This is kind of an exciting milestone.  My book – “Pro ASP.NET SharePoint 2010 Solutions – Techniques for Building SharePoint Functionality into ASP.NET Applications” has been released by APress to the public.

Amazon.com link is here - http://www.amazon.com/ASP-NET-SharePoint-2010-Solutions-Functionality/dp/1430231114/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295283824&sr=1-1

To document my journey with writing this book, it began with doing a few projects in MOSS 2007 where the core portion of the application was not SharePoint, but an ASP.NET application.  However, with the extensive requirements for documentation, SharePoint was chosen as a platform.   I quickly found out that there was very little content published about scenarios of this nature.   So I started cataloging my learning along the way.

Now I have a long and extensive background in ASP.NET development that actually dates back to it’s beginning.  I did some classic .asp development, and switched over to ASP.NET immediately.  Interestingly enough, my classic ASP work that I did was mostly in the VB language, but when .NET came out I switched immediately over to coding in C#.   Languages aren’t really a hindrance to me as I have cataloged over 35 programming languages I have written code in throughout my career.  I’ve actually slowed up a little recently and need to branch out!  (F# is on my horizon, as well as compiler constructs for DSL application – LALR parsing algorithms).

So what we found out on these projects was that SharePoint has quite a number of compelling features for a development platform to start from.  I highlight many of these in Chapter 1 of my book entitled “SharePoint as a Development Platform”.   The main drawback I found was there were technological and cultural barriers to entry.   The nature of SharePoint product configuration and necessity of understanding its architecture was the highest barrier to entry for a standard ASP.NET developer.   So one of my goals in writing the book was to help ASP.NET developers jump over that barrier.

In SharePoint 2010 I found that Microsoft also has put a great deal of effort into this goal as well.  I started corresponding with Reza Chitsaz who is a Sr. Program Manager with the Visual Studio team who was in charge of integrating many of those features for SharePoint development into the Visual Studio IDE.   The team did a great job of initial integration there, and I look forward to further developments!   Chapter 2 of my book deals with all of the advancements in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, and is entitled – “Visual Studio 2010 – Enhancing the SharePoint Development Environment”. 

Throughout the rest of my book I tried to achieve a balance between a succinct education on many of the architectural constructs of SharePoint 2010 and providing good real world code samples of some of the things that I ran into with the initial blended projects.

The other main thing I introduce in the book is a way that I developed of looking at some of these projects.   SharePoint is such a huge product that customizations and integrations tend to be all over the place.  I found it helpful to try and categorize the types of approaches together into types of solutions.  In my book I coin the phrases “Low Touch Point Solutions, Medium Touch Point Solutions, and High Touch Point Solutions” as terms to help categorize approaches and levels of effort with SharePoint / .NET development.   This has proved helpful to myself and the teams I’ve worked with as well as some others I have discussed the topic with in the community.

One of the last things I wanted to mention about my book is that I endeavored to give code examples of some of the common challenges I ran into when using SharePoint 2010 as a .NET development platform.  To keep things interesting, I also included in code examples some approaches that could serve as patterns for interacting with some of the newer technologies out such as SQL Azure and the Azure Data Marketplace.   The places we look for information is rapidly changing, and these approaches are not too far off the horizon for mass implementation.

So that’s my book – it’s just out, and I hope readers will give it a chance and look it over as well as check out the code samples which are available on the APress site.

To conclude, I will list a complete Chapter / Section Table of Contents to help reader selection.

Book Content

• Chapter 1 – SharePoint as a Development Platform
• SharePoint Features
• Extensibility
• Document Management
• Authentication and Authorization
• Microsoft Office Integration
• SharePoint Designer 2010
• SharePoint Workspace
• Visual Studio 2010 Integration
• Common Approaches to Application Development in SharePoint
• Intranet Scenario
• Publishing Site Scenario
• Sandboxed Solutions
• Advanced Approaches to Application Development
• Summary
• Chapter 2 – Visual Studio 2010 – Advancing the SharePoint Development Environment
• Anatomy of a SharePoint 2010 Project
• Empty SharePoint Project
• Visual Web Part
• Wrapping ASP.NET Development
• Coding the Sample Visual Web Part
• Deploying a Solution
• Examining the Deployment Process
• Deploying to a Test or Production Environment
• Using Features
• Feature.Template.xml
• Feature1.feature and Feature1 Nodes
• Package Designer
• Packaging Explorer
• SharePoint Project Templates
• Sequential Workflow
• State Machine Workflow
• Business Data Connectivity Model
• Event Receiver
• List Definition
• Content Type
• Module
• Site Definitions
• Import Reusable Workflow
• Import SharePoint Solution Package
• Other Visual Studio Templates and Features
• Team Development
• Development
• Test
• Production
• Summary
• Chapter 3 – SharePoint, IIS and the .NET Framework
• SharePoint 2010 in IIS 7 Manager
• IIS and .NET Fundamentals
• SharePoint 2010 File System Folders Under IIS
• SharePoint 2010 Virtual Directories
• SharePoint 2010 and the .NET Framework
• WSS web.config File
• Code Access Security
• Sandboxed Solutions
• Summary
• Chapter 4 – SharePoint Architecture – File System, Database, and the Provider Pattern
• SharePoint 2010 and the File System
• SharePoint Root
• Program Files\Microsoft Office Server
• WSS Folders
• SharePoint 2010 Databases
• SharePoint 2010 and the Virtual Path Provider Pattern
• Object Oriented Architecture
• The Provider Pattern
• The Virtual Path Provider
• Summary
• Chapter 5 – Web Parts and Master Pages
• Web Parts
• Building a Visual Web Part
• Building a Standard SharePoint Web Part
• Building a Silverlight Web Part
• Accessing External Database Content in a Web Part
• Web Parts Summary
• Master Pages
• Understanding Where Master Pages Are Used
• v4.master
• Master Page Content
• Summary
• Chapter 6 – The Client Object Model
• Introducing the Client Object Model
• .NET Managed and Silverlight Based Clients
• ECMAScript/JavaScript Clients
• Taking Advantage of the Client Object Model
• Client Object Model Components
• .NET Components
• Silverlight Components
• Client Object Model API Support
• Data Retrieval and Interaction
• LoadQuery and Load
• Client Object Model – The Big Three
• Client Object Model Reading List Data via ASP.NET
• Client Object Model Writing List Data via ASP.NET
• Client Object Model Reading List Data via Silverlight – From a Web Part
• Client Object Model Writing List Data via Silverlight
• Debugging Silverlight in SharePoint 2010
• Client Object Model Reading List Data via ECMAScript / JavaScript
• Summary
• Chapter 7 – Business Connectivity Services
• What Are Business Connectivity Services?
• BCS Solutions with SharePoint Designer
• BCS Solutions with Visual Studio 2010
• BCS Architecture
• Summary
• Chapter 8 – Touch Points – Integrating SharePoint 2010 and ASP.NET
• Integration Factors
• Example Business Scenarios
• Corporate Internet and Service Portals
• Existing ASP.NET Product
• New Blended Solution
• Expanding Your Corporate Portal
• Talking to SharePoint
• Organizational Factors
• Organizational Examples
• SharePoint-Centric Organizations
• Touch Points
• Low Touch Point
• Pros
• Cons
• Branding SharePoint Solutions
• Branding Possibilities, Features, and Tools
• SharePoint Server 2010 Publishing Features
• Working With a Brand
• Branding the ASP.NET Application
• Branding in SharePoint Designer Example
• Deploying Branded Solutions
• Publishing Layouts
• Customizing SharePoint 2010 Navigation
• Customizing Navigation Through the User Interface
• Adding Links through the Object Model
• Navigation Custom Data Sources
• Summary
• Chapter 9 – Medium Touch Point Solutions
• Medium Touch Points
• Pros
• Cons
• Medium Touch Point Examples
• SharePoint and the Cloud
• SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure MarketPlace
• PowerPivot and Azure
• Accessing Azure DataMarket Feeds Through .NET
• Integrating External Feeds Through .NET WCF Services and jQuery
• Consuming an oData Feed with jQuery in SharePoint 2010
• Summary
• Chapter 10 – High Touch Point Solutions
• Tenets and Constraints for High Touch Point Solutions
• High Touch Point Blended Solution Example
• Migrating an Existing ASP.NET Application
• Load Testing Your Blended Solution
• Summary and Conclusion

Thanks for checking out my book!

Dave Milner