One of the bad things about software is… you cannot really be sure about learning a technology until you have applied in real live scenario. Well, maybe its about time for me to just play, play with this SharePoint thing that I have been reading so much about.
So what is SharePoint?
Okay, this is a difficult question, ‘cos SharePoint is a bit of everything.. It is definitely a framework (i.e. something that requires massive customisation) and I think it can be summarised as:
- Portal Framework (sort of like PlumTree, iGoogle)
- Content Management System (i.e. Documentum, Alfresco)
- Web Content Management System (i.e. Drupal, Joomla)
- Data Connectors (cannot name other products.. .but basically they have something called Business Catalog.. then allows u read data from other applications)
- Workflow Management System (in Java, we like to call it Business Process Management, i.e JBoss’ JPBM)
I am sure I might have missed out some other feature on SharePoint. The above list was a from memory kind of thing. But last but definitely not least… the killer feature of all is:
SharePoint’s seemless integration into the Microsoft Office Suite.
Frankly, that is really, really powerful when most of our organization, currently at least, is depending of MS Office for document processing.
So what is my plan now? Well, lacking a real SharePoint project, I guess, I will just need to try to implement out some simple business flow.
