Can a Sharepoint 2007 application be developed that will handle complex Parent Child tables and User interactions with those tables?

Question

Hello, after finishing what i think is a medium complexity Sharepoint project that basically presents 1 dimentional lists to users and was developed using Sharepoint designer, i realized that if i had to really handle some complex Parent Child table or "list" relationships where the users need to interact with the lists, update the lists, add comments, and create reports ect, i realized that this may be a real challenge using Sharepoint, especially in handling the parent child list interations.

So i'm wondering if anyone has successfully created an application like this using any of the Sharepoint versions, where they had to address alot of interactions between parent child "lists" and if so, could you please share some of the details about that project or maybe point me to a reference about such a project? For example, i would even thin that a time keeping or status reporting application might be a fairly big challenge to develop using Sharepoint for the same reasons above, where you might end up needing alot of 1 to many child "lists" to support a given master list of information?

Thanks for any insights into this wonderment!

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rlk

Answer 1

SharePoint lists are not designed to be a replacement for a full featured relational database.  Normally If I am building an applicataion like you describe I will build it using SQL and then build the User Interface as SharePoint Web parts.  SharePoint is a great platform and can be very useful, but its not a fully relational database, especially not in the 2007 release.

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Paul Stork SharePoint Server
MVP Senior Solutions Architect: BlueChip Consulting Group
Blog: http://dontpapanic.com/blog
Twitter: Follow @pstork
Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves your problem.

Answer 2

Ok thanks Paul, so it sounds like you would still use Sharepoint for the interface and that's what i'm trying to determine, if i would still be able to use Sharepoint for LOB type interfacing, and then use SQL for the data, i'm assuming thru BCS or BDC, versus going back to a purely .NET approach for LOBs, so that's what i'm trying to determine. I quess i was starting to think that its appropriate to use Sharepoint for document management mainly, but would still need to use .NET for the "complex" LOB type applications and i'm pretty much basing that on the fact that i've yet to see many LOB applications being referenced in the Sharepoing blogosphere discussions.

Thanks very much for your sharing your thoughts on this Paul have a great year!

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rlk

Answer 3

I agree that SharePoint 2007/2010 is not a product intended to develop transactional application which involves list relationship. You can definitely achieve one-to-many relationships (parent-to-child relationships) even in MOSS 2007. The idea is to define a secondary list and leverage Event Handler to achieve this. This article has how to accomplish this for MOSS 2007

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc438798.aspx

Also please refer the following MSDN forum thread for more details

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointcustomization/thread/b1cbb05a-69fe-47e0-9c40-2883f266bd5b

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Sundar Narasiman

Answer 4

Thanks for the references Sundar, will be checking these out this week! have a good one!

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rlk

Answer 5

You can definitely use BCS for this, although I usually don't.  As a programmer I find it just as easy to use .Net to access the database directly.  BCS is more benefitial when trying to provide other users with a way to access a Relational Database without the complexity of understanding Normalization.

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Paul Stork SharePoint Server
MVP Senior Solutions Architect: BlueChip Consulting Group
Blog: http://dontpapanic.com/blog
Twitter: Follow @pstork
Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves your problem.

Answer 6

Thanks Paul and Paul would that typically be a standalone .Net application or would you set up a .Net application on the Sharepoint platform so users could call the application directly from Sharepoint?

I guess what i'm trying to determine is when to use Sharepoint and for what and when to use standalone .Net and i'm getting the feeling so far in googling around that one would typically use Sharepoint for document management and simple Excel list type data and use standalone .Net for everything else?

Thanks again Paul

bk

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rlk

Answer 7

Even when using a full database as a back end and accessing the tables via ASP.net I normally develop the application as a set of web parts to be added to a page.  SharePoint IS built on .NET and is fully .NET compliant.  It just provides additional features and functionality.  so I normally build applications using SharePoint as a platform even when using .Net and databases as the data repository.

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Paul Stork SharePoint Server
MVP Senior Solutions Architect: BlueChip Consulting Group
Blog: http://dontpapanic.com/blog
Twitter: Follow @pstork
Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves your problem.

Answer 8

Thanks Paul that's good news as i was thinking that Sharepoint may only be used effectively for document managment, but if we can also host regular transactional, parent child crud applications, that's very good news!

Have a great week Paul!

And thanks everyone for you thoughts!

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rlk