As I write this, I’m enroute to Microsoft’s 2009 SharePoint Conference. In a prior post, Eight things to look for in SharePoint 2010, I promised an update on my predictions after last month’s preview of SharePoint 2010 in Atlanta. Here’s how I did:
Where I was right
· Two way data exchange via the Business Data Catalog. Microsoft has greatly enhanced what’s now called Business Connectivity Services, or BCS. BCS adds three great new capabilities:
· Read write access to remote data sources
· Exposing remote SQL tables (and other sources) as editable, native SharePoint lists (so you can use datasheets, RSS feeds, etc.)
· Republishing BDC data to other application, such as Office 2010. This means you could have a remote contact list in your CRM system, link it as an editable list in SharePoint 2010 and republish the list as a Contacts list in Outlook.
· Richer end user form design for SharePoint lists, and support for a relational data model, child grids, etc., without InfoPath Mostly there – InfoPath is greatly enhanced as the non-developer interface for customizing list based forms. This will certainly be available in SharePoint Server, although I’m not yet sure how this is supported in SharePoint Foundations (f/k/a Windows SharePoint Services [WSS] 3.0).
· Better tools for bundling and applying changes to existing objects that have already been deployed to production. Definitely – all updates can now be easily packaged as WSP packages in SharePoint Designer 2010 as well as Visual Studio 2010. You can now use Visio 2010 to design a simple workflow, extend it using Designer, and make detailed enhancements in Studio, all using a common interface to package the deployment
· In line editing of page content. Simpler than ever to create and edit pages, using wiki syntax, and customize themes and brands all from the browser without needing to understand HTML, XML or CSS.
· Better Web 2.0 style social networking for the enterprise. A big win – there’s extensive support for Twitter style microblogging, LinkedIn style expertise finding, Facebook-like wall posts, Digg/Del.icio.us tagging, ratings, etc. You get the picture:
· Silverlight based native support for streaming media, especially video. SharePoint 2010 adds supports for audio and video as managed content types, along with a Silverlight client to stream audio and video to the browser UI.
Still waiting
· Simpler debugging for web parts, especially ASP.NET Probably, but I haven’t seen it yet.
· Real blog editing with better permalinking URLs for external sites and in line editing. The editing’s better, but the permalinking is still pending.
· Improved security model integration between Project Server2010 and SharePoint 2010. No information on this yet – as the Magic 8 Ball says, “ANSWER HAZY. TRY AGAIN LATER.”
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more news from SPC 2009.
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