Building Web Applications with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Step by Step [With CDROM]

In the Army, there is a series of manual refered to as SMCT. The Soldiers Manual of Common Tasks gives concise and pramgatic step by step instructions on how to do a specific tasks, and the tasks are catagorized by a common goal. This is the basic structure of the 'Step by Step' series. I am a developer by trade, but found it hard to wrap my head around sharepoint when I came at it from the Visual Studio perspective. By attacking this technology from the functional side of things, I was able to see what all the pieces are and how they are put together, so now I can go back to Visual Studio and work on back end like I am expected too. This book was the perfect guide to this. The book, infact, the entire series, is designed for the 'non technical' person in mind, giving them just the information they need to get started and show some results. This is well done, so why only 4 stars? The one draw back, as mentioned in the other reviews,it that you need a SharePoint server site already up and running to do this. The one used in the text is no longer in operation. As a technically oriented person, I could take the sample code and MS trail software and build a Virtual enviroment to work thru this book, but a functional person would not be expected to know this. This is not mentioned at all in the text So in the end, its a good book for a non technical person to become aquainted with SharePoint designer, but it is set up in a way that only a technically orientated person can take advantage of it. Once you get started, however, its good to go.

I work as a systems analyst for a large company with MOSS 2007 for Search installed. I am not in IT, and my primary role is designing and developing business applications (without writing server code if possible). Some of the advantages of MOSS 2007 pushed me to start using SharePoint as an option for our software projects. The more I can get out of SharePoint Designer and the "out of box" experience, without involving the IT developers the lower the project costs. Hence the importance of a book like this which is focused on building full-fledged web applications without writing server code. Although obvious to some, I want to distinguish that this is a review of the book "Building Web Applications with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Designer 2007 Step by Step" and NOT a review of WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 or SharePoint Designer. If you are developing on the SharePoint platform using Designer, I would imagine, like me, you are making a tradeoff between all the amazing potential of SharePoint and the frustrating experience that is the SharePoint Designer software. The software is clunky, slow, buggy and difficult to use with limited ability for debugging. Therefore, I felt it important to distinguish that this review attempts to separate the experience of the software, with the actual content of this book. In fact, reading this book has helped my productivity and made using Designer less of a chore. In short, this is a great book about SharePoint Designer, but I still dream of the day when using SharePoint Designer and related tools will not be a tradeoff and will provide amazing potential for application development without the frequent crashes, slow performances and lack of transparency. The actual content of the book is excellent. Clear and concise it explains how to use the SharePoint Designer to accomplish common development techniques that one might use developing apps on any platform. I'm not sure that there is even an alternative book for a SharePoint "Designer" (person who builds sites but does not write server code) that covers this material. I believe this book covers an important scope, because the ability to create solutions without developers lowers project costs significantly, and in that, this book has really succeeded. The book logically starts with a high level overview of "web applications" and takes the user through topics that revolve around building modern web applications in a progressive learning path, ultimately providing tools you will need to solve common design problems. In short this book has helped my meet my goals of utilizing SharePoint to reduce costs of developing business solutions.