Real World SharePoint® 2010: Indispensable Experiences from 22 MVPs

Chapter 8. Building Sandboxed Solutions

By Robert Bogue

Since SharePoint Portal Server 2001, end users have been finding ways to get things done. Getting things done didn't always mean writing code and deploying it to the server. Little "hacks" started to show up around the time of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and particularly with SharePoint 2007. These little "hacks" may have been a little bit of JavaScript, a cute bit of CSS, an InfoPath form, or even a special Word or Excel template file. The fact that these little "hacks" existed has flown mostly below the radar of the IT professional trying to manage the system. Generally, they didn't cause much harm (if any) and, in the end, the IT professionals had bigger issues to worry about.

In 2007, SharePoint began to emerge as a valid development platform. As of this writing in 2010, many people have caught on to the fact that SharePoint is a valid development platform — even if it's not without its difficulties and limitations. That has created more and more solutions that IT professionals were asked to deliver to their SharePoint 2007 farms.

It is, of course, predictable that when the IT professionals were trying to deliver numerous solutions quickly, some of those solutions had performance and stability problems. The end result was that the entire SharePoint 2007 farm's stability and performance were threatened or impacted by as little as one quickly written solution. This has been a problem that IT professionals have been trying ...