With the 2010 release of SharePoint, Microsoft is bringing the development of custom features for their collaboration platform closer to the mainstream .net development world. This brings with it new opportunities and more importantly, a new way of looking at web-based development in a whole.
Probably the number one complaint that Microsoft got from developers in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 was that custom development for the platform was in nothing like creating a new web application. The learning curve was steep and without additional tools like WSPBuilder, it was almost impossible to easily develop and debug the features you were creating. That meant that SharePoint developers became a very specialized bunch of people completely separated from the mainstream ASP.NET developers. As a result, a custom web application and a SharePoint application became competitors in many cases.
Of course, this was not what Microsoft wanted as it basically divided Microsoft web application customers into two camps. On the one hand the SharePoint believers, on the other hand the firm believers in “from-scratch” web applications. A strange predicament, seen MOSS 2007 is in essence an ASP.NET custom application made by Microsoft itself. It also meant that many of the undoubtedly strong features of SharePoint went to waste for custom web application and in that sense the wheel was invited over and over again.
Now in the 2010 release of SharePoint Microsoft addressed these issues and is bringing SharePoint development on the same level as the custom ASP.NET application development. The fact Microsoft actually listened and addressed most of the complaints made by developers is maybe the best indication of how big the problem was. But now, the threshold will be lower for ASP.NET developers to use SharePoint components, libraries and user interface. For a comprehensive overview of the new development platform, make sure to read the excellent white paper by David Chappell on the 2010 SharePoint Developer Platform. You can download it from Microsoft Downloads here. His conclusion to his white paper made me write this post, because I think it captures one of the most important strengths of the new 2010 release.
That conclusion is that from the 2010 release, because the SharePoint development platform is now essentially on the same level, the separated worlds of ASP.NET developers and SharePoint developers can come together in a unified and therefore much stronger Microsoft .Net web-based community. The ASP.NET developer can now, much easier and more comprehensible than before, build his custom pages on top of SharePoint and in the process benefit from the default SharePoint components, services and the consistent user interface. This makes SharePoint 2010 a much stronger product for the entire company to use for internal as well as external sites and web-based applications. It also enables custom websites to benefit from the SharePoint “infrastructure” even more, eliminating cluttered web servers, identity services per web application and more of these things many administrators struggle with in the current Microsoft web-based world.
The SharePoint development platform is therefore growing from an ASP.NET application created by Microsoft in MOSS 2007 to a web application framework that can be used in addition to the ASP.NET framework. So whether you are currently an ASP.NET developer (with or without strong feelings towards SharePoint) or a SharePoint developer, you can definitely benefit from looking into the new 2010 Development Platform because in the future it will cross your path. I guarantee it.
Resources: White Paper “The SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform: An Introduction for ASP.NET Solution Architects” by David Chappell (download: here )
By Ronny Gabriels, SharePoint Team Leader, Euricom