Now let’s talk about development on Sharepoint. We all know that it is painful to use Visual Studio 2008 to develop Sharepoint solutions, even integrate with the office tools for it. For instance, it takes more than 12 steps to design, develop and deploy a feature to the local host through VS tool. Now with two weeks developing practices on VS 2010 and SPD 2010, I can finally say: It is easier than ever.
1. SPD 2010 plays a bigger role in developing now. SPD 2007 was a tool for end user/power user/IT Pros only, and it is really limited because of the GUID key used widely by sharepoint 2007 and WSS3.0. Now Microsoft Sharpeoint team removed most of that restriction and added much more features on SPD tool. For instance, you can develop a reusable workflow combined SPD 2010 with VS 2010 and deploy it as a reusable workflow template. You can create an external content type directly from SPD tool and build up a BDC file using SPD 2010 for a BCS service, then publish the external content type on the farm level.
2. SPD is not just a tool to modify html file anymore, it becomes a visual tool to manage a sharepoint site and lists, and provides all metadata information for an end user to work on, without any coding.
3. Now let’s talking about the key part for development using Visual studio 2010. Huge changes!
– most important Architecture change is that no more post backs, now all is based on Ajax Call Back using JSON and XML techniques, Server side Ribbon controls, and Web 2.0 Style. All major Browsers are supported. Client sides have two level: IE 7/Safari/Firefox and IE 7 64 bits version.
– one click deployment: I like it very much! Most of the development and testing process can be done just by one click to Deploy, it is feature driven, and integrated with best practice coding templates.
– SandBox dev and deployment: it is not difficult even you are the first time user to develop a sandbox solution. And this solution relieves so many pains from an admin, and a developer as well.
– more Sharepoint solution templates, based on the best practiced guide and provides more standard approach and sample coding guides, this is very useful, as there might be 4 different ways to develop a web part, while visual studio gives you one of the best by default.
– Silverlight support. Sharepoint 2010 not only provides an out of box Silverlight web part, it also provides some architecture object Model–like client OM, to support codes being executed on the client side, not caring which forms(web, window, console, etc) it is running, which relieves heavy work load on the Sharepoint server side.
– Client OM. Yes, now you can run Sharepoint services on you client machine, no matter what OS and tools you are using, as long as you can connect to the Sharepoint server and has the authetication to access Sharepoint. It supports most, if not all, the Sharepoint service and Object Models on client side, this, combined with .NET component, Silverlight and ECMAScript support, really enhanced the Sharpoint development into a higher level (.Net 3.5+).
– Sharepoint Server explorer. — this is big too. From a Visual studio tool you can link to any sharepoint site and list and create a link to it and use the exposed Object on the web site and drive through the Sharepoint objects.
– LINQ to Sharepoint. No more CAML statement bother you programming queries and searches. LINQ to Sharepoint Engine will take care of transfer it into CAML to take with Sharepoint. Using SPMetal tool, all Sharepoint enitities(site, web, list, doc library, etc) are automatically built into entity classes, and you can directly use Strong typed codes with LINQ to Entity, and it will take care the fastest way to query the Sharepoint Database for you.
–Workflow enhanced. Now you can build a site level workflow, it is no longer only tied with a list item or a document, and SPD workflow can be reusable, lots of new activities added and it can take the external parameter to drive the workflow to different directions.
4. Overall, programming is based on .NET3.5 SP1, tool is VS 2010 only, sorry have to say bye with VS 2008, IIS 7.0 is the web engine, and 64 bits is a requirement, Now you can do development from a box either Windows Server 2008, or Window 7!
5. Introduced a new federated Authentication: Claims Based Authentication. This is the basic SOA style standord security Token that using SAML. Which also requires Sharepoint Database support the particular security component.
6. Developer Dashboard. This is new and brilliant! After turn on the Dashboard, you can see each major page rendering, data caching, and query performance, and look into the time spent there, thus provides absolute clear clue where and how to improve your web part/customized codes performance. Admin can also use this to identify some front server/DB server issues.
7. Powershell integration — Sharepoint 2010 provides End to End integration to Powershell, no as a developer or an admin, you should, or MUST use Powershell to enhance the programming and administration skills and functions. It is a Swedish Knife for Sharpeoint 2010.
In Summary, Sharepoint 2010 programming has more:
Efficiency: fast program, deployment and live debugging. Enhanced project template with best practice guide, more existing tools.
Features: Sandboxed solution, reusable workflow from SPD, farm level content types, managed metadata, Client OM, LINQ feature, WCF based communication, Silverlight and ECMAscript support.
A lot more, waiting for you to adventure.
