[SPC09] Overview of the SharePoint 2010 Development Platform

This session was delivered by Paul Andrews, Microsoft Technical Product Manager for SharePoint. It was really “techie” stuff, but summarized enough to squeeze into 75 minutes.

Here are my notes from the session:

Developer Productivity Improvements

• SharePoint 2010 now runs on Windows 7 or Windows Vista SP1 (in 64 bits, standalone install only)

• Visual Studio 2010 (Beta 2 now available for download) enhances development on SharePoint 2010

  • WSP packages import and export

  • Server Explorer now shows SharePoint artifacts

  • Full TFS Integration

  • Web Part, Business Data Connectivity entities and Workflow designer

  • Extensible, you can add your custom artifacts

  • Visual Web Part designer creates ASCX control that's loaded into the web part

  • LINQ-to-Sharepoint is now supported

  • SPMetal tool creates the LINQ entities from SharePoint lists

• SharePoint Designer 2010 (still free)

• Tool to create BDC entities, list schemas, custom actions, task and approval forms

• Improved page editor and workflow designer

• “Save Site as Template” action now saves into a WSP that you can import into VS2010

• Developer Dashboard

  • Quick debug or page performance monitor
  • Has to be enabled with STSADM tool
  • Shows the detailed ASP.NET and back-end operations (event the SQL queries in full)

• Web parts can be inserted into page content (it uses a hidden WebPartZone controls)

Platform Services Improvements

• Business Connectivity Services (the new BDC)

  • Read/Write access to the LOB data
  • Available in SharePoint Foundation (new WSS name), too
  • BDC Entity Designer in VS2010
  • The data are surfaced as External Content Type in SharePoint list templates
  • Monitored by Service Applications option in Central Admin

• List Improvements

• Cascaded and Block Relationships in SharePoint lists (really good news)

• Validation and uniqueness check on the list edit form

• Lookup to multiple columns

• Large lists are now possible (but you must limit the view elements)

• CAML in views is now replaced by XSLT (CAML is still used for queries)

• Data Retrieval

  • REST APIs
    • Built on ADO.NET Data Services
    • Visual Studio Data Source wizard now supports SharePoint as a data source
  • Client Object Model
    • ExecuteQuery() method must be called explicitly
    • Batched for performance reasons
    • Available from for NET, Silverlight and JavaScript CLR
  • LINQ with list joins and field projections without schema changes

• Events

  • There are now event templates in VS2010
  • After-synchronous events (like the –ing events in SharePoint 2007 but for the –ed events)
  • New events such as workflow events or list creation events
  • Custom error pages for event validation errors

• Workflows

  • There are now “Reusable declarative workflows” available (no code)
  • Site workflows (not bound to a list, they show in the Site Actions menu)
  • High privilege workflows (as opposed to normal user permission-limited workflows)
  • Pluggable WF services (can be triggered by external events)
  • VS2010 can make workflow form UI with code-behind

• Service Applications

  • Improvement upon SSPs
  • Built on WCF
  • Sits on the Application Server machines

• UI Ribbon and Dialog Framework

  • Status bar beneath the ribbon
  • Notification Area (balloon, like the GMail “Loading” notification)
  • Dialog box (in AJAX and JavaScript)

Deployment Improvements

• Sandboxed Solutions

  • Balance between agility and stability
  • Limited API access, separated process and monitored resources
  • Uploaded into site Solution Gallery (in Site Settings)
  • SPUCWorkerProcess.exe executes the code, in proxy fashion
  • If too many resources have been consumed, the solution is shut down
  • There's a job that monitors the resource usage and shows it in the gallery
  • It will be used in SharePoint 2010 Online

• Upgrade

  • Assembly Redirects for 2007 DLLs, so they will be running without recompilation
  • Upgrade mappings (not really clear on this one)
  • Feature upgrades with code
  • Visual Upgrade for SharePoint 2007 sites, on demand

I can’t wait to try these new improvements on my own!!! However, we will still have to wait until November to get our hands on the Beta version binaries.

List Throttling for large lists

 
MOSS 2007 in SP2010, without running Visual Upgrade