For some time now, I’ve felt the need to set down my thoughts on the power of development in the Middle Tier for SharePoint. Today, I’m publishing the first edition of my white paper The Middle Tier Manifesto: An Alternative Approach to Development with Microsoft SharePoint. I say ‘first edition’ because the days of spending a lot of money to print a white paper and distribute it widely are long gone. I expect to and want to develop these ideas over time based on input from you, the SharePoint community.
In this white paper, I lay out the methods and rationale for preferring to develop for SharePoint using SharePoint Designer and a combination of the Data View Web Part, scripting, and CSS over managed code. For quite a long time this is where I’ve focused my development efforts for clients and was part of the genesis for the jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (SPServices). I find that developing in the Middle Tier using SharePoint Designer can be faster, more reliable, and cheaper than the managed code approach.
I expect that some of you may well disagree with this premise and I know that others will absolutely agree with it; I welcome the debate. Take a read of the white paper and let me know what you think.
Thanks to Michael Greene (@webdes03) and Jim Bob Howard (@jbhoward) for their input on early drafts.