After I figured out why my first installation try went wrong I hit another strange issue.

When installing MOSS you have to choose which role your server is in. As I want to develop with BDC, Excel Services, Search Service I need to create a small farm (SQL Server running on the same machine in this case). But during the setup the “Complete Server Type” was missing!

Where are you my PDC?

I like development. So this installation took place on my home-machine which is not inside a domain.

A little while ago I installed MOSS successfully on Vista including the “complete role”. So one difference was the absence of a domain-controller …

Conclusion

After my machine became a member of a domain (and a reboot) the “Complete Server Type Role” became available during installation! SharePoint development on Windows 7 x64 is pure fun …

public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
  // Scope="Web"
  SPWeb web = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb;
 
  // Scope="Site"
  SPSite site = properties.Feature.Parent as SPSite;
 
  // Scope="WebApplication"
  SPWebApplication app = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWebApplication;
 
  // Scope="Farm". Does not work
  SPFarm farm = properties.Feature.Parent as SPFarm;
}

Farm != SPFarm

So the last line in the example code does not work. The variables farm is always null.

Here comes the great “SharePoint-naming-convention“… The class to get a farm-context is named SPWebService!

public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
  // Scope="Farm". Works!
  SPWebService farm = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWebService;
}