Monday 20 August 2007

ASP.NET 2.0 VS Sharepoint 2007

One of my clients, Pfizer - wanted a list of reasons vs reasons against using Sharepoint 2007 compared to using classic ASP.NET 2.0.

Here is a list that I came up with:

Integration Level 0 (No Integration)
Advantages

1) Simplest solution as there is no need to integrate with SharePoint 2007 or deployNOTE: This is based on requirements outlined by Pfizer (Document versioning is not required)
2) More reliable as there is no reliance on SharePoint 2007 services
3) Simpler to customise look and feel as no customisation of SharePoint is required.
4) Pages render faster in native ASP.NET rather than being hosted in SharePoint 2007.
5) Server requirements are reduced as SharePoint services are not running/not required.
6) Better control of caching than when hosted in SharePoint 2007
7) Simpler development and deployment model and debugging (no .webpart & GAC deployment required, don’t need SharePoint on development machines)

Disadvantages
1) (We are not planning on using ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts) - No user customisation possible
2) Limited integration with existing SharePoint 2007 Portals
3) Outlook Task creation is more difficult

Integration Level 1 (Using ASP.NET 2.0 hosted inside SharePoint 2007 without any changes to make SharePoint 2007 aware)
It is possible to simply add aspx pages developed outside SharePoint to a Sharepoint 2007 site – and pointing to the Sharepoint 2007 master page.
http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2006/09/05/application-development-on-moss-2007-amp-wss-v3.aspx

Advantages
1) Hosted inside SharePoint, but not integrated – so deployment model is the same as for other SharePoint 2007 sites currently in use.
2) Simpler development Model compared to higher levels of integration
3) SharePoint is aware of the page – so the link is natively visible to portals (ie the link doesn’t need to be added to SharePoint)
Disadvantages
1) Dependency upon SharePoint 2007
Integration Level 2 (Using ASP.NET 2.0 and Web Parts hosted inside SharePoint 2007)
Disadvantages
1) Integration of Web Parts is more complex than a standard ASP.NET 2.0 page.
2) Pages render slower in SharePoint 2007.
3) There is a reliance on more components – so reliability of system is lower.
4) Reduced control over Caching.
5) Creating the desired look and feel is more complicated if we are using Master pages in SharePoint 2007.
6) More powerful servers are required for SharePoint 2007.

Advantages
1) Can leverage current look and feel of SharePoint 2007 sites if they already exist
2) Direct Access to SharePoint 2007 versioning control if we did need it (we don’t)
3) Outlook task integration is simpler to perform.
Integration Level 3 (Deep Integration with SharePoint 2007 using Lists)
Advantages
1) All advantages of Level 2 integration PLUS
2) Lists are easily customised by users
3) Notifications when data Changes
Disadvantages

1. All limitations of Level 2 integration PLUS
2. Problems with the performance and scalability limits of lists (see http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/07/25/scaling-large-lists.aspx)

3 comments:

Venu Reddy said...

good comarision , truely searching for it,

Venu Reddy said...

good comparision, turely searching for it.

Rocky said...

Hi David

Thank you for your list. I was hunting for the same for on of my client