New SharePoint 2010 information on MSDN

While the SharePoint Conference 2009 continues to day 2, Microsoft adds more SharePoint Content to MSDN. Did you notice that MSDN looks different this week?

Windows SharePoint Services are now, collectively, called SharePoint Foundation. This makes sense, since a number of products (Dynamics, Project Server, Commerce Server, etc.) use these services. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is now simply called the SharePoint Server. Hopefully, this will be easier to explain that the difference between WSS and MOSS.

While you're at it, try to call InfoPath > Design mode the InfoPath Designer (as opposed to the InfoPath Editor). Oh, and don't call anything Groove, either.

SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peeks - Developers

Visual Studio 2010 Sharepoint Tools
This is an equivalent product to the VSeWSS. Here are the tools:

• Import VSeWSS Project
• Import Reusable Workflow
• List Definition
• Sequential Workflow
• Content Type
• BDC Model (Application Definition)
• Module
• Empty Project
• Event Receiver
• State Machine Workflow
• Import SharePoint Solution Package
• Visual Web Part

VS 2010 Server Explorer can drill-down into sites with "Folder List"-like structure. You can see lists, libraries, etc. exactly like the Folder List in SharePoint Designer. The VS Debugger can now attach to a Sharepoint site, and you can establish breakpoints in your aspx runtime. A demonstration showed a webpart which, when viewed, transferred control back to Visual Studio and stopped execution at the breakpoint!

Also, a Developer Dashboard control is on the SharePoint pages (an icon) which refreshed the page and displayed a pane containing server information, database query statistics, event reports, web part rendering times, etc. I would imagine that this control is only available if debugging is enabled in the web.config file.

Client OM
A Client Object Model is provided as an abstraction into client-side processing functions (AJAX, JavaScript, Silverlight, etc.). Part of this library is a ClientContext datatype, which presumably keeps track of the site as it is manipulated by client-side functions. A ClientContext.ExecuteQuery method was shown to query a database (in a Silverlight web part) based on infomation kept in the client.

SharePoint Products and Technologies: 2010 (Technical Preview) Developer Documentation

I've been asked to study the new SharePoint Technical Preview documents released 7/13/09 from Microsoft. Officially called SharePoint Products and Technologies: 2010 (Technical Preview) Developer Documentation, the download is available here. Microsoft is officially silent about SharePoint 2010, until a Beta is available in October.

A new (albeit sparse) MSDN branch for Sppt 2010 has been created here.
Sppt = SharePoint Product and Technologies.

The download released Monday is a .zip archive of 4 files:

• ReadMe.txt
• Customizing the Ribbon in Windows SharePoint Services 14.pdf
• Customizing the Ribbon in Windows SharePoint Services 14.xps
• SPPT2010TP.chm

There is much legal text in these documents prohibiting the reproduction of the material. I'll try to summarize the contained information, so download these yourself to be informed.

ReadMe.txt
The ReadMe file is helpful for opening .chm content. Compiled HTML (.chm) is a handy format for Help applications, but contains a vulnerability.

Customizing the Ribbon in Windows SharePoint Services 14.[extension]
Wss 14 will contain an Office Ribbon. The Office Ribbon will be customizable using Open XML (RibbonX) using the same model that Office 2007 customizations are made (ribbon > tabs > tab > group > control). These customizations are deployed as features, and pretty similarly to how a developer would customize a new Site Settings link.

Importantly, deployment of features can now be performed using PowerShell. New commandlets are Install-SPFeature, Enable-SPFeature, and (presumably) others.

SPPT2010TP.chm
This self-proclaimed "SDK" is a help file with the new Sharepoint namespaces, arranged alphabetically. This is a lot of information, and I'll commence to finding all the new stuff/good stuff.


On another note, there is new Office 2010 material at http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010 . Of mention are Groove SharePoint Workspace 2010 and Web Applications.