Just because you can, doesn't mean you should!!!!!

For months now, I've been arguing with people about when to use SharePoint. One line that I keep repeating to people is "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". Does because SharePoint in capable of doing something, doesn't mean you should develop the application in SharePoint.

So before deciding to develop in SharePoint, please sit back and decide if SharePoint is the appropriate application or is there some other development platform you can use that will make your job easier and speed up development.

Fadi

SharePoint User Group Presentation

This week, Sam Balaz and myself presented at the Canberra SharePoint User Group. Our presentation was based on the lessons learned when we developed and deployed an internet facing website.

If anyone is interested in finding out some of the problems we faces and how we found work arounds, just contact me.

Fadi

App Pool Monitor/HDD Monitor/Service Monitor

I've had a couple of people ask me for the source code for the app pool monitor. So here it is ( http://www.dhf.com.au/apppool.zip ). This actaully also checks for services, and if they're down it will restart them and email you. I've done it as a simple aspx page, but it shouldn't be too hard to convert it to an app. If you look at the web.config, you will notice there's some settings there you need to change, like email address etc etc. The code needs to be cleaned up a little, but it should give you something to start with.

Optimizing SharePoint

Here's a very useful article I came across regarding Optimizing SharePoint.

http://blogs.technet.com/waynemo/archive/2008/03/19/moss-server-performance-considerations.aspx

It goes through and talks about the recommendations, the reason and the benefits. It's come in very handy for me when it comes to Internet deployment.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Extensions, Version 1.2

They've finally released Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools Version 1.2.

Do download, go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7bf65b28-06e2-4e87-9bad-086e32185e68&displaylang=en

Included in this release is:

Visual Studio 2008 Project Templates

• Web Part
• Team Site Definition
• Blank Site Definition
• List Definition
• Empty SharePoint Project

Visual Studio 2008 Item Templates (items that can be added into an existing project)

• Web Part
• Custom Field
• List Definition (with optional Event Receiver)
• Content Type (with optional Event Receiver
• Module
• List Instance
• List Event Handler
• Template

SharePoint Solution Generator
This stand-alone program generates a Site Definition project from an existing SharePoint site. The program enables developers to use the browser and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer to customize the content of their sites before creating code by using Visual Studio.

I still haven't played with it, so I'll let you know how it goes.

Fadi