Best Practices

• A developer should make sure that out-of-the-box SharePoint 2010 features do not provide capabilities that can meet end user requests before diving into Designer 2010 or Visual Studio 2010. This is no easy task because SharePoint 2010, as shown throughout this book, has many new and powerful features, such as calculated columns, lookup columns, external data, workflows, alerts, and other tools that might be good enough for end users to start with, rather than over-building a solution.

• When working with Designer 2010, it is recommended to not install Designer 2010 on production servers but to install it on a workstation or on a development or test SharePoint 2010 server.

• Always use a nonproduction server to develop and test code. When a development server is not available, use sandboxed solutions in a nonproduction web application or site collection.

• When possible, use a development, staging, and production deployment scenario to minimize the impact on the production environment.

• When developing code for SharePoint 2010 using Visual Studio 2010, you need both Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 installed on the same machine.

• Many new features in SharePoint 2010 make it better suited to use as a development platform, including the sandboxed solution deployments, client object model, LINQ integration, and enhanced development environments. However, not all projects require direct integration with SharePoint. Take care to evaluate all contingencies because SharePoint may not be the optimal platform to support the desired solution for many reasons, including licensing, storage requirements, throughput, record count, and security, to list a few.