Developing SharePoint Applications

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The SharePoint platform enables you to develop applications that have the following features:

  • Scalable. SharePoint provides an extensible framework that allows you to add applications and features as needed to meet growing demands.
  • Collaborative. SharePoint includes features that allow you to create workspaces where people share ideas, documents, and other assets.
  • Content-driven. SharePoint allows you to create and publish content that is tailored to your users' needs.

This guidance describes many of SharePoint's features. In addition, it demonstrates how to apply design and application patterns to SharePoint development. The guidance includes a reference implementation that is named the Partner Portal application, which shows how SharePoint capabilities are used in enterprise-scale applications. The reference implementation shows aspects of a SharePoint application that cannot be captured in smaller code samples. The guidance often refers to specific areas in the Partner Portal application to show how the guidance is implemented in an actual solution.

This topic contains the following two subtopics.

To help developers who are new to SharePoint development, An Overview of the SharePoint Platform for ASP.NET Developers provides an overview of some key capabilities and concepts. It assumes that you have a working knowledge of ASP.NET application development. This topic does not provide a complete description of SharePoint. Instead, it highlights some of the most important SharePoint capabilities that extend features from ASP.NET. After you read it, you will be able to think of your development project in terms of what SharePoint offers you.

A Quick Tour of the Partner Portal Application provides an overview of the business scenario that motivated the development of the Partner Portal application. It points out aspects of the application that show why SharePoint was the best development environment to address those business challenges. Understanding the various elements of the Partner Portal application and how they map to specific SharePoint capabilities will help you to apply the guidance to your own applications.

Although both subtopics are far from exhaustive, they do illustrate why it makes sense to build many applications using SharePoint. Additional learning resources include the following:

Note

In addition to the Partner Portal application, the guide includes a supplemental reference implementation that is named the Training Management application. The Training Management application is a more introductory example of how to use basic SharePoint capabilities, such as lists and content types. For more information, see Training Management Reference Implementation.

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