Here’s my little list of what I like to call the “Best Damn SharePoint Books” list. Bit of a disclaimer: I haven’t read all the books out there… came back from TechEd with a few in my car and after checking my mailbox, there were another few… totaling 10! No way have I had a chance to review all of them, so this is not an exhaustive list… but it is strongly slanted in the direction of development books. I’m deliberately staying away from admin / end user books because I haven’t had a chance to really dig into those.
Best Damn Windows SharePoint Services v3 Developer Book: Inside Windows SharePoint Services v3 by Ted Pattison & Dan Larson (MSPRESS) No, it’s not because I teach with Ted, it’s because I learned more in this book than any other dev book. More importantly though, I love the way how they explain certain concepts. Chapter 2 covering how the plumbing of SharePoint and ASP.NET 2.0 work together is second to none. Chapter 3 that talks about customizing a site vs development has changed how I explain the concepts to customers (as did the KILLER workflow chapter). Oh, did I mention they did a fantastic job on the chapter on AJAX Web Parts? I’ve yet to find a single bug in the code or typo… now that’s a quality book!
Best Damn Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Developer Book: Tied: Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2007 Solutions in C# 2005 by Scot Hillier (APRESS) & Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 by Patrick Tisseghem (MSPRESS) I love both of these… no complaints. Love Scot’s chapter 2 on setting up a SharePoint dev environment. So much so, that I scrapped mine and followed his instructions. The only complaint I’d have about either of these books is that MOSS is so big that each piece warrants it’s own book, but if you want one book for MOSS, you can’t go wrong with having BOTH of these on your bookshelf… I do!
Best Damn SharePoint Workflow Development Book: Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System by David Mann (APRESS) The title says it all… it’s the best damn workflow book for MOSS… nuff said. David did a fantastic job… yes, in my review on Amazon I said it was a bit chatty (which I regret saying), but don’t let that make you second guess it… this is the definitive guide to workflow in SharePoint v3/2007.
Best Damn Advanced SharePoint Development Book: Professional SharePoint 2007 Development by [everyone & their mother] (WROX) I love this book… I haven’t gone through every chapter one-by-one, but last night I pulled out the copy my good friend (and co-author on this book) John Holliday gave me the other night and thumbed through all the chapters just to see what’s in here. WOW… I need to sock away a full day to go through code samples here… I love this book!
Best Damn Real World, Practical Guidance Book On SharePoint: Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences From 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs by [everyone & their mother] (WROX) OK, bit of a self promotion here as I contributed a chapter here (and it isn’t 100% about development). This book has (wait for it… waaaaaaaaaaait…) 16 (surprise!) SharePoint MVP’s who each tossed in a chapter on something that they have a special focus on. You’ve got Heather Solomon & Shane Perran talking about branding & design, you’ve got Dustin Miller talking about SharePoint Designer, Nick Swan (of BDC Meta Man) talking about the BDC, I did a chapter Web Content Management, Adam Buenz did security, Shane Young did admin… oh man I’m leaving a lot out. The best part is this isn’t company line speak… this is our “look, this is real world guidance… from our experience in the field.” I love the concept… the book isn’t available until the last week of July / first week of August… but you can pre-order it today!