Sharepoint or ASP.Net?

SharePoint or ASP.Net?

As architects we have often come across this scenario in Software development life cycle.

The grilling project requirement phase ends, it’s time to start getting design savvy and the tech architecture team will brainstorm amongst eachother to come up with a recommended architecture.

 SharePoint and Asp.net are widely used technologies and finalizing one vs the other is a challenging task in itself.

Based on my experience and what I have learned from my community, for the applications that can utilize the below features of SharePoint - this platform should be the preferred choice...

• Collaboration
• Internet facing website
• Social networking such as Blogs, Wikis, Communities, etc
• Applications requiring browser enables forms
• Enterprise Search
• Information portals
• Business Intelligence and Dashboards
• Workflows
• Content Management
• Ms Office Integration
• External Data systems integration via BCS
• Document Management

If the dilemna still remains, we need to look at different aspects before deciding whether to go for SharePoint or Asp.Net.

Below I have collated a couple of my considerations:

Licensing : To get the Basic OOB Out-of-the-box features from the Free version of Sharepoint
SharePoint Foundation is aptly named because it provides the base for SharePoint 2010 Standard and SharePoint 2010 Enterprise. SharePoint Foundation is free and is supported on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2. Here’s a list of what you get in SharePoint Foundation (see Editions Comparison at Microsoft's site to learn more about each feature):

SharePoint Foundation

Accessibility Blogs Browser-based Customizations Business Connectivity Services Business Data Connectivity Service Claims-Based Authentication Client Object Model (OM) Configuration Wizards Connections to Microsoft Office Clients Connections to Office Communication Server and Exchange Cross-Browser Support Developer Dashboard Discussions Event Receivers External Data Column External Lists High-Availability Architecture Improved Backup and Restore Improved Setup and Configuration Language Integrated Query (LINQ) for SharePoint Large List Scalability and Management Managed Accounts Mobile Connectivity Multilingual User Interface Multi-Tenancy Out-of-the-Box Web Parts Patch Management Permissions Management Photos and Presence Quota Templates Read-Only Database Support Remote Blob Storage (SQL Feature) REST and ATOM Data Feeds Ribbon and Dialog Framework Sandboxed Solutions SharePoint Designer SharePoint Health Analyzer SharePoint Lists SharePoint Ribbon SharePoint Service Architecture SharePoint Timer Jobs SharePoint Workspace Silverlight Web Part Site Search Solution Packages Streamlined Central Administration Support for Office Web Apps Unattached Content Database Recovery Usage Reporting and Logging Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools Visual Upgrade Web Parts Wikis Windows 7 Support Windows PowerShell Support Workflow Workflow Models

SharePoint 2010 Standard includes SharePoint Foundation features and adds these features:

Ask Me About Audience Targeting Basic Sorting Best Bets Business Connectivity Services Profile Page Click Through Relevancy Colleague Suggestions Colleagues Network Compliance Everywhere Content Organizer Document Sets Duplicate Detection Enterprise Scale Search Enterprise Wikis Federated Search Improved Governance Keyword Suggestions Managed Metadata Service Memberships Metadata-driven Navigation Metadata-driven Refinement Mobile Search Experience Multistage Disposition My Content My Newsfeed My Profile Note Board Organization Browser People and Expertise Search Phonetic and Nickname Search Query Suggestions, "Did You Mean?", and Related Queries Ratings Recent Activities Recently Authored Content Relevancy Tuning Rich Media Management Search Scopes Secure Store Service Shared Content Types SharePoint 2010 Search Connector Framework Status Updates Tag Clouds Tag Profiles Tags Tags and Notes Tool Unique Document IDs Web Analytics Windows 7 Search Word Automation Services Workflow Templates

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise includes the features in SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint 2010 Standard and adds these features to the mix:

Access Services Advanced Content Processing Advanced Sorting Business Data Integration with the Office Client Business Data Web Parts Business Intelligence Center Business Intelligence Indexing Connector Calculated KPIs Chart Web Parts Contextual Search Dashboards Data Connection Library Decomposition Tree Deep Refinement Excel Services Excel Services and PowerPivot for SharePoint Extensible Search Platform Extreme Scale Search InfoPath Forms Services PerformancePoint Services Rich Web Indexing Similar Results Thumbnails and Previews Tunable Relevance with Multiple Rank Profiles Visio Services Visual Best Bets

Again, to learn more about each feature, see this side-by-side comparison chart at Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 website. Hovering over each item displays a description that explains what the feature does.

You can use SharePoint 2010 to set up intranet, extranet, and Internet sites. SharePoint 2010 Standard and SharePoint 2010 Enterprise are licensed depending on how you will use SharePoint. There are two ways to use it, and thus two licensing models:

• Intranet sites: Server/Client Access License model
• Extranet/Internet sites: Server-only model

Intranet sites. Intranet sites are licensed using a Server/CAL model. SharePoint Server 2010 is required for each running instance of the software, and CALs are required for each person or device accessing a SharePoint Server. There are two licensing models for intranet sites:

• Check if the requirement maps to Out-of-the-box (OOB) SharePoint features :

Is the requirement to utilze some of the basic features i.e. site provisioning, search, version control, roles/groups, easy forms/Lists (new, edit, view pages), collaboration, workflows, content deployment, alerts, social collaboration on documents etc...?                       

If we are not using any of these features, then it’s probably not worth using SharePoint.. The effort involved in building Custom features will be pretty considerable.

• Check what kind of System/Application is being built

 Is it one application or similar replicated Applications across many teams\sites?                        

SharePoint is an excellent platform to replicate one type of site to many teams. Site templates are excellent feature of the replication.

• Check the Scale and Performance objectives of the application                      

SharePoint may not be able to match the performance of a plain ASP.net application as it does a lot more work (security trimming, getting files from database etc.)

Getting back to real life scenarios, we should not forget some project specific considerations:

•  Cost of project -  Is the licensing cost ( free, standard, Enterprise) goof enough to demonstrate to the client that there will be savings? 
• Skillset of the team - A very important aspect is to also assess the team's skillset. Have we considered the budget to to ramp up and provide trainings to the team?  Though SharePoint is based on ASP.net, but there is need to have additional knowledge to develop SharePoint applications. Custom development in SharePoint is complex and requires extertise.

DECIDE.............WISELY!!!!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

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Refrences: MSDN