I am in the process of getting up to speed with the new Visual Studio 2010 IDE and how it can be used to develop custom SharePoint 2010 solutions.

It’s so easy to do a “Hello World” Web part project now. These days, my Hello World projects typically involve opening up a database table and displaying records in a table. I was able to do this with minimal coding and got it up and running—a full blown Web part—in under 15 minutes!

I created a sample project that opens up the AdventureWorks database and displays employee records in a table:

The Web-part looks like the following when used inside SharePoint:

 

• The Visual Web Part project cannot be deployed as a “sandboxed solution”. It has to be deployed as a farm solution.
• Project-debugging became a lot easier even with a full-blow farm-deployment. Press F5 in the VS 2010 IDE and Visual Studio will build, package, deploy, and activate your feature, and launch the debug-browser all in one click! When you’re done debugging, terminate Internet Explorer, Visual Studio will deactivate and retract the solution out of SharePoint.
• IIS-reset (for the target Web app) even for full-blown deployments when debugging is fast!
• Remember in VSeWSS 1.3 where you had to Google first how to specify the group the Web part appears in because it wasn’t so obvious? Well, it got easier in VS 2010! Now, the Elements.xml file has a place-holder for the Web-part group. All you have to do, is change it from “Custom” to whatever value you want it to be. It’s so visible now you can’t miss it.

 

• You can now add Web User Controls (ASCX files) into the project! As a matter of fact, the project template adds one ASCX file for you. This just made Web Part development a HECK of a lot easier! This is HUGE! Back in VS 2008 developing SharePoint 2007 Web parts, there were no designers available. If developers wanted to use ASCX files, they had to create regular ASP.NET Web apps, design the ASCX files there, write the code-behind, compile the project so the code-behind logic gets packaged with the ASCX files, deploy the ASCX files to UserControls folder within the SharePoint virtual Web app folder, deploy and enable Smart Part, add a Smart Part Web part to the SharePoint pages, then finally, hook-up the Smart Part to the ASCX files. Whew!!! Talk about LOTS of steps! In VS 2010, you don’t need Smart Part or that lengthy way to integrate ASCX file in SharePoint anymore. The challenge of “imagining” what your Web part will look like as you write your C# code is no more. The designer is built in to the Visual Web Part project. Leverage your ASP.NET skills to the max.
• Despite all the improvements, Web part development veterans should recognize familiar concepts and project files such as Elements.xml, .webpart file, strong-named key file, packages and features. 

I have many ASP.NET developer friends who didn’t want to get into SharePoint development because:

• The Web part project wasn’t easy in SharePoint 2007. No designers, hard to design a visual element.
• ASP.NET developers got accustomed to easy debugging of their projects by simply pressing F5 key or the play button on the IDE toolbar. In 2007, ASP.NET developers thought deploying the app and then attaching to the w3wp.exe process (multiple manual steps, not one) was too cumbersome.
• It took forever to even debug the code because the SharePoint Web app always recycled on deployments.

If you are an ASP.NET developer contemplating if you should try SharePoint development, I highly recommend you try it NOW! SharePoint 2010 development feels like traditional ASP.NET development more than ever!

Situation: you finished installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7. You have ran the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. You are finally inside Central Administration 2010 and was surprised that creating new Web Applications is disabled:

What the heck?? You thought you were admin! You check the Farm Administrators list and your account is there. So, what gives??

Windows User-Access-Control is getting in the way. Although your account is Farm admin, because of UAC, you’re still not permitted to do stuff in Central Admin like create new Web apps. The fix? Disable UAC and reboot Windows. After reboot, you should be able to create new Web apps:

Caution: after you have created your Web apps and Site collections in Central Admin, turn on the UAC again and reboot. Turning off UAC for good is not recommended even if it’s annoying.  If you permanently turn off UAC, malware might have a chance to install in your PC (you are admin, no prompts for system mods—yikes!!)

The hardest part in installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 is the installation process itself and then configuring the Complete installation on a single-server of the SharePoint Config Database while using local accounts. Once the SharePoint Content DB and the SharePoint Admin Content Databases are created, you can now run psconfigui.exe, SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.

When you run the PSCONFIGUI, since you already configured the SharePoint config database, will start-off at the following step of the Configuration Wizard. Notice that my database-server and database-name have already been pre-populated. Click Next.

 

You get to specify additional information such as Authentication provider (choose NTLM, especially if you do not have domain controller  in your network). You can also choose the port number where Central Admin will run.

Click Next until it runs the actual  configuration of the Central Admin:

Once the Wizard is finished, run your Central Admin. If things were installed and configured correctly, you should be able to launch Central Admin: