Overview: Project Renamer PDS Extender
When you use Microsoft® Office Project 2003 to work with local projects, you can rename single projects (.mpp files) or projects that are stored in a Project database (.mpd file). However, when you use Microsoft Office Project Professional to save a project to Microsoft Office Project Server 2003, there is no easy way to rename the project.
Project Renamer is a Project Data Service (PDS) extender that enables you to rename projects that are stored in Project Server. This article shows how to develop and install the Project Renamer PDS extender.
Download The Project 2003: Project Renamer PDS Extender (pj11pdsxRenamer.exe) file includes the source code for the Project Renamer PDS extender. This file is available from the Microsoft Download Center.
You can call a PDS extender from a custom Web page in Project Web Access, or from another application or component. Creating a custom Project Web Access page is beyond the scope of this article. For more information, see the following:
- Project Server 2003 Web Parts and URL Options shows how to create custom Web Part Pages that you can use in Project Web Access.
- Project Data Service (PDS) Usage and Methods Reference includes two PDS test applications in the download; the source code shows how to make PDS method calls using SOAP.
The Project Renamer Extender implements the XMLRequestEx PDS extender interface for Project Server 2003, which is described in Writing a PDS Extender. The extender implements a custom method named RenameProject that can rename one or more projects specified by project ID. RenameProject checks for the correct permissions and duplicate project names, makes sure each project in the request is not checked out, and then builds and executes a SQL query that updates the project names in all locations of the affected tables. Because RenameProject is implemented within a PDS extender interface, it appears to a client that the PDS supports that functionality.
Note The Project Renamer PDS extender is implemented to automatically rename all versions of a project when you rename a non-default version of that project.
The following topics describe how to develop and install the sample Project Renamer PDS extender.
- Installing and Registering the Project Renamer PDS Extender describes the download, which includes the compiled ProjectRenamer.dll that you can install and use.
- Parsing the XML Request shows how XMLRequestEx extracts the ProjectRename method from a PDS request.
- Parsing the ProjectRename Method describes how the RenameProject function parses the <ProjectRename> node in the XML request.
- Creating the Database Query includes example queries and a discussion of how to test and debug a PDS extender.