SharePoint 2010: Developing – almost

A few tidbits to share with you so far.

WSS has gone through a name change (there was a time when WSS stood for ’Web Storage
Server’ that SharePoint V1 + Exchange 5.x were based on) and is now called SharePoint
Foundation 2010.

I’m guessing that this name is more inline with Microsoft’s thinking around getting
SharePoint as the backend/foundation in Companies, as Office is standard on user’s
desktops.

Setting up your Development Environment:

(no more WSPBuilderthe SharePoint tools are baked into VS2010 beta 2. A nice feature
is that you can select what a ’Deploy’ does, or a ’ReDeploy’ by essentially adding
all these actions to your config, such as ’restart IIS’, recycle app pool, make web.config
change You just package them up – nice!)

1. SharePoint 2010 Beta Center – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514561.aspx ***
   Great place to Start ***
2. SharePoint 2010 SDK – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ee557253(office.14).aspx
3. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 – http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010/default.mspx (this
   will work with the upcoming beta release of SharePoint 2010)
   Point to note: .NET 4.0 introduces WF4.0, however at this point SP2010 supports
   only 3.51. There are some *very* significant changes in Workflow between
   these 2 versions and we’ll have to wait and see the outcome. Performant 10-30x faster,
   reduced memory footprint, more flexible, clean XAML, more events etc etc.
4. One last little point – where is the Public SharePoint 2010 download.unfortunately
   not yet will be soon and should be up on Dev Center Downloads – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/aa905690.aspx

In the meantime, be sure to check out the changes and enhancements to the SharePoint
2010 API model and some of the new capabilities such as:

1. Powershell everything
2. Check out LINQ/ADO.NET Entities integration and querying data
3. Performing JOINS in CAML
4. Client.svc – client side proxying, batching of requests and sending them through to
   SharePoint 2010. Very fast, as we only send what we need.
5. Workflow exporting/importing from Visio->SPD->VS.NET->Deploy.
6. Sandbox Solutions – now we can target our SharePoint Solutions to the Site
   Collection Level (rather than previously targeting only the farm). When we
   create this solution in VSNET2010, it rebinds to a ’fake’ Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
   (v14.0.0.39 from memory) that introduces all the restrictions in your code and provides
   special intellisense. Commands such as ’Run Under Elevated Security’ get caught on
   compile as these are not allowed.

   Could you be in the situation where your code compiles but the *real* SharePoint ’foundation’
   says ’no!..that instruction is not allowed’ – it’s possible, as you’re not actually
   compiling against the real DLL.

   Currently there are several projects that you can’t sandbox based
   on their type – such as Workflow Projects. These still need to be targeted to the
   Farm.

   Worth checking out – specifically if you’re hosting SP sites.

7. AJAX through out – even WebPart editor toolparts you can introduce AJAX there for
   alot of the lookups etc.
   
8. Other noted feature is that Throttling is on by default – so if you
   say “list.Items.AllItems” and that returns back 50000 usually, SP2010 will error.
   You have to explicitly ask to make the request without Throttling (couple of properties
   you set before hand)
9. Your WSSv3.0/MOSS sites can be *supported* in SP2010 and stay at their existing UI
   Level (look and feel), then at a later point we can flick the switch and see your
   site under the newer/AJAXY UI – through the APIs we can change it back SPWeb.UIVersion
   = 3 or 4.

Enjoy,

Mick.