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This is the first of a series of notes I will be making while attending the SharePoint Conference in Vegas. These are not intended to be complete, polished, edited blog posts. Its simply the highlights, as I saw it, from the sessions I attended.
- Started with a review of the types of applications that are built on SharePoint.
- SharePoint 2010 can be install on Windows 7 or Vista SP1
- Both SharePoint Foundation Server (was WSS) or SharePoint 2010
- Still requires you to be running 64bit
- This is for development only, so single server, non-production, etc.
- There is an Install Guide in the SDK (Beta coming in November) this replaces the Prereqs installer that works on the Server OS’s
- Visual Studio 2010 integration is the tightest integration ever.
- Lots of “SharePoint Aware” designers (Web Parts for example)
- Package and Deploy
- Can view SharePoint site via the Server Explorer
- TFS integration
- Sandbox support, WSP Import (nice)
- BDC becomes BCD (Business Connectivity Services)
- SharePoint Designer 2010
- Will remain free
- Looks to be seriously beefed up and also simplified. Seems to have removed or hidden many of the FrontPage functionality hangovers.
- Workflow Designer
- Developer Dashboard
- Very hot
- Is turned on by demand, and provides real time feedback on the performance of your code.
- Beta 2 will require manual steps in order to activate it (STSADM/Powershell command)
- DEMO 1
- Visual Studio –> Build a Web Part
- Farm Solution = To current approach to solution building
- Site Solution is the new Sandboxed stuff.
- Demo uses the VS Toolbox to graphically build a web part.
- Uses a UserControl
- I think this is nice, interesting to see how much I will actually use this
- LINQ for SharePoint (Was almost expecting an applause on this one!)
- SPMetal works like SQLMetal
- LINQ looks hot
- F5 kicks off the browser with “Add Web Part Page”
- Web Part Page is going to be a depreciated, pretty much Wiki pages do it all now. (Wiki pages do have a Web Part Zone, but does not display it)
- Dashboard provides LOTS of detail
- Platform Services
- BCS is the new name for Business Data Catalog
- Read/Write access to data
- Comes with SharePoint Foundation now, NICE.
- Office clients can then take the data offline (wonder how conflicts are managed)
- SQL, Web Services
- DEMO 2
- Connecting the BCS to a Web Service
- SharePoint Designer is the primary place to do this, can also do it in Visual Studio
- With VS you can connect it through to a .NET type
- Generate the CRUD operations for you
- Explorer that helps you define these objects, and then you can write any custom mechanisms for performing the CRUD operations
- IISRESETS will not be going away (not that I was expecting it)
- Connect it through to lists using “External Content Types”
- the result is that the external data looks exactly like a list.
- SharePoint List Improvements (most interesting to me)
- Can create relationships between lists, with cascades…(WOW)
- This is piggy backing on SQL functionality
- Validation support, Excel like formulas
- Lookup to multiple columns, nice
- Automatically create indexes where they make sense (for example on lookups)
- Demonstrated a 220,000 item lists, (dont be afraid of large lists)…hmmmm I’m not sure this is really as big a deal as it is. Querying the data is still the important bit. Throttling will block queries that are made for large numbers of items (configurable)
- XSLT for Views
- Bit of CAML bashing, its not really that bad.
- CAML does not go away, but views will now be done with XSLT
- CAML mostly used for Queries (wonder where the LINQ/CAML overlap is)
- DEMO 3
- List definition obviously become more complex now, wonder how your average SharePoint user will feel about that.
- Demonstrates the cascading functionality
- Column validation looks hot, got an applause
- Lists will indeed become much better for creating applications
- Accessing Data in Lists
- Lots of new options
- Server OM (as we have now)
- New: Client OM –> Runs on the desktop
- New: REST API’s –> ATOM response
- New: LINQ and all LINQ goodness
- Supports Joins and Projections
- Will dramatically reduce run time errors, moving them to compile time
- Client Object Model
- Different to the Server OM
- Promotes the batching of commands, so different to Server OM, but will be familiar
- Almost full access to site based functions, but not server operations (maybe some limited) you use this “ExecuteQuery” function to perform the operations you line up, nice.
- .Net assembly, Silverlight and Javascript files (Very HOT)
- REST API
- Supports ADO.NET Data services
- SP2010 also installed ADO.NET services as these are what the REST API’s are built on
- SharePoint becomes an ADO data service. Thanks to REST. HOT
- Seems to come in mostly on the LISTDATA service
- Demonstrates querying by URL, smart stuff.
- DEMO 4
- Builds a Windows Forms application
- Adds a data source, service reference –> connects to LISTDATA
- Binds a Grid on to the SharePoint List
- Event Improvements
- Project Template
- New After-Synchronous event
- Site Scoped events
- Web Creation Events
- List Creation events
- Workflow Improvements
- This is a really long slide
- SharePoint Designer has an improved design service
- Integration between SPD – VS
- Browser base visualisations, HOT
- OOB workflows can be fully customised.
- DEMO 5
- Build a really quick workflow is VS
- Creates a Sequential Workflow
- Can create a “Site” or a “List” workflow, Site Workflows do not require a list.
- VS has a very visual designer
- Got your standard drag and drop workflow design, nice, but the devil is in the detail
- Adds an “Initiation form”, this is just a web form
- SharePoint Service Applications
- If a job is too big for the Code Behind, make it a service application
- SSP –> Service applications
- Developers can create new services
- WCF knowledge nice to know here
- Includes:
- WS/Database provisioning
- Settings Store
- and much more…
- Ribbon and Dialog Framework
- A number of elements available for use by developers:
- Ribbon is context sensitive
- Status bar
- Notification area
- Dialog Framework
- These are all JS based, all AJAXy
- Silverlight
- Media Player – HOT
- Beyond Media scenarios, I’m not really much of a Silverlight fan
- Could be nice to smooth over the upload process
- There is a client API for this
- Flexible Deployment
- Sandbox Solutions - HOT
- Designed to strike a balance between business Agility and Security and Stability
- Site Collection based
- Limited API Access
- Monitored
- Deployed remotely to a solution gallery (a lot like a document library)
- Does no end up anywhere on the server filesystem
- Easy deployment
- This has some pretty profound implications
- DEMO 6
- Sandbox solutions come with alternative VS deployment config
- Create a web part –> Adds a label control which displays all the sites and all the lists
- Tries to do some bad stuff in the code –> Creates a big loop
- Packages it, and then goes to upload manually (very smart stuff)
- Solution gallery lives in Site Settings
- Adds the web part
- When the loop goes for too long, then it hits a resource limitation
- Resource monitoring which can set limits, and creates a series of metrics around the performance of various applications
- eg. Resource Usage.
- Clear this is functionality driven by Microsoft Online requirements
- In my view this is the most significant new feature in the product
- SharePoint Online
- Supports Sandboxed solutions
- Supports BCS
- It becomes a development platform
- Upgrade and Packaging
- Upgrade callouts for features – HOT
- Test your SP2007 code before running on a SP2010 server, SHOULD be ok, but needs to be tested
- WSP is the unified packaging approach
- TFS
- Bit light on, will need to check out the specific session.
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