SharePoint and Silverlight Web Parts

I wanted to get familiar with SharePoint 2010 because I have noticed how the market is starting to demand it. Also, most of the SharePoint 2010 guides on the net are outdated. They show everything from registry hacks/editing xml files to installing hot fixes/service packs. My guide uses the latest bits as of 6/7/11 to create a SharePoint 2010 server inside of an Virtual Machine. This will be more than enough to begin creating Silverlight Web Parts inside of SharePoint 2010.

NOTE: I did not want to use any automated tools to perform the install (specifically AutoSP Installer) because I want to understand the installation process myself. It would probably be easier to use such tools.

Have the following software available before starting: (You can use trial versions if necessary)

• VMWare Player – specifically because it supports x64 OS and was recommended by the SharePoint Community on Twitter.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 w/ SP1 – because SharePoint 2010 requires an x64 operating system and getting it to run on Windows 7 looked painful / pointless.
• SQL Server 2008 R2 x64 – SP can run on SQL Express from what I have read, but I noticed you need to install a lot of “hot fixes” in order to get it to run. Most SharePoint people were recommending using the full version of SQL Server.
• SharePoint Server 2010 x64 – Without this it would be hard to use SharePoint 2010!
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate – How else am I going to build the Silverlight Web Part? 

The first thing is to install is VMware Player. It requires a few reboots but once that is up and running you can click “Create a New Virtual Machine”.

At this point you may want to go ahead and mount your .ISO image of Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 w/ SP1 to a

Silverlight vs

What is Silverlight

Definition

Silverlight is a Microsoft technology aimed to help developers create rich interactive Web applications with the best user interface features and functionalities. It’s available as a plugin for almost all famous browsers available today, and it’s used to deliver the next generation media and Web applications.

When we say rich applications we don’t mean those with amazing interfaces and lots of graphics. Indeed, we mean by “rich” those have lots of functionalities not available for standard Web applications. Common examples of rich applications are online document editors and image processors; both are very interactive and offer lots of functionalities that are usually not available for standard Web applications. And that actually what Silverlight is devoted for, its main goal is to allow for developing rich interactive applications for the Web.

Platform Support

Unlike many other Microsoft technologies, Silverlight applications can run everywhere. It’s said to be cross-platform, cross-browser, and cross-device. It can run on Windows, Linux, and even Mac, it can run on Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and many others, and it also can run on PCs, mobile devices, and handhelds. Really it can run everywhere without any code changes!

One more interesting thing is that Silverlight Web applications can be hosted on any server. You can host your Silverlight application on a Windows, Linux, or Mac server without any additional code changes or configuration.

Rich Interactive Applications

We have been talking about rich interactive applications for a while; now let’s see what a rich interactive application really means.

A Rich Interactive/Internet Application (RIA) is a Web application that’s very interactive with the user and has lots of functionalities. It’s very similar to desktop applications comparing interactivity and features; however, it’s a Web application that runs on the browser not the desktop. So we can say that RIA applications have the best functionalities and user interface features of desktop applications and Web applications.

 

Today, there’re lots of technologies available for creating RIA applications. The most famous platforms are

Deploy Silverlight Application using SharePoint 2010 Project

Deploy Silverlight Application using SharePoint 2010 Project: "

In this post we will see how to deploy Silverlight Application using SharePoint Project in Visual Studio 2010. The first step is to ‘Create a Silverlight Project’. I have already demonstrated one of my Silverlight applications which shows Plane Projection capabilities in Silverlight Silverlight 3D - Using Plane Projection. You can refer to that article or use your own Silverlight project for this example. I will be using the project I created earlier for this demonstration.

So let’s create an ‘Empty SharePoint 2010 Project’ with the name ‘DeploySilverlightApp’ as shown below –

Excel Service User Defined Function in SharePoint Server 2010

In this post, we will see how to create an Excel Service User Defined Function in SharePoint Server 2010. We will also see how to deploy and enable the UDF using Central Administration Tool. We will also test the function using Microsoft Excel 2010.

To start with, let’s create a Class Library Project using Visual Studio 2010 with the name ‘SalaryCalciUDF’–