SharePoint® 2007 and Office Development Expert Solutions

Chapter 6. SharePoint Application Services

Microsoft's SharePoint technology architecture delivers a foundation of APIs and functionality that makes it easier for developers to build and deploy applications for a variety of scenarios. Workflow-enabled forms solutions, business intelligence and reporting aggregation tools, Excel-based publishing tools for Web reports, and records management tools are a few of the many functions that SharePoint supports out of the box, with hooks for customization and extensibility built in. These products have been packaged into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and are primarily delivered through SharePoint's Enterprise edition product.

In order to leverage these existing application services to build new solutions, we'll look at the following components in the SharePoint application services stack:

• Forms services publishing, management, and administration

• Dashboard and reporting applications development in the Reports Center

• Document management solutions with the Records Center

In each of these areas, we'll look at the architectural components of the SharePoint products and technologies that enable developers to build out these services and leverage them in their applications. In addition, we'll look at some scenarios on how each of these feature areas can be leveraged and identify integration and extensibility points for custom applications. With an understanding of these features and services, you should be able to build InfoPath-designed forms that ...