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SharePoint scores with Web developers

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check out this article on the SDTimes Web site. I captured some key points form the article below.

"The platform's growing popularity and the subtle differences between SharePoint and ASP.NET development are compelling Microsoft to invest in guidance to bring developers up to speed. The patterns and practices group at Microsoft has begun to write guidance for working with SharePoint APIs and building applications, according to Paul Andrew, senior technical product manager for SharePoint."

"SharePoint gives developers a lot of functionality for building Web applications out of the box that they would otherwise have to build themselves, said Ryan Thomas, SharePoint practice director at Syrinx Consulting."

"At a lower level, SharePoint has facilities for data access and list management built in; developers do not have to change database schema or write store procedures for SQL Server, Thomas said. Additionally, its CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language) makes it possible to run data queries without "cracking open Visual Studio," resulting in significant time savings, he said."

"Developers get the speed of pre-built plumbing," Thomas said. "Microsoft has run QA over it, and the CRUD [create, read, update and delete] operations are built into the quality life cycle. There are standard data access operations against SharePoint lists; you don't have to spend nearly as much time testing."

"In a January report, Forrester analyst G. Oliver Young predicted that Microsoft SharePoint would "steamroll" the Web 2.0 market and that IT departments taking a leadership role in enterprise 2.0 deployments would look at SharePoint first."

"The patterns and practices group at Microsoft will start publishing prescriptive guidance in the coming months for working with SharePoint APIs and building applications, said Andrew, adding that it has already published best practices for tuning memory management in SharePoint. Additionally, the group is working to establish guidance for life cycle management with SharePoint, he said."

"Microsoft's developer division will also invest in tools and improve SharePoint Extensions for Visual Studio.
The next version of Visual Studio will bundle tools for SharePoint, and Microsoft intends to migrate SharePoint developers onto it, Andrew added. He would not specify what the new tools might be. Microsoft will continue to develop SharePoint extensions for Visual Studio"

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