Yesterday I saw and replied to @nickhadlee’s twitter Poll:
Poll: Is #XSL code? In the context of a 'codeless' solution :) [Feel free to RT]
My twitter response was:
@iwkid RT @nickhadlee: Poll: Is #XSL code? In the context of a 'codeless' solution <-- I consider it "no-code" in that it is not managed/deployed
What I did not do was further qualify my response. Jim called me on it:
http://ednortonengineeringsociety.blogspot.com/2010/06/code-blue.html
He’s absolutely right – but there’s some history here. Let’s go WAY back in time to SharePoint 2007...
Building Solutions on SharePoint 2007
There were two kinds of solutions you could build in SharePoint 2007 – Managed and “No Code” solutions.
Managed solutions:
- Involve custom managed code that is generally built by a developer and deployed by an administrator
- Treated as a true development project stored in source control, deployed as a perfectly wrapped SharePoint Solution
- Ideally it would go through a code promotion process (dev –> test –> prod) and thorough testing
“No Code” solutions:
- Involve customizations generally made with the browser or SharePoint Designer
- Can consist of a variety of code:
- DHTML, JavaScript, XSLT, XPath, CSS
- Generally are not stored in source control, packaged, or deployed by an administrator
- Generally are built in production
So if those are the attributes of the two solution types, what really is a “No Code” solution:
- A solution that is not deployed by an administrator?
- A solution that does not contain any managed code (.dll)?
- A solution that wasn’t built in Visual Studio?
- A solution that really doesn’t contain any code (JavaScript/XPath)?
In 2007, I think the generally accepted answer was a solution that is not deployed by an administrator, which really has nothing to do with code at all :-)
Now let’s fast-forward to SharePoint 2010...
Building Solutions on SharePoint 2010
In SharePoint 2010 the “No Code” designation has been further complicated. Two new technologies have been added to the “No Code” side of the world:
- Sandbox Solutions – SharePoint Solution files, built with managed code but deployed by site (not server) administrators.
- Client Object Model – Enables even more sophisticated solutions to be built via JavaScript/Silverlight/etc
I don’t think we can call solutions built with either of these new technologies “No Code” so I would argue that the idea of what is a “No Code” solution is changing. In fact, I’m not sure the designation really means anything and I think we should consider the term “No Code” to be dead.
So.....
A few points to sum up:
- I DO consider .XSL to be code
- I think there is a great deal of value in what we traditionally called “No Code” solutions
- I think there are some huge issues with what we traditionally called “No Code” solutions
- I’m very curious to see how how we will classify solutions built in SharePoint 2010
- This would have taken a LOT of tweets :-)