Development Opportunities in WSS

As a developer, you have many different avenues for extending WSS. You can develop many types of custom components for use within WSS sites. These components include standard ASP.NET server controls, Web Parts, event handlers, custom field types, and custom policies.

A site column is a reusable column definition that can be used across multiple lists. A site column defines the name for a column, its underlying field type, and other characteristics such as the default value, formatting, and validation. Once you have defined a site column, you can then use it as you define the schema for custom lists and document libraries.

A content type is a flexible and reusable WSS type definition that defines the columns and behavior for an item in a list or a document in a document library. For example, you can create a content type for a customer presentation document with a unique set of columns, an event handler, and its own document template. You can create a second content type for a customer proposal document with a different set of columns, a workflow, and a different document template. Then you can create a new document library and configure it to support both of these content types.

Another great new development opportunity is to work with the new Office Open XML file formats. This new technology introduced with Microsoft Office 2007 provides you with the ability to generate and/or manipulate Microsoft Office Word documents and Microsoft Office Excel documents from server-side code within custom components such as event handlers and workflows. What’s nice is that the Office Open XML file formats eliminate the need to install and run a version of a Microsoft Office desktop application such as Office Word or Office Excel on the server. Everything can be done by programming against server-side libraries, which provide high degrees of scalability and robustness.

WSS is built on top of Microsoft’s new Windows Workflow Foundation that is part of the .NET Framework 3.0. WSS adds an extra dimension on top of the Windows Workflow Foundation to provide a foundation for attaching business logic to list items and documents in a WSS site. WSS extends the basic model of the Windows Workflow Foundation by associating a task list and a history list with each workflow.

Rerefence: Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by Ted Pattisonand, Daniel Larson