Although SharePoint Portal Server 2001 is a version 1 release, there are a considerable number of materials available to aid your portal deployment. This chapter describes some of the major SPS development resources that will be of interest to you. The resource and development kits are being updated at an astounding rate, with more and more information and tools available every day. The resources listed here are by no means all that are available. Always check the Microsoft site for the latest versions and updated listing of available resources. Also, if you develop Web Parts that you feel would be of use to others, and you are feeling particularly generous, why not contact Microsoft and see if they would add your Web Parts to their gallery so that you too can contribute to this wealth of information.

10.1 SPS Development Kit

You can download the SPS Development Kit (SDK) from the Microsoft SharePoint Web site. The kit contains important information with respect to developing SPS solutions. For example, the ReadMe file explains which modifications are supported and which interfaces are not supported. Therefore, before you begin customizing SPS, check this file to see where the boundaries lie with respect to your support contract.

The core of the information available in the SDK is accessible through the help file spssdk.chm, shown in Figure 10.1.

Figure 10.1: SPS SDK help file.