.themackpage.com/2009/05/26/how-to-build-your-totally-free-sharepoint-development-environment/

If you are lucky enough to have a development environment with even better tools, as I am sure most of you do, then please feel free to use whatever best tools you have as you make your way through this. 

Also, there is a supporting screencast for this blog post that contains much more detailed information.  You can find it here:  http://www.themackpage.com/screencasts/dynamic-pageviewer-web-part

Without further ado, let’s get down to it.  Here are the steps to create your very own dynamic PaveViewer web part.

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I am not sure how much call there is for a post like this, but I was thinking recently that with the free development tools available now from Microsoft, it might be possible to build a SharePoint development environment for free.  Lo and behold, not only is it possible, it is downright simple to do.

First things first – there are a few caveats.  They are:

• What I am about to describe is in no way supported by Microsoft
• You will be confined to the WSS object model…although I supposed you could also install MOSS as well for your own use in a dev environment without anyone giving you any flak
• You will not have access to the Visual Studio Templates / Extensions (more on this one later)

OK – who’s ready to build something cool for free?  I know I am!

What you need:

1. The latest Windows SharePoint Services installation bits.  It’s a good idea if you are installing SharePoint to go with the latest and greatest.  There is now a streamlined installation for WSS that includes SP1 and SP2.  Get it here:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EF93E453-75F1-45DF-8C6F-4565E8549C2A&displaylang=en
2. SQL Server Express.  This is optional, but highly encouraged.  The 2005 version or the 2008 version will work.  You can get the 2005 version here:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=220549b5-0b07-4448-8848-dcc397514b41&displaylang=en.  You can get the 2008 version at the new Microsoft Express site, which is here:  http://www.microsoft.com/express.
3. SharePoint Designer.  This is the approved way to mess with SharePoint pages, and it is now a free product from Microsoft.  Find it here:  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/FX100487631033.aspx.
4. Visual Studio Express.  Get the VS Express products that you prefer.  There are 3 language-specific products, for C#, Visual Basic and C++.  Get one, get all 3…it don’t matter to me one little bit…but you should probably make sure you get at least one, as it will be your preferred product for creating class libraries for use with SharePoint.  I would also highly recommend that you download Visual Web Developer Express as well.  This is the product you can use to create web-only stuff, like ASP.NET applications, web services, and server controls.  You can get all the Visual Studio Express products at the same place you got SQL Server 2008 Express:  http://www.microsoft.com/express.
5. WSSonVista.  This is mandatory if you are not doing this on a server-class operating system (Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008).  Our good friends over at Bamboo Solutions have found a way to allow an install of WSS (MOSS, too) on Vista.  If you do not download their tool, the WSS/MOSS installer will bomb out and let you know that it can only install on server operating systems.  You can find out more about WSSonVista here:  http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/bambooteamblog/archive/2008/05/21/how-to-install-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-sp1-on-vista-x64-x86.aspx

OK.  Now that you have everything you need, it’s time to start installing stuff.  I don’t care when you install the Visual Studio Express products and SharePoint Designer.  You can do it in the beginning or at the end.  I will leave that up to you.  But, the other 3 things should be installed in the order prescribed by the Bamboo Solutions blog post referenced in #4 above.  Install SQL Server Express first, then WSSOnVista, then SharePoint.

There are detailed instructions, with screenshots, in the Bamboo Solutions blog post.  Just follow those instructions perfectly, and you will have a perfect installation of WSS/MOSS on Vista.

Assuming that you have figured out how to install some combination of Visual C# 2008 Express, Visual Basic 2008 Express, Visual C++ 2008 Express and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express…you are now able to create Visual Studio projects, reference the SharePoint DLL(s) resident on your machine, and code away.

As promised, here is a small nit that I will pick with Microsoft regarding the Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint (VSeWSS).  It used to be possible to install a trial version of Visual Studio 2005 Professional, then install VSeWSS for Visual Studio 2005, and then merely copy the SharePoint project templates to the Templates folder referenced by Visual C# 2005 Express.  This will not work with the 2008 versions of these products.  When you try to use the Visual Studio 2008 templates to create a project in Visual C# 2008 Express, you will get an error message stating that “The project type is not supported by this installation.”  In my opinion, this is in direct contrast to the way Microsoft has been proceeding over the past several years with regard to making some pretty robust tools available to independent developers that want to familiarize themselves with the Microsoft development suite without spending a ton of money.

If and when I find a workaround for this, I will try to return to this post and incorporate the fix.

I had occasion to move a SharePoint site (technically, it was a sub site) from one location to another today.  I am sure that there are several other folks that have put similar posts to this out in the blogosphere, but for those regular visitors to The Mack Page, I thought I would give you something small to put in your kit bag.

Scenario:  You need to move a SharePoint site from one place to another.  For the purposes of this exercise, I am moving a site titled SharePoint Training, with a URL of http://wss.tpg.local/IT_Team/SPTng from the “IT_Team” site to the “Training” centralized site, which is located at the same level as the IT team site.

Tool:  The quickest and easiest way to accomplish this task is to use the STSADM tool, specifically the export and import operations.

Steps:  Enough lead-in B.S.  This is a simple one, so let’s get right to it.

1.  Create a blank site at the destination.  For this example, I did the following:

a.  Navigate to the Training site

b.  Click Site Actions

c.  Select Create

d.  Select Sites and Workspaces under the Web Pages column

e.  Type a Title (“SharePoint Training”)

f.  Type the new site’s URL (“http://wss.tpg.local/Training/SPTng”)

g.  Select the Blank Site template under the Collaboration tab

h.  Click the Create button

2.  Logon to a server in your farm as a user with the appropriate permissions.  Since both the source and destination of this site are under the same site collection, I logged on as a member of the Site Collection Administrators group.

3.  Open a command prompt and browse to the “BIN” folder under the “12 HIVE”.  For default installations, it is found here:  C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\BIN.

NOTE:  If you have not already done so, it is a good idea to set up an Environment Variable on the servers in your farm that you can use to navigate directly to the “12 HIVE”.  I usually set up a variable named simply “12” and map it to “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12”.  After you create the variable, you need only type “cd %12%”  from the command line to go straight to the hive.

4.  Run the export using STSADM.  I almost always use the –includeusersecurity parameter when I do an export/import operation to preserve the user and group security settings for the site.  The command I used for this particular scenario looked like this: 

stsadm –o export –url http://wss.tpg.local/IT_Team/SPTng –filename E:\MOSS_Staging\SPTng_Export.cmp –includeusersecurity

5.  Navigate to the location where you saved the export file and make sure that it is there.  If interested, you can also explore the log file there as well.  It should be pretty easy to identify, as it has the format:  <<exported file name>>.export.log.  For my example, it was named:  SPTng_Export.cmp.export.log

6.  Run the import using STSADM.  Just like when exporting, I make it standard practice to include user security.  The import command I used for this scenario looked like this: 

stsadm –o import –url http://wss.tpg.local/Training/SPTng –filename E:\MOSS_Staging\SPTng_Export.cmp –includeusersecurity

7.  That’s it.  You are done.  As you would expect, the import operation will put a log file in the same location as the export log file, and it will also be very intuitively named.

If you have any issues along the way, you should be able to see what is happening in the command line window (as long as you don’t use the –quiet parameter), as well as the log files.

For more information about the parameters available, you can simply type stsadm –o <<operation name>> (e.g. stsadm –o export) with no parameters.  Alternatively, you can check out the stsadm page on Microsoft TechNet.

First things first – I am fully aware that I wrote in my first post of this series that I would be putting out 2 of these per week…and here it is, like 6 weeks later, and I am just now getting to the second post.  I have been sidetracked, at least for the purposes of this series, by revenue-generating (or at least potentially revenue generating) activities.  In fact, if you are a baseball fan, feel free to check out one of my most exciting potentially revenue-generating activities at MLBGeeks.com.  If you are a college basketball fan, you can check out another thing I have been working on, The RPI Bracket.

Enough about my other pursuits – let’s get back to these Implicit Documents, whatever the heck they are.  Just to make sure that we continue on the same path every step along the way, let’s bring up the table of contents from the first post in the series (Step 0 of 10).

• Step 0: Welcome and Outline
• Step 1: Setting the Table – Background Information, Technology Levelsetting and Real-world Applications
• Step 2: High-Level Solution Design
• Step 3: Development Environment Set-up
• Step 4: Data Warehouse and Dimensional Model
• Step 5: Making Time – Working with the Time Dimension
• Step 6: Rapid Application Development in SharePoint – Just an Introduction
• Step 7: Using BDC Columns
• Step 8: Building the Microsoft Word Template
• Step 9: Bringing it All Together – Document Generation
• Step 10: Reporting and Auditing

So, let’s get right into the meat of this post, shall we?

Background Information

For years, I have been dreaming about the concept of a knowledge management paradigm whereby a document consists of nothing more than a series of references or pointers to something smaller than the document itself.  The totality of all of those references makes up the document itself – just a bunch of data points and that’s it. 

Like I said, I have been thinking about this for years, but until I started thinking of it in terms of the 2007 version of the Microsoft Office platform, I would always think of it, sigh and resign myself to the fact that I would never have, or want to have, the 500 hours necessary to code something from scratch.  With all of the integration points of the current Microsoft Office system, it should take a lot less time to show something simple enough that it won’t take forever yet complex enough that it will show the capabilities.

One other item of background information – while this kind of technology has existed for a while, and while people like me have been thinking about it for several years, there is basically one group of people that are currently delaying some of the cool things that technology can provide us in the Knoweldge Management field – and those people are…auditors.  It seems like there is still a reluctance in the auditor community to accept a document that doesn’t really exist.  Until there is a standard software package that can do this will completely validated predicable performance, then the auditors will continue to require something more concrete.

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