Professional SharePoint 2007 Development [Paperback]

John Holliday (Author), John Alexander (Author), Jeff Julian (Author), Eli Robillard (Author), Brendon Schwartz (Author), Matt Ranlett (Author), J. Dan Attis (Author), Adam Buenz (Author), Thomas Rizzo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0470117567 | ISBN-13: 978-0470117569 | Edition: 1

If you're a .NET or Microsoft Office developer, this book will give you the tools and the techniques you need to build great solutions for the SharePoint platform. It offers practical insights that will help you take advantage of this powerful new integrated suite of server-based collaboration software tools along with specific examples that show you how to implement your own custom solutions. You'll then be able to apply this information to create collaborative web-based applications that enhance user productivity and deliver rich user experiences.

You’ll start by building a strong foundation based on a thorough understanding of the technologies that come with the SharePoint platform, while also drilling into specific implementation areas. Next, you'll dive into seven key SharePoint development areas: the base collaboration platform, portal and composite application frameworks, enterprise search, ECM, business process automation and workflow, electronic forms, and business intelligence.

This book is for ASP.NET developers who want to add collaboration support to their existing applications, Windows/Office client developers who want to move their solutions from the desktop to the web, and experienced SharePoint version 2.0 developers who want to take advantage of the new capabilities available in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

You will learn all about Windows SharePoint Services and MOSS 2007, including the following:

• Ways to enhance collaboration using calendars, tasks, issues, and email alerts

• Techniques for developing applications with integrated RSS, blogs and Wikis

• How to build, configure, and manage portal solutions

• Strategies for using enterprise search, XML, and XSLT

• Methods for improving enterprise content management and business intelligence

• Ways to take advantage of built-in support for regulatory compliance and web publishing

• How to create custom workflows and integrate them into your solutions

This book is also available as part of the 4-book SharePoint 2007 Wrox Box (ISBN: 0470431946) with these 4 books:

• Professional SharePoint 2007 Development (ISBN: 0470117567)
• Real World SharePoint 2007 (ISBN: 0470168358)
• Professional Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Design (ISBN: 047028580X)
• Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development (ISBN: 0470224754)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...provides a good programmer to programmer learning experience from real world professionals...good examples to guide you along the way." (Portal.AThousandThreads.net, December 31st 2008)

From the Back Cover

If you're a .NET or Microsoft Office developer, this book gives you the tools to utilize the entire SharePoint platform. It offers practical insights that will help you take advantage of this integrated suite of server capabilities along with specific examples of how to implement classes of solutions on top of the platform. You'll be able to apply this information in order to create a collaborative environment and build web-based applications.

You'll build your SharePoint foundation on the solid details provided on SharePoint technologies, architecture, and development tools. The core of the book takes you into the key areas of development on SharePoint: base platform, collaboration, enterprise search, enterprise content management (ECM), records management (RM), document management (DM), web content management (WCM), workflow, electronic forms, and business intelligence. With these skills, you will be able to set up a SharePoint environment that enhances productivity and delivers rich-looking sites.

What you will learn from this book

• All about the Microsoft® Application Platform, WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007, and SharePoint's relationship to ASP.NET

• What tools you'll need and how to build your development environment

• Ways to enhance collaboration using calendars, tasks, issues, lists, and e-mail events

• Techniques for developing applications with RSS, blogs, and wikis

• Strategies for using enterprise search, XML, and XSLT

• How to create solutions integrating custom workflows and e-forms

Who this book is for

This book is for ASP.NET, .NET, and Microsoft Office developers who want to learn SharePoint development. .NET code examples are given in C#.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 744 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (June 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470117567
• ISBN-13: 978-0470117569
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #357,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great True Development Book June 26, 2007

By Brian Abram

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Most of the SharePoint books out there focus on the basic features of WSS, including lists, document libraries, views, blogs, wikis, etc. Although these are integral parts of SharePoint, they don't begin to scratch the surface of what it has to offer.

This book begins to cover these details. Topics such as building a true development/production environment, designing an enterprise portal application, creating custom field types (not just creating custom columns), creating web parts, building custom features and solutions, and programming through the object model are important to SharePoint developers creating SharePoint content in Visual Studio.

This book also takes great aim as documenting that which hasn't been documented yet, especially the XML schemas of features, elements, and solutions.

Finally, the book focuses on the enterprise portal features of MOSS, including Excel services, the Business Data Catalog, Enterprise Search, and Document Management.

Because this book focuses heavily on development, Content Managers will be better off choosing another book from the many out there for creating lists, customizing master pages, creating style sheets, and other content topics.

But for SharePoint portal architects and development programmers, this is your book. There's a wealth of information in this book and deserves to be in your library.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A thorough book, but it lacks depth in important matters July 9, 2007

By Rodney Viana

Format:Paperback

Considering the plethora of subjects which should be covered on MOSS 2007 this book is thorough. When it comes to depth this book loses its five stars (I would give 4 ˝ if it was possible). Let's first make it clear that I strongly recommend this book. This being said, I add that this book does not cover enough to get someone prepared to be a Sharepoint Developer. However, it is a good starting point for experienced developers trying to get a grasp of what it entails Sharepoint Development. Let's go chapter by chapter:

1. The Microsoft Application Platform and Sharepoint
Good introduction to terms and technologies used by Sharepoint and Windows (when relevant to Sharepoint). But if you don't know what LDAP is, you won't learn it from here. Don't expect either programming references to authentication mechanisms (though you are going to see a few things in Chapter 5).

2. MOSS 2007 Overview for Developers
It contains a General Overview of MOSS architecture. It brings an entire topic listing the software pieces you should/must install and put together to developer for MOSS (very useful). It also explains how to install most of the utilities and, yes, they know you will prepare VPCs for this task and explain you better ways to do it, step by step, including the steps to set up remote debugging.

3. The Sharepoint User Experience
I only passed through this chapter but it seemed to be important for those not so familiar with WSS and MOSS. Here you start to see some coding.

4. WSS v3 Platform Services
WSS 3 is much powerful than its antecessor. This chapter is a good reference to templates location, site definition files, navigation, master pages, modules etc. You also can see a detailed step by step on how to create a Custom Site Definition. There are also the steps to extract the public key of an assembly without having to copy it manually from GAC (you will need this for the whole book and during your development). I used this chapter for my first Sharepoint development which was a feature to concatenate various MS Word documents from a file list into one. The book was not of much help, but it introduced me to the M.O. so I could research in the Internet for the various parts I needed to put together. But the lesson on how to create the CAB file almost redeemed the lost star.

5. Programming Windows Sharepoint Services
This chapter alone would worth the purchase of the whole book and may suffice as reference for most application types. It approaches the SP Object Model. The references you need to add in order to develop using Visual Studio. Here you also learn how to handle events (useful to write a handler to log which user spends more average time with check-out documents, for example). It also shows another way of retrieving the public key of an assembly (when it is the GAC). SP Webservices also enables access to SP Object Model and this chapter gives "a tiny glimpse" (using the author's words) of them. I felt as it deserved a whole chapter as with Webservices we are able to develop in an environment without MOSS installed. This is more important because the documentation at Microsoft is shallow on Webservices.

6. A Sample Collaboration Solution
7. RSS, Blogs, and Wikis
8. Building Personalized Solutions

I just browsed these chapters, so I'd better not comment. I know that chapter 8 will save my live someday.

9. Using Enterprise Search
This chapter comes with a sample code to retrieve search content programmatically which is very useful. Most of the chapter concerns configuration though.

10. Using the Business Data Catalog
This is the most disappoint chapter of all. I was very interested in learning how to transform a Webservice definition into an Application Definition File. Though it comes with nearly 28-pages of innocuous examples of ADF, this chapter is not able to explain how to create a ADF out of a webservice or database definition.

11. Building Document Management Solutions
I am still working in this one and it seems to be one of the best chapters too. It enables you to create customs lists, specially for document management. I don't know if the depth is enough yet, but so far so good.

I did not have the time to go into the other chapters yet.

Appendix A - Using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WSS 3.0
These extensions are not good enough. This appendix helped me know for sure what I suspected.

I also missed information on debugging. There is something on Webservices debugging in Chapter 4, but I would have enjoyed if there was more information.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good supplement to the SDK June 18, 2007

By R. Hostetter

Format:Paperback

If you need to extend MOSS functionality, or integrate other systems with MOSS, this book will help get you going.

The MOSS SDK is a good reference, but doesn't provide much direction. This book fills in those gaps and gives you good, real world examples of MOSS development.

Good examples of workflow, and the chapter on BDC was very helpful for us.

Highly recommended.