Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

6.4. Lists

The lowest level of a storage construct in SharePoint is a list. SharePoint lists are similar to database tables in many ways. In terms of the structure, lists have fields (columns) and items (records) just like databases. Database tables have triggers, events that fire under certain circumstances, such as when records are added, updated, or deleted. SharePoint lists also have triggers, known as events, that enable developers to write event handlers to execute custom code under certain circumstances. This analogy to a database table should be taken very loosely though, as there are some significant differences. For instance, database tables are optimized for multiple (and rapid) read/write operations, as well as to hold vast amounts of data, unlike SharePoint lists.

SharePoint lists also contain some additional capabilities. All SharePoint lists are capable of delivering their contents in the form of Really Simple Syndication (RSS), making it very easy to consume and present data stored within lists in other applications. Administrators can also associate pre-defined workflow templates with a list, as well as set unique permissions on the list, breaking the inheritance of permissions from the site in which the list resides.

Lists also have versioning capabilities. SharePoint lists can be configured to create a new version when an item is updated, optionally limiting how many versions can be retained. Document libraries, a type of SharePoint list, have enhanced versioning ...