Property Section Name Cannot Start with “SPS-“

21 Sep 2012 | SharePoint 2010

If you attempt to create a new User Profile Property Section with a Name of “SPS-_name_”, you’ll receive the following incorrect error message:

Invalid Property name. Please enter a property name that matches the specification of URI schema name (RFC2396), which must begin with a letter, and must contain only letters, digits, and the characters ".", "+", or "-".

However, that error message isn’t accurate. Instead, SharePoint reserves the use of “SPS-“ to itself. Within Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.CoreProperty is a check to validate whether or not the new section starts with “SPS-“, and if so, throws an error:

public override string Name
{
	get
	{
		return this.m_Name;
	}
	set
	{
		base.AdminCheck(StringResourceManager.GetString("PropertyUpdateAccessPermissionError"));
		if (!this.m_IsSection && !base.IsNewProperty)
		{
			throw new UpdateReadOnlyFieldException(StringResourceManager.GetString("Exception_Property_cs1"));
		}
		this.m_Name = Validation.SqlStringValidate("Name", value, 50, true, false, !this.m_IsSection);
		if (this.m_Name.StartsWith("SPS-", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
		{
			throw new InvalidValueException(StringResourceManager.GetString("Exception_Property_Name_SPSReservedPrefix"));
		}
		if (base.IsNewProperty)
		{
			this.m_OldName = this.m_Name;
		}
		base.m_IsChanged = true;
	}
}

This incorrect error message occurs from at least as early as June 2011 v2 CU to the August 2012 CU. This incorrect error message also occurs when attempting to create a new Property with the name of “SPS-“.

The SharePoint Farm

Property Section Name Cannot Start with “SPS-“