Chapter 5. Programming Windows SharePoint Services
By Matt Ranlett
Windows SharePoint Services is a lot more than just a set of fancy web pages where you can store your documents and lists. WSS is even more than a host for custom applications and Web Parts. WSS itself is actually a rich platform for application development, complete with a rich object model (OM) and web services layer. This platform allows developers to interact with SharePoint itself—the sites, the lists, and more. By leveraging the SharePoint platform, a developer has the power to create management applications, programmatically interact with lists and document libraries, react to system and user events both before and after they happen, and more. Furthermore, because this platform is exposed to developers both as an object model and as a web services layer, developers have the option of creating windows forms applications, web applications, Web Part applications, system services, and even console applications that can be executed locally on the server or remotely halfway around the world.
Within this chapter, you will learn about the Windows SharePoint Services API. This API includes two major interfaces, an object model you can incorporate directly into your code and a set of web services, which allow you to invoke SharePoint functionality from anywhere on the network. This chapter also covers an introduction to the greatly enhanced event-handling model and a guide to choosing between the object model and ...
