Ok, so now SharePoint has gone gold, and everybody (at least at Microsoft) is jumping up and down in excitement.
Don't get me wrong – I do like SharePoint – heck I've made it my livelyhood as a SharePoint developer/consultant. But where is the documentation for this monster product?
The SDK for SharePoint 2003 was horrible. It was totally incomplete at product launch, it was imcomplete a year after, and I'll bet, it's incomplete even today!
Let's get something straight: SharePoint is a high profile enterprise product, targeted as the new application platform for Windows. Version 14 (skipping v.13) even more so, according to MS.
Well, wouldn't you expect Microsoft to support the developers a little bit better, by supplying well written and complete documentation by now?
The situation right now is rather frustrating for developers trying to leverage the functionality of SharePoint, especially if you use the SharePoint object model. Let me give you an example:
Content types are new to 2007 and a great addition to the product. Take a look at the online WSS 3.0 SDK documentation (revised november 2006):
The section SPContentType Members contains 29 public properties. Not a single one has a description! If I take a closer look at the Document Template property, it seems to only contain som auto generated description of this property. What's the purpose of this property? How can you use it? Are there any caveats?
Does Microsoft not document their code themselves while writing it? How about a tool for exctracting XML documentation!? (Who said NDoc?).
By the way – if you look at the Content Type Schema Definiton you will observe that Document Template is obsolete! Makes you wonder what you should do, if you would like to programmatically bind a content type to a document template.
Mike Fitzmaurice has a new post: The RTM SDKs Will Be Downloadable on November 28th, 2006 in which he states, that "The goal is always going to be that the SDK is the ultimate authoriative reference", and further more that "We had a really good team spend a lot of time on this for the 2007 releases, and the situation is markedly different from the 2003-era offerings. I hope you'll notice the difference."
Well, SharePoint 2007 has grown to be a much bigger product than 2003 – so should the documentation effort be!
But I really don't think we're there yet. This is why we all rely heavily on the community and the very skilled SharePoint experts out there, who makes it all possible. Without people like Amanda, Bill, Jan, Matt, Patrick, Steven, Ted and Todd an all the other great persons out there, sharing their experiences, the SharePoint developer community would fare very badly.
Come on Microsoft. Put the plans for SharePoint V.14 back on the shelf for a while and concentrate on making a good product a GREAT product!
steinhof