Introduction
SharePoint technology is adopted in many organizations and
supported by IT due to it’s Out of the box features and its Integration with
other systems. Although we can do everything in SharePoint because of its rich
features and support, we need to analyze and take a decision whether to use
SharePoint or ASP.NET (Forms or MVC).
When to use SharePoint
If the new application requires more collaboration, less
database intensive operations, BI, Publishing, Content & document
management and adopts most of the SharePoint OOTB features (with less custom
development), then SharePoint is the best choice.
Key features of SharePoint technology
1.
Collaboration
2.
Single Sign on
3.
BI Insight
a.
Reporting Service Integration
b.
PerformancePoint
c.
Excel services ( Power view, Power pivot, Power
Map)
4.
Project Server Integration
5.
Office
a.
Web based access to the office applications
b.
Drag and drop from desktop to the platform
c.
Exchange Integration
d.
Improved notification
6.
Social Networking
7.
CMS Integration
8.
Advanced Search
9.
User profiles
10.
Business Process workflows with Workflow
manager
11.
Business connectivity services (BCS)
12.
Security
13.
Mobile support (contemporary HTML5 view, Device
channels, Office Web Apps Ux with touch support)
14.
OOBT Site columns, Content types, Page layouts,
Master pages, Themes, Web parts and Workflows etc.
15.
OOBT Site templates (example Team site,
publishing site etc.)
16.
OOBT Objects such as lists and document
libraries (example Task list, Issue list, contacts list, picture library etc.)
17.
Document and Records Management. (Versioning,
co-authoring, Retention policy, Barcode, Label, Audit etc.)
18.
WCM
a.
Cross site publishing
b.
Video and Embedding
c.
Image Rendition
d.
Clean URLs
e.
Variations and Content translation
f.
Metadata navigation
g.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
19.
SharePoint Store
20.
Cross browser functionality
21.
e-Discovery feature with e- Discovery center
site templates.
22.
Publishing to Multiple formats (Intranet,
Extranet, Internet, Mobile, Tablet)
23.
OData
24.
And much more.
When not to use SharePoint /
When to consider ASP.NET
However there are certain circumstances we may not choose
SharePoint and the better alternative is ASP.NET custom application
development.
1.
Complex
database: If the application uses RDBMS with many tables with
relations and Indexes, It is better to go with traditional ASP.Net application.
Although we can achieve the same database table structure in Sharepoint List
and document library using lookup columns and Taxonomy, it is flexible and easy
in SQL and traditional ASP.NET applications. In addition, creating OLAP cubes
using Database tables, Creating BI reports and creating Indexes to fine-tune
the BI report performances are easy. In simple words, SharePoint lists and
libraries are not the correct substitute for Relational database.
2.
Database vs. SharePoint list: If your business logic requires
transactions, storing data in a database is preferable to using lists. Also, SharePoint
lists are meant to store simple data structures. If you require a complex data
model with intricate relationships, a database is more appropriate.
|
Benefits
|
Database
|
SharePoint list
|
|
Handles complex data relationships
|
Yes
|
No
|
|
Handles large numbers of items
|
Yes
|
No
|
|
Handles transactions
|
Yes
|
No
|
|
Is easy to use
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Accommodates workflows
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Includes a standard interface
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Can easily add binary data
|
No
|
Yes
|
3.
Administrator
/ IT Configurable UI Components: SharePoint webparts such as Announcements,
Weather Information, Sales dashboard web parts are reusable in multiple pages
across the multiple websites and required to create new pages and include the
reusable web parts by Sharepoint administrators or site collection
administrators. If such requirement is not required, we need to consider
choosing traditional way.
4.
Branding:
Sharepoint branding Implementation is comparatively time consuming than ASP.net
and the end results not great especially in admin interfaces which have ribbon
and breadcrumb. Ribbon and Breadcrumb design requires some styles
customization, if we are using our custom branding (custom master page)
5.
Performance:
SharePoint have an extra layer which translates CAML query to T-SQL and then it
executes it. The SharePoint lists and document libraries have some extra
overhead in accessing Data and have items boundary and over the limit
SharePoint won’t support and have performance Issues. However Database table
item storage boundaries are high and optimized according to our data volume.
6.
“Untouchable”
Database: Microsoft strongly recommended not to touch the SharePoint
content database and its objects, as the structures of the Sharepoint tables
are not like normal application table structure.
7.
Time
and Dev server hardware and software requirements:
Developers normally use visual studio to build & deploy many times during
the day, moreover the time spent for building & deploying a SharePoint
solution is normally double or triple the time for a normal ASP.NET application.
This will increase much more if the Developer machines have less than the
Microsoft recommended hardware such as RAM, Processor and Free hard disk space.
8. Complex knowledge platform: It requires a very advanced understanding of the complex concepts of ASP.NET, database & windows server like Active directory,
PowerShell, Memory management, caching, hardware capabilities & networking.
9. Deployment: Complex compared to
ASP.NET, which require to copy DLLs (GAC or Bin directory) and a files in to a
specific folders. A few SQL commands to add Tables, add Meta data etc. In
SharePoint it is complex, and we need to prepare the solution and write
PowerShell commands to add, upgrade, Activate solutions. In addition we need to
activate the features in Farm, Site collection, Web levels. The deployment
process also includes Metadata Import scripts, some manual and automated
process.
10. Estimation: Estimation is difficult
and sometimes we can get a solution from codeplex for free and sometimes we
need to develop from scratch. In addition, there are multiple ways in
Sharepoint to get a required solution such add a list of contacts from a csv
file to SharePoint list. This task can be achieved using Server object model
(c#), CSOM, PowerShell script, SharePoint UI data entry (if the contact list is
small).
11.
Administration:
Backup and restore of ASP.Net application is simple and the administrator needs
to take the backup Database related the application only, whereas in SharePoint
we need to take the snapshot of the server and All the databases related to
Site, Central admin, IIS configuration, Service applications etc.
12.
Full
Control: Since SharePoint is a framework we can’t change certain
features and needs a few workarounds to attain the solution. In case of ASP.Net
application we have a full control over all the UI, Libraries, controls which
we have created and we can modify and fix issues very easily and quickly.
Advice from Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President SharePoint
- Use
SharePoint as an out-of-box
application whenever possible - We designed the new SharePoint
UI to be clean, simple and fast and work great out-of-box. We encourage
you not to modify it which could add complexity, performance and
upgradeability and to focus your energy on working with users and groups
to understand how to use SharePoint to improve productivity and
collaboration and identifying and promoting best practices in your
organization.
- Be
thorough in custom web design, development and testing – We know many
SharePoint sites are published portals or custom web apps and are excited
about the new features we designed for these scenarios. We encourage you
to review the new features and guidance to reduce the amount of custom work you need to do.
But even there, code is code and we encourage you to validate your design
early in your development cycle and with particular focus on peak usage
performance testing for how your customizations impact HTTP and SQL Server
roundtrips. We have guidance and page and object caching techniques that
can help here.
