Chapter 20. Incorporating ASP.NET 2.0 Applications

As covered in this book and many others, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) can be used to host not only traditional collaboration sites, but also content-centric sites. However, many organizations may require some sort of functionality or custom application to be embedded within a SharePoint site. For instance, a SharePoint Publishing site may need to have a newsletter subscription and management application or an event registration system. In past versions of WSS 3.0 it was not very easy to incorporate custom applications into a site.

Thankfully, WSS 3.0 greatly expands on the number of options available to developers to build custom applications in SharePoint sites, both collaboration and Publishing sites. This chapter covers different techniques and options developers can utilize to incorporate custom ASP.NET 2.0 applications into SharePoint sites. In addition, many common questions that come up when building applications in SharePoint are covered in this chapter, such as when to store data in SharePoint lists compared to a custom database and how to customize the navigation.