Sharepoint 2010 Features, Advantages and Limitations
Sharepoint is a product that is truly what you make of it and has always been more platform than simple product. Companies who invested in proper customization and integration have been able to benefit from it much more than organizations who simply deployed Sharepoint and made it available out of the box.
Sharepoint 2010 is much more usable out of the box. The new ribbon interface is intuitive and familiar to office users and the product is much tighter, but the need for customization and integration remains. Luckily, Sharepoint 2010 is more focused than ever on being a platform for developers.
Microsoft announced about Sharepoint 2010 technical preview.
Sharepoint 2010 Key Features:
- New User Interface including new Ribbon
- Web Edit
- Silverlight Web Part
- Rich Theming
- Multiple Browser Support
- Visio Services
- Sharepoint Designer
- Business Connectivity Services (the evolution of the Business Data Catalog)
- Sharepoint Workspace
- Rich Media Support
- Central Administration
Sharepoint 2010 is packed with exciting new features. Content authors, administrators and developers can all expect an improved experience.
Content Authoring Improvements in Sharepoint 2010:
- Improved WYSIWYG Editor (Web Edit with Live Preview)
- Improved Theming
- Silverlight Web Part
- Ribbon Toolbar
Administration Improvements in Sharepoint 2010:
- Streamlined Central Administration
- Best Practices Analyzer: analyzes farm health and can automatically fix common configuration errors out-of-the-box. Extensible and rules-based.
- Unified Logging Database
- Resource throttling for large lists and libraries
Development Improvements in Sharepoint 2010:
- Visual Studio 2010 Tools including a Package Designer and Web Part Editor
- LINQ for Sharepoint
- Developer Dashboard: Page-level debugging/trace output
- Business Connectivity Services (BCS) replaces Business Data Catalog (BDC) with Sharepoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio will provide BCS-specific tooling
- Client Object Model (OM) is a new Sharepoint API that runs on the client and can be called from JavaScript, .NET, or Silverlight
Sharepoint 2010 Limitations:
Sharepoint 2010 has hardware and other limitations:
- Sharepoint 2010 will only be available in a 64-bit version. This change is not limited to servers. Developers running on 32-bit hardware will need new machines.
- Sharepoint 2010 will required a 64-bit version of SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 (SQL Server 2000 is no longer supported)
- Not all applications written for Sharepoint 2007 will work in 2010. But certain APIs will be no longer be available. Others will be deprecated.
- The basic flow for many tasks as changed. That coupled with the laundry list of productivity-enhancing features means that any 2010 deployment should be accompanied by training for users, administrators, and developers.
