SharePoint 2010 features and enhancements

Hi All,

I am really very happy to share with you all new and enhanced features in new SharePoint Server 2010. Apart from sharing initial thought in SharePoint 2010 is coming, I would like to go in bit details now as SharePoint 2010 has finally released and available for use.

Office 2010 + SharePoint 2010 global launch

Let us explore its features one by one.

BCS (Business Connectivity Service)

• A business connectivity service is a replacement of Business data catalog (BDC) in MOSS 2007. Earlier we used BDC to fetch the data from different external sources and display in SharePoint 2007 with the help of different web parts. However the limitation was that it was a read only operation. We could select records only. Now in BCS it will be completely CRUD operations. You can insert, retrieve, update and delete the record from SharePoint 2010. Another big advantage of BCS is unlike BDC, you no need to buy enterprise edition to get this. You can also create lists based on database tables now with the help of BCS.

Developing enhancements
• In SharePoint 2007, development effort goes in the server operating system. Now in SPS 2010 it will be possible to develop solutions in client OS like Windows 7. Developer can now use .Net framework 3.5 LINQ feature directly to query lists and document library. However the current method of using SPQuery still exists and exists with some enhancements. New ribbon interface enabled developer to learn a new client side model for SharePoint 2010. Visual studio 2010 plays a great role in making developer’s life easier. Control is returned to user even though event handler has not completed. Now we have a full control over this behavior to make sure that event handler completes its execution and then transfer control to user. This will solve lot of problems.

Enhancement in large list
• We all know that the first question people used to ask is what if the data is enormous; can we store it in the list? Well, now Microsoft has really worked very hard on this feature to make it more effective. New features have come up for this issue and they are Query Throttling, Batch Query Support, Remote Blob Storage, and External Lists. Query throttling allows administrator to control over the returning result from the list. If you query the list and if the result returns more than 3500 rows, then admin can restrict this limit. Now SharePoint also includes handling of simultaneous multiple items in a single batch. It also allows storing some large files, like large picture or audio / video files outside of SharePoint with the help of remote blob storage.

Improvements in Workflow
• Now workflows can be saved as template. This is really a significant change, because in earlier version as an out of the box workflows, they are associated with list and hence limits the association. Now we have the template workflows, and so we can attach it to any list in SharePoint Designer 2010. Moreover, now we can also modify existing out of the box workflows which ships with SharePoint 2010.

Access Services and Visio services
• As we had the excel services in SharePoint 2007, we now have access services as well as vision services. User now can create vision diagrams and can publish them directly in SharePoint 2010. And the end user does not need to have client vision to see the diagram. End user can see it right from SharePoint 2010. In the same way access services allows publishing access applications to SharePoint which is again a fantastic move and very useful move. Of course, these services will have some limitations as they will work in browser same like excel services. You will not get all full features like client access or client vision, however a fair enough improvement.

Record management enhancement
• We all are aware about the record management feature of MOSS 2007. Now this feature has been enhanced in SPS 2010. Now document can be routed to multiple repositories and that too in hierarchical manner. Now in document library we can mark the document as a record instead of moving the document to a record repository.

Tagging and cloud
• In SPS 2010 we can tag sites, blogs, list and documents. Almost every element is tagging enabled in SPS 2010. Rating is also one of the new features in SPS 2010. We can rate artifacts and also recommend to others.

Security and Deployment
• In SPS 2010 they have introduced a new concept called sandbox solutions. Now administrator can decide on which part of code can run on what constrain. There can be some part which strictly requires administrator privileges to run. Ultimately administrator can enforce a security on what resources can be consumed by code. There are three ways to deploy our code now on the server.

1) Full trust – DLL is deployed in GAC.
2) Partial trust – DLL is deployed in bin directory of web application.
3) Sandbox – DLL is deployed in site collection gallery.

As and when we come across to new features, we would love to share it with our readers