SV Code Camp Session Report: Working with Sharepoint Data
Session: Working with Sharepoint Data @ SV Code Camp / Presenter: Joseph Ackerman, Senior Consultant with Allin Corp. MS Partner
Things I heard (caution: I am not a Sharepoint user or developer):
- Sharepoint development is not fun. 80% audience (~30 prople) raise hands as sharepoint users.
- Had never heard of CAML until now…CAML=Collaborative Application Markup Language
- Sharepoint woefully under-documented for developers, getting better but right now it sucks.
- Though built on top of ASP.net 2.0, SQL Server, Sharepoint has lots of differences. E.g. cannot do the way you are used to doing it with those stuff.
- Biggest difference is working with data. Everything is a list. Lists = Tables. Fields = Columns. Rows = ListItems. Lists have more metadata. Less flexible (e.g. joins are difficult or impossible). Lots of things to stitch together.
- You get a Context object to work with anything in Sharepoint (e.g. SPContext.Current.Site). Sites have webs. Web has a collection of Lists. List has 1-n views.
- Sharepoint / Web Parts is impossible to debug – use the famous println approach.
After this conceptual discussion, I am lost in all the XML files, C# and other code shown on screen (probably because I am not a SharePoint developer).
My Rating: Presenter was really good. But not so sure about Sharepoint itself. After attending, I did not come away with “Holy Macro! I need to get my hands on Sharepoint and try this out!”.
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