Chapter 1. SharePoint as a Development Platform

Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink...

—Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)

Some of the first questions that face a developer when initially looking at a platform like SharePoint are such questions as "Why should I use SharePoint for a platform as opposed to some other solution?" and "What features does SharePoint have that are compelling enough to make me select it as the center of a development platform in order to deliver the best solutions to my employer or customers?" These questions are all the more overwhelming with the number of solutions that exist. There are large numbers of frameworks to choose from with which to build upon, everything from code generators to web site extenders, development tool extensions to fully functional portal frameworks. Evaluating the pros and cons of each possible environment is a huge task that is impossible to accomplish on a budget.