Windows SharePoint Services Overview
Up to this point, I've discussed building traditional Access client-side databases and run through some of the new tools and techniques that are available. This represents a very important part of the work done in Access 2007, but it is only one part. In addition, we've done a lot of work to make it easy to build client-server databases against Windows SharePoint Services. Doing this allows users who don't have the skills or privileges to be SQL Server DBAs to still get the manageability and stability benefits of storing data on the server, while retaining the ease of use of Access. This is a significant long-term bet for Access, and the level of server functionality can be expected to continue to grow in the future. I'll be describing Access 2007's SharePoint functionality over several posts, and will start with an overview of the server itself.
Windows SharePoint Services Overview
SharePoint is becoming increasingly well known, but is new to many Access developers. At the top level, it is simply a set of services that runs on top of Windows Server. It is shipped on the Office schedule, but it is included with Windows Server (i.e. if you have server, you can freely download the SharePoint bits). SharePoint provides the server cornerstone to the Office System, and SharePoint functionality appears throughout the Office client apps. SharePoint is designed to be a very horizontal technology, applicable to all Office users, and not limited to large organizations. We'd expect that eventually anyone with a file server, will eventually move to SharePoint, and those without servers will be able to take advantage of services like Office Live. There is an enterprise-focused SharePoint server, called SharePoint Portal Server, that runs on top of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and provides additional functionality to large organizations. Access 2007 runs on both, but with a few exceptions I'll call out, all of the functionality described below works on WSS and is included in the base version of Windows Server.
Windows SharePoint Services is described more fully here, but for our purposes, we can think of WSS as being composed of two parts: a platform, and a server application built on that platform. The platform contains things like an authorization model, a set of collaboration services, and flat file database (or "list") functionality this platform is highly programmable both directly and through web services, and in 2007 will have a dedicated design tool called SharePoint Designer. The application then builds UI on top of that platform to enable a collaboration app. This app is designed to enable team collaboration out of the box, and contains lists for things like a calendar, tasks, issues, and documents. User interact with SharePoint directly through the browser for adding or editing list items, uploading documents, or even modifying the site itself.
Here's a quick walkthrough of the parts of SharePoint that are most relevant to Access (there's a lot of other stuff we won't go through here, so if you're interested in SharePoint in general, please refer to the links above). Here's a picture of a demo SharePoint site:
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Clicking on the Announcements title, takes you to the default view on the Announcements lists, called the "All Items" view. If the all items view doesn't meet their needs, users can build their own custom views in the browser, choosing columns, column order, setting filters, and so on. The All Items view for our demo Announcements list looks like this:
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In addition to the default view, each list has a single-item view and a single-item edit form. The single item view looks like this:
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And the single item form looks like this:
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You'll notice above that SharePoint has support for rich text, complete with in-browser tools for formatting, as well as the ability to copy / paste from other apps.
Office 2007 users can also use the Access Datasheet to edit list items in the browser through a grid, which allows quicker editing for multiple items. The grid looks like this:
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Creating a new list is also done through the browser, and the user can select from a variety of built-in list types or create a custom list. The custom list creation UI looks like this:
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Adding columns is done after the shell of the list is created, through the "List Settings" UI, where you can choose data types, defaults, and so on:
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Each of the lists created shows up on the "List of Lists", which prevents orphaned content:
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In addition to the very basic list functionality described above, SharePoint provides a number of other features that help users. You can turn on version history for list items, allowing you to see who made each change and when, and roll back those changes if desired. In addition, deleted items land in a "Recycle Bin" and can be easily undeleted. Here's what the recycle bin looks like:
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Next Time
The SharePoint team collaboration app and SharePoint platform provide basic in-browser database functionality - there's a place to store data and simple forms and reports. Of course it lacks many of the things that make Access so powerful (relationships, remote data, logic) but it adds some things that are also useful to database authors (server manageability, recycle bin, versioning). In the next posts, we'll explore moving Access database to the SharePoint server and discuss building apps that take advantage of the best of the rich-client and the rich-server.
