SharePoint 2010 will be one of the most exciting products that Microsoft has ever released. There are many new features, a small number of which have been announced on the SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek site. Here are the top four things developers can do today to prepare for SharePoint 2010.
Plan to Upgrade Your Existing Code
This might seem like an obvious point, but you should plan time and resources to upgrade your existing code. A large number of existing SharePoint 2007 solutions will continue to run in SharePoint 2010 without additional work, some will need to be upgraded, and a few will need to have additional development to make them compatible for SharePoint 2010.
Visual Studio 2008 includes a set of templates for creating SharePoint 2007 workflows, and projects built with these templates will upgrade to Visual Studio 2010. Projects built with the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services (VSeWSS) 1.2 or 1.3 will upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 by running those projects through an upgrade tool.
In specific cases where an API is deprecated, Microsoft will provide detailed written guidance for developers on how to upgrade custom code, and any deprecated API’s will issue warnings on compile with recommendations for changes.
If you'd like to read more, see the SharePointPro Connections website.
Kirk Allen Evans is an Architect Evangelist for Microsoft’s Communications Sector.
