The latest offering from the SharePoint Shepherd—Rob Bogue—came across my desk today. It’s a two-CD set called “The SharePoint Shepherd Reveals… Introduction to SharePoint Development.” In the first disc, Rob talks about both what you CAN do with SharePoint, and what you SHOULD do in terms of custom development. For instance, he says you could build a high-transaction system atop SharePoint, but that it’s probably not a wise thing to do. This is a good discussion, especially in light of the fact that Microsoft is recommending that customizations are kept to a minimum in the upcoming SharePoint 2013.
So, once the kind of development your organization needs is established, Rob walks viewers through Web Part creation in Visual Studio 2010, including adding properties, attributes and connections, and then looks at the Sandbox, where developers can take their work out for a spin without impacting the production servers.
There’s great information here on data searching and access, workflows, security, and even creating packages from site collections in content databases.
Rob has a real easy presentation style, speaks clearly and doesn’t rush through his demos. If you’re new to SharePoint, or simply want to gain a better understanding of the most common development requirements, I highly recommend this boxed set. You can find out more on the product page and order it there as well.
—David
