SharePoint Use Cases

  • Home
  • About
  • Our Tools
  • Contact me
SharePoint

Team-Based Development in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Toni Frankola - December 16, 2008

I already blogged about setting up a SharePoint team, and I am going to explain the technical side of that in this post.

Here are the classic mistakes and best practices on how to setup development environment for a SharePoint team.

Environment 101

Mistake – Installing SharePoint on a developer workstation

It is nice to have all the tools you need installed on your workstation / laptop. This is a wrong approach for SharePoint projects. SharePoint is a very complex software product and it will probably mess-up something else on your computer. So you will end up reinstalling it, every few months.

SharePoint also requires a Windows server to run, which you can install on workstation, but you will not be able to run some client applications (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite).

The best practice – SharePoint in a Virtual Machine

The best practice for setting up development environment is to use a virtual machine. VMs are easy to manage and host operating system is completely isolated. You can tear apart VM, but host machine will not be affected. The benefit: You can have a different machine for each client/project you are working on.

Here are some useful links on this topic:

  • How to Create a MOSS 2007 VPC Image: The Whole 9 Yards
  • Scott Hanselman’s VM Performance Checklist – Before you Complain that your Virtual Machine is Slow


Virtual Machines 101

There are various options for using Virtual Machines and here are some mistakes and best practices when it comes to SharePoint development:

Mistake – Using a Virtual Machine provided by Microsoft

You can download a preinstalled VM with SharePoint and everything you need from Microsoft web site. These machines are great because they included all the tools and services you need to do presentations and developing for SharePoint. However you will encounter the following two problems when using them:

  • VM is set to expire in few months, and sometimes it is very hard (in some cases impossible) to prolong that
  • If two or more people are using this machine on the same network this will cause you a lot of problems. Renaming a server with SharePoint and Domain Controller installed is a nightmare, and you cannot have two machines with the same name on your network.
    So, sooner or later you will abandon this approach. 🙂

Please note: If you only need to do a simple pilot, or a demo you should stick to this VM. It is great and rapid tool for simple scenarios.

Mistake –Single Virtual Machine approach

The next approach you will probably try is having one virtual machine per project, and use it as integration (sometimes even development) server. Each developer uses this machine for debugging, deployment and integration.

This is a mistake, reasons:

  • Deploying SharePoint stuff often requires you to restart IIS or recycle pool. If you have two or more developers working on this machine this might be a problem, because all these restarts will decrease productivity of a developer.
  • No matter how much RAM you allocate for this machines, you want be able to allocate enough.
    It is always hard to allocate enough if two or more developers are using Visual Studio debugger on the server

The best practice approach – Development lab

In next post I am going to describe how and why you should build a testing lab for your team.

Related articles:

  • Bulding a SharePoint team
  • Team-Based Development in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Part 2 – Building a development lab
Tags | best practices, development, msf, Team-Based Development in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
 0
Share Now

Toni Frankola

Entrepreneur, IT consultant, speaker, blogger, and geek. Co-founder of syskit.com.

You Might Also Like

SharePoint

Bulding a SharePoint team

June 29, 2008
SharePoint

Storing metadata in SharePoint Lists vs. SQL Database

November 3, 2008
SharePoint

Team-Based Development in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Part 2 – Building a development lab

December 21, 2008
SharePoint, SharePoint 2010

SharePoint installation and maintenance slide decks from Windays 2012

April 27, 2012

3 Responses

  • Les Crawford March 9, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    The part 2 of your article is lost or has a broken link:

    Team-Based Development in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Part 2 – Building a development lab | SharePoint Use Cases

    Will it be available again, I really appreciated the first article.?!

    Thanks,
    Les

  • Toni Frankola March 9, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    @Les: Here it is: https://www.sharepointusecases.com/index.php/2008/12/team-based-development-in-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-part-2-building-a-development-lab/

    Can you just tell point me to the broken link so that I can fix it for others?

  • Building a SharePoint Development Environment | SharePointDevWiki.com September 26, 2013 at 12:08 am

    […] Mistake – Installing SharePoint on a developer workstationIt is nice to have all the tools you need installed on your workstation / laptop. This is a wrong approach for SharePoint projects. SharePoint is a very complex software product and it will probably mess-up something else on your computer. So you will end up reinstalling it, every few months. SharePoint also requires a Windows server to run, which you can install on workstation, but you will not be able to run some client applications (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite). The best practice for setting up development environment is to use a virtual machine. VMs are easy to manage and host operating system is completely isolated. You can tear apart VM, but host machine will not be affected. The benefit: You can have a different machine for each client/project you are working on. Source : Team-Based Development in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 […]

  • Comments are closed.

    Previous Post Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009
    Next Post KPIs for Masses – Part 2 and Part 3

    Archives

    • December 2021 (1)
    • June 2021 (1)
    • January 2021 (1)
    • July 2019 (1)
    • June 2019 (2)
    • March 2019 (1)
    • February 2019 (3)
    • October 2018 (2)
    • August 2018 (2)
    • June 2018 (1)
    • April 2018 (1)
    • February 2018 (1)
    • January 2018 (1)
    • June 2017 (1)
    • April 2017 (1)
    • February 2017 (1)
    • November 2016 (2)
    • August 2016 (1)
    • July 2016 (2)
    • March 2016 (1)
    • February 2016 (2)
    • January 2016 (1)
    • November 2015 (2)
    • December 2014 (1)
    • November 2014 (2)
    • July 2014 (2)
    • June 2014 (2)
    • May 2014 (1)
    • April 2014 (2)
    • March 2014 (1)
    • February 2014 (4)
    • January 2014 (2)
    • December 2013 (1)
    • September 2013 (1)
    • July 2013 (1)
    • June 2013 (1)
    • May 2013 (1)
    • April 2013 (3)
    • February 2013 (1)
    • December 2012 (1)
    • November 2012 (1)
    • September 2012 (1)
    • August 2012 (1)
    • July 2012 (2)
    • June 2012 (4)
    • April 2012 (1)
    • February 2012 (1)
    • January 2012 (1)
    • November 2011 (2)
    • October 2011 (2)
    • September 2011 (2)
    • July 2011 (3)
    • May 2011 (2)
    • April 2011 (1)
    • March 2011 (4)
    • February 2011 (3)
    • January 2011 (4)
    • December 2010 (4)
    • November 2010 (3)
    • October 2010 (3)
    • September 2010 (4)
    • August 2010 (1)
    • July 2010 (4)
    • May 2010 (2)
    • April 2010 (2)
    • March 2010 (3)
    • January 2010 (2)
    • December 2009 (3)
    • November 2009 (5)
    • October 2009 (2)
    • August 2009 (7)
    • July 2009 (3)
    • June 2009 (4)
    • May 2009 (3)
    • April 2009 (5)
    • March 2009 (8)
    • February 2009 (5)
    • January 2009 (8)
    • December 2008 (9)
    • November 2008 (8)
    • October 2008 (7)
    • September 2008 (4)
    • August 2008 (6)
    • July 2008 (5)
    • June 2008 (3)
    • May 2008 (4)
    • April 2008 (6)
    • March 2008 (4)
    • February 2008 (3)
    • January 2008 (6)
    • December 2007 (1)
    • November 2007 (3)
    • October 2007 (3)
    • September 2007 (2)
    • August 2007 (1)
    • July 2007 (12)
    • June 2007 (2)
    • May 2007 (3)

    Connect Us

    All postings on this blog are provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confer no rights. All entries in this blog are my opinion and don’t necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer.

    • Home
    • About
    • Our Tools
    • Contact me

    Copyright (c) Toni Frankola 2008. - 2019.