3 Degrees of SharePoint Development: Recent Comments

Comment on SharePoint and the File System UX model

2009-12-16T17:45:01Z

I pretty much agree with you Dave, expecting users to understand a file system, much less the workings of a data base, is too much.

I was introduced to file systems over the course of a decade or so before really 'getting it' at an inode level, and the bill-of-materials model gave me a headache for about a month before I could really get any good use out of it in an application.

Every organization that I have worked in had 'power users' who loved Excel. This has resulted in me hating Excel, especially when asked to integrate data back into a data warehouse or (shudder) operational system. Users do not understand my gripes about data consistency, so they just keep plugging away with it.

Which brings us to Sharepoint Lists! users see an interface like their familiar old friend Excel and take to it like cats to a litter box, plus we can use templates and enforce some sort of control over data entry, apply security groups for access etc...

Sounds good eh? Well, just try using a list with about 150,000 rows in it (slow and hard to back up), or complex parent-child relationships (doable, but its a hack), or...

We have started deploying web-apps within Sharepoint that support complex data models (outside of the user's view). The users get a 'listy' looking application (plus they can export to Excel), our admins get to use the Sharepoint security model and I get to support a database driven web-app.

So, I sent a couple developers to the 2010 conference and they came back excited about Silverlight and the degree of development that can be done directly in Sharepoint. My questions to you are; Will the Silverlight interface still make the users all happy with an Excel look and feel? Will I be able to define a decent data model? Will 'lists' ever gain a sound database implementation?

Comment on Community Server SDK Overview & Customization

2009-12-08T12:37:49Z

Humm... interesting,

Keep up the good work,

Anyway, thanks for the post

Comment on MSDN Unleashed Presents: The Best of Mix in Denver and Co. Springs!

2009-11-03T16:00:58Z

Quite inspiring,

Keep up the good work,

Thanks

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 8.04 on Virtual PC: It takes a village | Linux and Open Source | TechRepublic.com

2009-10-13T10:11:20Z

Interesting,

this is great, thanks for sharing the link, keep up the good work

Thanks

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 8.04 on Virtual PC: It takes a village | Linux and Open Source | TechRepublic.com

2009-09-30T11:35:46Z

Wow, I never knew that Installing Ubuntu 8.04 on Virtual PC. That's pretty interesting...

Comment on Community Server SDK Overview & Customization

2008-02-28T08:48:08Z

Thanks! You have a very clear post that helps me a lot.

Comment on Agile Software Development

2007-09-03T07:48:04Z

Dave,

Interesting post, you pretty much nailed it on the head in that 'extreme Dave Milner' sort of way. :) The only thing I disagree with you on is the iteration length. I truly believe that iteration length should be no more than 2 weeks. On our team, every 2 weeks we all put our screenshots into a power point and show the power point in a web meeting (the team is distributed all over the US & Australia).

There is a very interesting success story regarding the adoption of agile in a large project environment (link below). Adobe recently switched to agile methods on the latest release of Photoshop, CS3. One thing that stood out to me in particular was the use of 'low bug counts.' Any time a developer had a bug count that exceeded their limit (say 10, 20 or whatever), they have to stop working on any new features and fix the bugs. As a result, you have this 'drop your pencils' scenario where you can stop and do a release within a short period of time.

Here is the article:

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/03/08/adobe_cs3_development/