Comments on: Content Roll-up options – Conclusions

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:31:36 +0000

Thanks for saying thanks! Made my morning!

By: Julie Midlands

Julie Midlands — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:21:29 +0000

Phew… this post just saved me hours of googling tonight in order to work out exactly what to go forward with as regards roll ups!

Have stumbled upon all three thinking they did something different, started playing with them but then started wondering myself as to the difference…. great summerisation of all 3.

THANKS

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:59:37 +0000

I didn’t find it particuarly slow, and although it looks similar, it is:
1) Easier to use (e.g. displaying extra columns)
2) Has sorting on column headers
3) Works across site collection boundaries (which is frequently painful).

Yes, the Content Query Web Part and Lightning Conductor do basically the same thing, but the latter does more. I might not use it if I had simple requirements or access to an SP developer, but for general users, Lightning Conductor is more useful.

By: MT

MT — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:16:58 +0000

Lightning Conductor webpart is amazing slow. It’s literally the same as the Content Query Web Part.

By: John Hanna

John Hanna — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:41:59 +0000

Andy – thanks for the suggestions, which certainly seem encouraging. I’ll try it out and look for your future post too.

Also, I’ll try to figure out what the documentation is actually saying about merging. Sometimes, I think, descriptions under-rate WSS capabilities while implying MOSS would always be better.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:25:40 +0000

Hi John,

“But can a data source (for a DVWP) be constructed in SharePoint Designer to merge the common columns of several lists that don’t have exactly the same columns?”

Yes, it can! I’ll blog about it shortly, but the quick description is:
- Open SharePoint Designer, then ‘Manage Data Sources’.
- In your Data Source Library pane, expand ‘Linked Sources’ and Create a New Linked Data Source.
- Select your sources, and how you want to merge them (I’ve only tried merging into one list, rather than joining).
- Then use this data source for your Data View Web Part.

Presto! And as for…

“The documentation about this says “all the data sources [lists to be merged] must contain exactly the same fields””, well, I have empircal evidence that that is wrong, at least some of the time. I have two content types, both children of Document but with different columns, and they merge and display just fine.

I’ll try and post about it soon, but I’m going home now!

By: John Hanna

John Hanna — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:33:00 +0000

Nice analysis of Rollup options. But I wonder about one aspect of the Data View Web Part (DVWP), where you say “given that you can do the same things as Bamboo’s List Roll-up web part”.

Suppose you need to roll up several lists in a site. The lists have some columns in common, but they also each have some unique columns. I believe Bamboo List Roll-up handles that.

But can a data source (for a DVWP) be constructed in SharePoint Designer to merge the common columns of several lists that don’t have exactly the same columns?

The documentation about this says “all the data sources [lists to be merged] must contain exactly the same fields”, but possibly that means a VIEW of the lists must be exactly the same. However, there is no designation of view mentioned when selecting the lists for the data source.

Any suggestions to clarify your statement and resolve my issue about DVWP and Bamboo would be appreciated

By: novolocus.com » Content Roll-up options Part V - Bamboo’s List Roll-up Web Part

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:50:08 +0000

[...] So, on to the conclusions… [...]