Book Reviews 

Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Authors:  Ted Pattison and Daniel Larson

Reviewed by:  Jeremy Woods 

 This book steps through developing SharePoint applications. This book provides samples for designing and developing solutions for WSS 3.0. It steps through creating, debugging, and deploying web parts, Features, Site Definitions, Content Types, Workflows, Event Handlers, and List schemas. Each chapter can stand on its own because each chapter uses new examples of the programs that are being created. There is an assumption made in the book that the reader has a moderate amount of experience in programming in C#, as well as Visual Studio 2005. The nice thing with this book is that it does not use the Visual Studio Extensions for WSS, which means that you can use Visual Studio 2008 for development as well as Visual Studio 2005. Another problem with this book is that it assumes that you have downloaded all of the program code and does not display some pertinent information that is needed for a program to work. This book also skips a few steps in creating projects and when looking at the samples in the book some of the coding is missing. This causes readers that are trying to follow along in the book and recreate the samples to miss a part of the program and when they try to see it run from their program and it fails they may get frustrated. I do like the fact each chapter has a working sample in the downloaded code and you can view the program and what it does in WSS by building that project. I also feel that the chapters progress in an orderly way in that they start by modifying views, site definitions, etc. then as the book progresses the chapters become more code oriented and more complicated. When going through the book, I felt that some of the information, specifically in the AJAX chapter was lacking. I felt that a lot of information was missing to successfully create an example of an AJAX web part. When I tried to deploy the sample web part that was provided in the downloaded code, it failed to compile successfully, so I was unable to completely view and absorb the information for that chapter. I did like the fact that a chapter was dedicated to the security practices of SharePoint and building security into the web parts for sites. That was a very helpful chapter and answered a lot of questions that I had while I have been creating my own web parts. In all, I felt this book covered developing in WSS very well. I would recommend this book to any who are looking at a more advanced path to creating solutions in Windows SharePoint Services.

Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2007 Solutions in C# 2005
Publisher: Apress
Author: Scot P. Hillier
Published Date: February 2007

Reviewed by: Scott Struessel
 
Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2007 Solutions in C# 2005 is a hands-on book that supplies the technical knowhow to the rookie or seasoned veteran working with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and the 2007 Office System.  Scot Hillier provides a training style writing approach to the reader with a detailed overview of the major components of MOSS 2007 including portal, search, content management, business processes and business intelligence. 

I found this book extremely useful in the setup of a small farm in a virtual environment.  The environment consists of a domain controller, a SQL Server 2005 database server, a front end web server and an optional client system.  I have used these instructions with my clients to validate my install tasks or to validate an existing deployment many times over.
 
I also found that Hillier is upfront with the short comings of MOSS 2007.  In the chapter discussing business intelligence, the overview describes the lack of a complete BI solution.  I tend to agree with this synopsis and appreciate to get straight answers that are not sugar coated with marketing pizzazz.  Hillier also makes mention of the Reporting Services integration included with SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2.  At the time the book was published SQL Server 2005 SP 2 had not been released but I highly recommend that you take the time to review this material as it will most definitely be carried into the SQL Server 2008 release.
 
Although there are a lot of great code examples to reference, this book was published shortly after RTM and the samples do not all work as advertised without some troubleshooting.  I found the easiest way to do this was to look up samples on blogs similar to those in the book that have more recent dates and then compare the variations.
 
I do think Apress should reconsider how they distribute e-books.  If you purchase the paperback, then you are entitled for a discounted purchase of the e-book.  Now, typically I would not buy the e-book, but I use this book quite frequently and I don’t want to leave home without it. I  give Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2007 Solutions in C# 2005 four out of five stars for the depth and breadth of the material with both the high level and technical insight.

SharePoint Books 

Do you like to curl up with a good book at night?

The Rocky Mountain SharePoint User Group has some suggestions for you!

 

Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit (Pro - Resource Kit) by Microsoft Corporation   Extremely Useful technical articles covering a wide variety of specific issues. A must have, for any SharePoint Admin. (find on Amazon.com)

 

 

 

The Rational Guide to building SharePoint Web Parts (Rational Guides) by Darrin Bishop   Well-written intermediate guide for Dot Net developers who want to write web parts. (find on Amazon.com)

 

 

 

Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2003 Solutions by Scott P. Hillier   A good book but with a specialized niche.  For IT Pros just starting out, this book focuses on the integration and collaboration functionalities between SharePoint and Microsoft Office 2003. (find on Amazon.com)

 

 

 

Advanced SharePoint Services Solutions (Books for Professionals by Professionals by Scott P. Hillier   A good intermediate to advanced guide, particularly for Dot Net developers who want to integrate SharePoint with other Technologies (find on Amazon.com)