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One of my pain points as a SharePoint “administrator” is having to deal with deployments of solution packages to my environment without the best change management. This means that I often see packages making their way in to the environment without any thought given to keeping the package in case it needs to be reapplied at a later time (Note: I’m not the only one who controls what goes into the environment).

The solution? I whipped up a Windows application so download one, several, or all of the solution packages currently stored in the farm configuration database.

I have posted the application to CodePlex @ http://spsolutiondownloader.codeplex.com/.

The application must be run in the context of a Farm Administrator (i.e. right-click, Run As…) on a server in the farm for which you wish to download the solution package(s) from and requires the .NET Framework 3.5.

I would love some feedback from the community as to whether or not this useful. I have some other little apps in mind I could put together with the proper motivation.

SPTraceView (by Hristo Pavlov) is a tool which allows a user (with console and/or RDP access to a SharePoint server) to view the trace logs for SharePoint in real time. Parsing through ULS logs can be a tedious process, but being able to see the events as they occur certainly makes it much more palatable.

SPTraceView can be used in either a single server or a farm scenario, although a farm does require some configuration.

The Bamboo Team has just released an update to their SharePoint Analyzer. If you administer a SharePoint farm, it is definitely worth evaluating.

Did I mention that it is currently free? Go get it.