The SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model

Last Thursday I presented "SharePoint 2010 Development" at the Western Kentucky .NET Users Group at Murray State University. The group is a nice cross-section of students, faculty and area professionals. We had a lot of ground to cover and there were many great questions. I want to thank the group for their hospitality and encourage anyone in the area to check them out. Find out more at http://www.wkdnug.org.

One of the topics of particular interest was the new Client Object Model in SharePoint 2010. I demonstrated how to write a WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) desktop application against a SharePoint announcement list using the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. The attached Visual Studio 2010 solution is a quick-and-dirty approach to updating an announcements list. Feel free to try for yourself after updating the server name in the program code, but keep in mind this is bare-minimum and not production-ready. Watch this blog for more posts about the Client Object Model. I am going to walk you through extending this solution to allow you to choose your server and list dynamically.

Download Presentation from WKDNUG

Download Sample WPF Solution

Important 2010 Launch Dates

Arpan Shah of the SharePoint Product Team announced that May 12 is the official launch date for SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 -- with Release to Manufacturing set for April. Excitement continues to swell and the number of potential early adopters seems to be on the rise. Woody Windischman breaks the launch down succinctly in his blog with some key points to consider regarding SharePoint Designer.

Microsoft previously announced that the launch date for Visual Studio 2010 will be April 12. Having worked with the beta, my opinion is that this is going to be the most significant Visual Studio release yet -- especially if you are a SharePoint Developer.

Keep an eye on our blog to see what this means for you. 2010 is going to be an exciting year for SharePoint!

How to Set Up a Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 Beta

In case you have not had the chance to set up a development environment for SharePoint 2010 Beta, I have jotted down some notes following my experience.

I had two options for creating my development environment:.

1. Install SharePoint on a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008
2. Install SharePoint on my Windows 7 machine

I chose option #2 so I did not have to build the Windows Server 2008. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate on a Dell Latitude with 8GB RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It is important to understand that Option #2 is for development purposes only and it cannot be used in production.

1) Read all these steps before implementing Step 2.

2) Read the entire set of instructions from Microsoft’s site on “Setting up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server. You can find Microsoft’s instructions at this web address:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx

3) Before running the SharePoint configuration wizard be aware that there are a couple of hot fixes that you will need to successfully install prior to running the wizard. They are SQL Server 2008 hot fixes and can be located at http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=970315&kbln=en-us. You will need to request these hot fixes be sent to you via email.

4) After installing the hot fixes, I ran into an error running the wizard. To get around this error you will need to install the Microsoft Geneva Framework v1.0 at this location:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=118c3588-9070-426a-b655-6cec0a92c10b&displaylang=en

5) Run the Configuration Wizard.

Done! You now have a SharePoint installation to develop SharePoint solutions. Keep an eye on our blog for developing future SharePoint solutions.

I hope this saves you some time. Good luck!