How to Programmatically Impersonate Users in SharePoint

There are times when developing custom web parts and other SharePoint solutions, you need to impersonate a user and view SharePoint from within their context.

Impersonating a user in SharePoint requires a few things:

  • the account that the web or console application users that has privileges to impersonate other users (typically this would be the system account)
  • specific users' user tokens

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Testing LINQ Statements Using LINQPad

The other day I was needing a way to test some LINQ statements from an application which rebuilds a database while performing some calculations.  The rebuilding process is just shy of 24 hours.

Besides, there have been numerous other times in which I needed to test LINQ statements.

Troubleshooting LINQ can be difficult at times due to it deferred execution - the statement is executed as the last possible moment.  I wanted a tool similar to SQL Management Studio in which I could run LINQ queries against a database.  Thus, I stumbled upon (actually, it wasn't very hard to find) LINQPad.

Since, finding it, LINQPad has allowed me to test my queries prior to implementation in the application.  Therefore, I can better predict the result instead of waiting through a long process and/or waiting for QA to troubleshoot.

LINQPad allows the user to run C#, VB.NET, F# and SQL statements/expressions against the database - very flexible and extremely helpful.  LINQPad's flexibility allows the connection's data context to be LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework and WCF (OData).

Take a look at LINQPad at www.linqpad.net.