Chapter 13. Data Access Overview

More often than not, when it comes to designing a data access layer for a custom application, your only consideration is how the layer can be accessed and used programmatically. You don’t usually need to consider how a nontechnical user might configure and amend the data structure. Naturally, this makes life much simpler for the designer, because the data structure can be designed with only the application goals in mind. The exception to this rule occurs, of course, when the application itself is a configurable data store; in that case, the primary aim is to create a user-configurable data access layer. SharePoint is such an application, as a web-based platform for storing and sharing data and applications that allows nontechnical users to create data structures that meet their unique requirements.

This part of the book covers the various data access features available in SharePoint 2010. However, before we delve into these advanced features in detail, we’ll look at how data is stored and managed in the underlying platform. Given that the target audience for the data access platform is the nontechnical end user, from a development perspective, we have something of a learning curve to undergo before we can effectively make use of the platform to implement the structures required by our custom applications.