Access® 2010 Bible

Chapter 32. Understanding Windows SharePoint Services

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Getting familiar with SharePoint

• Working with SharePoint Lists

• Looking at different types of SharePoint sites

Throughout this book you've been reading about the many, many changes and new features that Microsoft has added to Access 2010. As exciting and interesting as these new capabilities are, they pale in comparison to the ability to upsize Access applications to Windows SharePoint Server (WSS). Each recent version of Access has demonstrated greater and greater ability to integrate with SharePoint, but always at the data level. Not until Access 2010 have you been able to upsize an Access application to actually run as a SharePoint Web site.

Upsizing Access databases to SharePoint is discussed in Chapters 34 and 35. Chapter 33 discusses sharing data with SharePoint sites, and this chapter discusses SharePoint and explains how Access developers can use the features provided by SharePoint.

Access and SharePoint can be tightly integrated, seamlessly sharing data across corporate intranets and the Internet. Access data can be linked or copied from data sources located on a SharePoint site. SharePoint data linked to Access appears as any other linked table, with the exception of somewhat slower data access because of the latency introduced by accessing remote data on a SharePoint server.

Although a lot of this chapter might sound as though I'm promoting SharePoint, given the expanded role that Access 2010 is sure to play ...