Rich Finn

With all the talk about SharePoint as an application platform lately, I figured it might be good to post on the way I like to describe SharePoint to clients.

Sure, you get a lot of neat features out of the box with SharePoint, but I've seen plenty of deer-in-headlight looks after people hear everything the product has to offer and the exponential amount of solutions that are possible when you look a little deeper.  Even after conversing a great deal about what SharePoint is and how it can help an organization, there are always a few folks who have that 'but... I don't get it!' look.  Usually, it's the business-focused people who understand the idea of SharePoint right away, but I've found that it's the folks who are deep-technical in nature, but have been exposed to MOSS only through reading some articles and maybe been through a little training, who have a harder time grasping the SharePoint concept.  Let's face it, it's a new way of thought for most techies.

One thing I heard in February 2006 struck a cord with me for some reason: 'Everything in SharePoint is a list.'  Got me thinking.  I did a ton of MCMS02 development, so I was used to performing app dev as using a robust API, and not heavily leveraging SQL.  Couple that with the article Gathering MOSS in the August 2006 issue of MSDN by one of the newest members of the MOSS blogging community, Ted Pattison, app dev in WSSv3 clicked.

Almost every client that I've talked to about SharePoint has had at least some technical experience in their careers, and even if they haven't, they probably are familiar with the way a database is set up, so why not have them think about SharePoint in way that they already understand?

When I've explained this, I always see the light bulb go on:

WSSv3 even introduces index columns and cross-list querying to allow for more database comparisons, and there are plenty others.

With the current argument going on around SharePoint as an application platform, maybe this will help those folks who are against the platform have the light bulb go on, too.  Sure, as AC and Joel have said, the developer experience might not be the greatest right now, but give it time.  At least it's better than punch cards!

----------

Note - yes, I know that all applications aren't meant to be in SharePoint, but I can see how all applications could be... ;)