Our organization started on the SharePoint path about two years ago. Before that, we (the developers) wrote mostly asp.net front ends for SQL back ends. Now it seems like every time a new project comes up, we are asked to “make” it fit in SharePoint; and we have stuffed some things into SharePoint that probably should have been stand alone applications or web applications due to complexity and interactions with other technologies.
My question is: Where do you draw the line as to developing a project in SharePoint versus Web/Winform application, and how do you convince your manager(s) that SharePoint may not be the best solution for a particular project?
I sort of agree with you that this is sometimes a tough question. In general, though, I agree with the cliche that you just have to think about a sharepoint app a little differently. If your data can be considered as list-based, then SharePoint probably isn't a necessarily bad development framework. It may seem like more work on the surface, but IMO the challenges just move from one place to another. If you use things like custom field templates and web parts, you can relatively naturally handle all sorts of data. And you get the positive aspects of SharePoint for free (an already mature security framework, built-in searching, site and list templates/definitions, personalized page customizations, yada, yada).
I also I don't know what you mean by "complexity and interactions with other technologies" here, so it's hard to imagine what specific issues might be introduced when SharePoint is added to the mix.
If your dev team is relatively inexperienced with SharePoint and you care about quality and deadlines, I can definitely see your point. It's not an easy learning curve, but I think the SharePoint product is more naturally extensible than many people give it credit for.
There is, in some cases, a third option between a SharePoint application and an ASP.NET application. You can build custom site and application pages and deploy them to a SharePoint site. (The book Inside Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 gives a good overview of how to do this.) This will allow you to use ASP.Net and SQL Server within a SharePoint environment (which means you can also take advantage of things like SharePoint security). It's not as easy as developing a plain ASP.Net application, but it's a compromise.
Of course, this is sort of a technicality if they're wanting these new applications to be built on SharePoint technologies (lists, libraries, workflow, etc.), not just to be "inside" SharePoint.
One of the primary reasons why you might put an applicaiton in SP is when you want to take advantage of the building blocks SP gives you:
Security (share security with the site)
Data (store some or all of your data in lists)
Provisioning (if you want you app on multiple sites)
Some basic data UI e.g. Lists give you that and you dont need to build it.
One thing to consider when trying to 'integrate' a new app into the existing pool is whether there is any overlap in data (customers, inventory, etc) that would benefit from the merger.
There is also the benefit of being able to back up multiple applications and all of their respective data in one place.
Why are they asking for it all to go into SharePoint?
In my experience it is because the 'ole SharePoint intranet is being great as a portal to keep everything together and findable under the one information architecture.
Approach the issue from a uses perception of the application space in the organisation.
So long as the application looks and feels just like part of the intranet site and the user does not have to think about how to get to it (and how to get back out), you can pretty much take any architecture decisions necessary to get the best bang for the organisations buck when it comes to implementation and maintainence.
When we started thinking about the site less from SharePoint vs other stuff to the nice woolly concepts of Information Architecture, findability and usability, our decisions not to make it actually inside SharePoint, but still skin it like the Intranet became easier to sell.
Related
All,
At my current company, we are looking to replace all ASP.NET Applications and OLTP databases with Sharepoint 2007. Our applications and databases deal with 10,000+ rows, and we have 5,000 + clients actively using the system. Our Implementation of sharepoint would replace all n-tier applications.
Does anyone have an experience in implementing this? My current viewpoint is that Sharepoint is not built for or adequate enough to handle this type of application. Can it really replace application with hundreds of pages, and hundreds of tables? Support Data warehousing operations? Support high performance OLTP operations? Provide a robust development environment?
Any and all input is greatly appreciated. Thanks S.O. Community.
SharePoint can absolutely handle this this level of data and users. But I'd have serious concerns though about whether the people in the organization can adequately manage, develop, and use such an implementation. There are hundreds of wrong ways to do things in SharePoint, and very few "right" ways.
At the level of usage you're talking about, you're going to have to do some serious customization and development. You'll have to be careful that people don't get fooled into thinking it will work for them out-of-the-box.
SharePoint is a platform, like any other, it has strengths and weaknesses and can be made, through various levels of effort, to do anything you really want to with it.
Can SharePoint handle the load you ask about? Without a doubt. Can it support your data back end? Sure, either via the "SharePointy" mechanisms of the BDC/BCS, or though your own custom code.
The better question is what is to be gained from essentially re-developing all of your applications on a new platform, if anything?
Don't be swayed jump on the SharePoint ship because Microsoft is selling it as the new shiny. A thorough knowledge of ASP.Net is required for development in SharePoint, but having that alone doesn't allow for a rapid start-up in development.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/256407/what-are-your-biggest-complaints-about-sharepoint
How good/bad is sharepoint programming?
Basically not a good idea to shift to sharepoint. Difficult to use. Steep learning curve. You would probably need sharepoint consultants.
update: Developing a website for 3 mln. users: SharePoint OR pure ASP.NET?
Sharepoint CMS vs UmbracoCMS
might be more relevant to you.
Also you may want to look at Running away from SharePoint (just kidding)
Thanks all for your answers!
After reading all of the feed back, it seems to fall in line with my research. Having said, here is what I gather from your responses:
SharePoint out of the box is a CMS.
SharePoint Lists do not replace relational tables.
Extending SharePoint to fill other uses is limited to custom development within the SharePoint framework.
From my research:
- Utilizing a relational database in a SharePoint application is done through custom code. Adhereing to point 3 above.
- Developing and building applications in SharePoint, with features that fall outside of the CMS domain , nullifies many sharePoint features and requires heavy custom development.
Again, thank you all for your feed back, this ihas invaluble to my research.
Here's some info on Sharepoint capacity planning: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/stsb07.mspx?mfr=true
It suggests that more than 2000 items per list would not work.
For posterity , and anyone else who stumbles here.
Further points:
- Most Developers do not have enough SharePoint Development Knowledge to properly implement a solution with SharePoint.
- ASP.NET Knowledge is required to develop SharePoint applications.
- SharePoint Maintains a step learning curve.
Are we saying that developing on a platform built on top of ASP.NET is harder to learn then ASP.NET it self?
Ouch man, I don't know if you want to head down this path; SharePoint has a pretty notorious learning curve, isn't something easy to bend and flex too much.
I'm currently looking at developing an application, and have a choice between doing a standard ASP.NET web application or integrating it into SharePoint. Our client would like it to be SharePoint if possible, as they are under pressure to put all new development into it, but standard ASP.NET is still an option.
It is an application to manage and view data in a database with about 10 tables, including an approval workflow when certain new items are added. Referential integrity of the data is important.
I have experience of developing ASP.NET applications, but very little with SharePoint. Does anyone have any criteria they would apply to deciding between the two?
So far I am thinking along the lines of:
Referential integrity of the data is important and SP doesn't seem to handle this very well without writing lots of custom code
SharePoint doesn't seem very scaleable with the suggested limit of 2000 items in a list
The application has an approval workflow, which does seem to be something SP does well
On the wholem, it seems like we would end up writing lots of custom code and not really using any of the out of the box SP features. So my thinking is why not just write a standard ASP.NET application.
Are there any other key things we should consider?
By now, you may have already found this link: http://blogs.msdn.com/sanjaynarang/archive/2009/06/19/should-i-build-my-application-in-sharepoint-vs-asp-net.aspx. If not, it's a decent starting place with some good questions to ask.
What follows is my take as a long-time .NET developer (for as long as the platform has been around) and a SharePoint architect (since 2003). That's basically my way of saying that I've been on both sides of the fence.
In my opinion, SharePoint is a platform, not a product. As ASP.NET provides valuable web-based services to the core .NET framework, SharePoint supplies additional services and capabilities on top of ASP.NET. The platform removes the need for writing common code pieces that are a part of so many ASP.NET apps: security code, user profile management, personalization, UI/UX baseline, etc. When you get into the plumbing, you get even more: rich caching support that requires minimal configuration, customization modularity via Features, and more.
Should every application be built in SharePoint? I'd never push for that. With my current client, we use a mix of SharePoint-based and custom ASP.NET applications. Whether an application gets built in SharePoint vs. written from the ground-up in ASP.NET is a function of what we're doing. We conduct the same sort of exercise you are. If SharePoint's features and functionality can be brought to bear to reduce development time, it goes in SharePoint. If the need is too specific or we feel we'd be working around SharePoint, we go the custom app route.
You have some very specific concerns for your application, so let me take a crack at them with the little I understand about your requirements:
REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY: based on what you're saying, it sounds like your data model is pretty specific. Building your information architecture to natively leverage site columns, content types, and lists probably doesn't make sense. That doesn't throw SharePoint out, though. There's absolutely no reason why you couldn't build the data model you want (presumably in SQL Server) and then consume it with components that reside in SharePoint. If you're using MOSS, some of the BDC WebParts might work for you straightaway. If not, you'd still be writing controls and/or pages to work with the data, correct? There's nothing wrong with using SharePoint as your presentation layer for access to SQL directly or (in a more scalable, n-tier fashion) go against business services somewhere else.
2000 ITEM LIMIT: this is a common concern and one that is misunderstood. There is no 2000 list item limit; the actual measurement is 2000 items per view (and that's with out of the box views, by the way) or "container" (such as a folder). You can store many more times that (millions, if you like) in a list if you partition with folders, build your own view to page, etc. Again, given your data structure and the likely need you have to dodge SharePoint's lists, this wouldn't be an issue if you simply consumed data from SQL Server.
WORKFLOW: SharePoint is nice as a workflow host, and the OOTB workflows are handy. I'm assuming you're looking at MOSS (versus straight WSS), but just in case: the approval workflow comes with MOSS. If you're constrained to WSS, you only have one workflow available to you: the three-state workflow.
At the end of the day, SharePoint is .NET and built on top of ASP.NET. Much of the code you'd have to write in a SharePoint app you'd need to write in a custom .NET anyway. I'd look at things from the perspective of understanding whether the experience and features SharePoint affords you (as a developer) can help speed your development cycle and/or improve the user experience (something we, as developers, sometimes forget).
David in Dakota does have an excellent point, though, in that the dev experience for SharePoint is different from straight ASP.NET. The need (or rather, best practice) to deploy via Features, understand specific SharePoint concerns (e.g., lifetime and disposal of SharePoint objects), etc., mean that there will be ramp-up time if you do build in SharePoint. There are quite a few good resources out there (including folks here on StackOverflow) that can help, but you'll need to factor some learning into the equation of whether or not SharePoint makes sense.
One more parting thought: Microsoft is slowly shifting many of its own products and platforms to leverage SharePoint as their UI/UX layer, and the trend is picking up some steam. PerformancePoint, Project Server, Team Foundation Server, and Commerce Server all use SharePoint as their presentation tier. The trend will probably continue, though I don't know how far. If you use any of these products (or their on your technology roadmap), a SharePoint investment now might pay off later.
Despite all of my writing about and advocating for SharePoint, I don't think it's the right tool in every scenario. I still build WinForms apps, smart clients, command line apps, and more quite a bit. It just comes down to weighing "what I get" for "what I spend" (in both time and money).
I hope this helps!
Your evaluation is quite accurate. (It would help to have more detail about every feature your application needs but that's not really practical for this medium.)
The problems you mention have been largely solved but you would need to understand and implement the solutions. For example, there is a CodePlex project that can assist with referential integrity and there are recommendations on how to manage the number of items in a list. But using SharePoint is never going to give you the freedom of writing an ASP.NET application from scratch.
Another thing to consider is how you and/or the client expect the application will evolve in the future. If it will need more collaboration-style features or features such as version history on list items and integration with the Office client then SharePoint may be the better option.
You should also think about the complexity of deploying and updating your application on SharePoint.
My company is in need of a task management system to handle scenarios as simple as "Purchase a computer for X" to "Relocate a person to another country". The simple scenarios are a single tasks handled by a single person, whereas bigger tasks can be broken down into multiple sub tasks delegated to multiple people during the workflow. Additionally the clients and vendors need their own views into the process.
We are evaluating different solutions from a custom application built on Workflow Foundation to SharePoint to BPM products like Metastorm and BPM.Net.
Here's my current understanding of these solutions:
Workflow Foundation - Low level workflow designer and/or library with no host environment. It seems we would have to reinvent some wheels if we went this route such as fault tolerance and document management. Some of the answers on stack also cause concerns such as the lack of versioning and a complete overhaul for VS10/.NET 4.0
SharePoint - Built for document management and collaboration but trying to create advanced workflows and tasking on top of that seems like a hack. Plus all workflows have to be tied to either documents or lists. I cant envision how a list (or list of lists) can address this issue.
BPM products - Mature workflow engine at a seemingly high price. BPM.Net is the only solution for which I could find some level of technical detail but im still not sure how different developing against this product would be from developing against Workflow Foundation.
Are there any workflow engines dedicated to solving all the workflow pains that can be easily deployed with their own hosting environment and initiated through a webservice?
Are there any other options I am missing?
Thanks in advance.
****Edit**
To answer the questions below the workflow needs are pretty light. Basic routing of tasks to approvers and subcontractors.
Whats driving us too look deeper than PM software is the nature of the business not the need for advanced workflow. We are basically in the business of procuring goods and services through subcontractors for our clients which can also include full employee relocation. The interface of the package should reflect this by being customer branded as well as intuitive for this line of business.
Basically if im moving my family to the other side of the world Im not sure i'd want to interface with Jira or Sharepoint or any other PM software to facilitate this.
If you are on Microsoft stack I would definitely recommend SharePoint for this scenario. As it seems to be very simple you can go with Windows SharePoint Services edition because it is free and it has everything you need.
You are right when you say that ShartePoint workflow are bit limited. IMHO the best way to overcome that limitation is to purchase Nintex workflow to create your workflows. It is cost effective solution that can help you design workflows you need.
You can find workflow samples inside the product (as workflow templates) and on the web site.
Nothing you mentioned has much to do with workflow. You're just doing project management. If that's the case, a simple bug tracker (like FogBugz! ;) would work - but if you're going to show it externally, it may not be the most professional presentation.
The closest off the shelf solution I can think of would be Project Server - though, depending on the number of projects and project managers, the desktop Project with a sync to a webserver for client views may be enough.
If that's overkill - because your projects don't require a lot of resource scheduling, Gantt charts, or other PM artifacts - you can take something like Trac and replace "bug" with "task". ;) (Seriously though, that'd probably get you 90% of the way there.....)
Have you looked at RT? I believe it can handle all your requirements, including that it's designed to let customers interact with the system by email, rather than having to log into the website. If you've emailed IT support desks then you've probably interacted with it without knowing... You can also completely customise the web interface and allow customer access.
Can't vouch for the quality as I haven't used it, but I did watch an online-demo video of Intalio, which has BPM and workflow capabilities.
We use Basecamp to control this sort of "task management" stuff. I'm not sure if it fits your needs totally, as it's a little light on the document management side, but it has a web service (REST) API, customer / vendor facing components, and basic interaction / chat capabilities.
The best part about it is that the API is simple enough where you can offload a lot of the "management" for it to admin support personnel, like assistants and interns, by providing custom scripts. If you've got people who aren't programmers using it you'll probably have better luck with it than even something like Trac or FogBugz.
I have/am going through a similar process. We wanted a lightweight workflow for internal use by our sales team. Most of the third party apps we looked at ,K2 and Skelta BPM.Net in particular, looked way over the top for what we needed. I'm now 2 months into working with Windows Workflow Foundation 3.0 and I have to say it isn't the most pleasant coding experience I've had.
If your workflows will truely be simple then it is pretty easy to build a workflow and hook it up to some web pages for the UI. But if you need to be able to change it on the fly, or do versioning (ie the user says we want another step added, then its a whole lot of hacking to get it to work - and it only works if you limit your workflow to being really simple), then you are in for a fair bit of work. And forget about it if you use an Oracle database.
The next version of windows workflow will have it's own runtime environment, code name dublin, with will provide a WCF interface into the workflows.
If your timeframe allows you could use that.
For information on Dublin and the next version of WF see:
http://www.microsoft.com/net/dublin.aspx
My vote is for FogBugz. Unless I am missing something in your requirements, why would you want to reinvent the wheel by using a code based workflow solution where you have to code up the flows yourself when you can use a perfectly good project dependency solution like FB or even MS Project Server - which lets you create nice dependencies for resources and people.
Check FileNet
FileNet is expensive but makes a good job with content and process management, but I guess is not what you are looking for.
We use Captaris Workflow, it is pretty good but it may be expensive for your needs.
What open source toolkit does fatwire compare to and are there some particular advantages to fatwire?
How hard is fatwire to export out of and move to a free alternative?
How stable is it as a platform to write java extensions on?
From a development persepective, FatWire can be unfriendly. Having worked on a number of sites using this application it can easy bloat, and become difficult to maintain.
From a user perspective there has been alot of effort in the UI and this has led to a highly functional tool.
From a client perspective all clients bar 1 (a large news agency) were happy with the end result. FatWire can slow when using complex logic to generate menus or breadcumbs for example or when you have a large amount of content. This is the main reason the one client was unhappy. The FatWire site regularily struggled under the load. It sometimes seen as a solution to all web needs.
As such FatWire succeeds in serving Static Content & Semi Dynamic content, but can flounder when forced to do fully dynamic sites (from my experience).
From the original press release:
FatWire Software announced the rollout
of FirstSite, which is a set of tools
and best practices that helps
companies using FatWire Content Server
get their first Web site or
application running quickly while
providing a foundation for future
expansion. FirstSite includes a
collection of standard templates and
site components that are common to
most sites, combined with
documentation, training, a rich
developer community, and best
practices methodology. FatWire and its
solution partners are using FirstSite
as the basis for developing
content-centric applications for
specific vertical markets. With only
minor, cosmetic alterations,
developers can use the code in
FirstSite to implement a first site,
while simultaneously learning how to
utilize Content Server's capabilities,
such as dynamic content delivery,
personalization, caching, and product
catalogs.
Firstsite is not a product, unless this has changed since 2004 (unfortunately I cannot look, since their developer site is down). Fatwire's Content Server does not compare to any Open Source CMS that I know. It's scope goes much further. I will answer your questions one by one:
Advantages - There are many (or nobody would buy it, and it is not cheap)
On the delivery side: scalability, fine-grained cache control, stateless servlet architecture, ....
On the back office side: virtually no limit to asset types, dynamic content attributes, find-grained security and access control, ...
On the development side: Intelligently architected API with good coding productivity, tag library, ...
Openness
You cannot easily expect to migrate content between any two CMS products, open source or not. While there are ways to extract contant from the database in XML and other forms, using product tools, or simply at the database level, I don't think that this can be an argument for or against using a particular CMS. Ever tried to migrate from Drupal to Joomla?
Stable
I worked on several Fatwire implementations from 2000 to 2004 (back then it was OpenMarket Content Server, then Divine Content Server). It was stable enough for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the S&P sites, and I would expect stability not to be an issue today.
Fatwire is really unique concept from developer point of view. It builds everything on a very abstract, extremely flexible clever asset modeling framework which is stored in relational database.
Application logic is based on "templates" which actually are pieces of JSP code. This JSP code is not like conventional Java, but tags instead. It takes very long from a developer to learn these tags and Fatwire asset api. Expect even months before skilled develpers start to be productive.
Almost nothing useable samples ships along the product. There is advertized "FirstSite" but it is way too simple for the purpose this product is used normally (huge complex sites). So pretty much everything has to be built from scratch.
Cache control is advertized to be one powerful feature. Yes it is, but we had extremely long learning curve and it never worked exactly like one assumed.
Wysiwyg editing has been missed from this product even it is advertized. At least during 2009 it had serious conceptual problems which practically prevented using it in live environments. But it was cool feature for demos and marketing of course. Today it might be fixed.
As a summary and if I were a customer with limited budget, I'd select any open source alternative instead. Mostly because development costs with Fatwire are high due the uniqueness of the product, lack of good documentation and extremely long learing curve. Of course the product price tag is also thing to consider.
And to answer to questions: you have to start from scratch if you move from Fatwire 6.0 to any open source alternative. And it is stable to build Java extensions on.
Fatwire stores content in relation database and file system. Depending on what type of content (structured/unstructured), Fatwire can be evaluated.
Our company has an ASP.NET application for customer information database. The application started small but has grown without proper design. Now a new version of the app should be developed, which basically would mean designing and implementing it from scratch. The company is interested in making use of Microsoft Sharepoint Services in future and it has been suggested to pilot it with this customer database application.
So my questions is:
Is database driven application something WSS is good for? Mostly the app would perform CRUD-operations on the database and also create reports.
I agree with Greg in that I wouldn't necessarily recommend putting your data in SharePoint lists (this is what Greg may be assuming). But my short answer would be "maybe".
Here's the long answer...
SharePoint runs on ASP.NET so it should accommodate your needs. You would likely be writing ASP.NET web pages that live within SharePoint that access your database or writing web parts that live within SharePoint that access your database.
You could consider the BDC for reading/retrieving data, but that requires MOSS Enterprise and won't provide the CUD part of CRUD. Other tools like CorasWorks DIT may help, but I suspect that custom web parts or pages are the way to go for you.
There are plenty of benefits you can get from SharePoint such as authorization and maybe things like integration of your data with SharePoint list data, provisioning, search, etc. It really depends on the nature of your application as to whether SharePoint will provide much of a benefit.
Short answer: No.
Long answer:
Is there any collaboration? Supporting documentation for the data? Workflow? If no, then there really isn't any reason to host it through SharePoint - you won't be gaining much.
Additionally, keep in mind that the SharePoint lists may look like tables, but they aren't - there is no relational aspects of the lists - no joining, no cascading updates/deletes, etc. This may be a problem if data reporting is a big part of your app.
You can store the data externally and have it appear as read-only lists in SharePoint, but you're still jumping through a lot of hoops if you're not using any of the other SharePoint features.
Kirk beat me to punch and said it better than I would have anyway :)
Another thing to consider is the possiblity of workflows in your process. For example, if you need to start a process when a new contact is added (a follow-up call, etc.), then SharePoint provides a great deal or benefit.
Perhaps a hybrid solution would be appropriate. A custom app for your CRUD and SharePoint integration for the pieces that make sense and provide value.
Building in SP for the sake of using SP probably isn't a good idea.
We have an ASP.NET application that runs in MOSS 2007. While we barely use any of SharePoint's features, we do get the advantage of SharePoint's security model, navigation webparts (we use CorasWorks), integrated Reporting Services, and workflows. In the very least, SharePoint features are there for us to use someday.
All of our application data is in its own SQL Server database. We don't store anything in the SharePoint content database.