SharePoint Dragons

There are at least three kinds of best practices. Often, when companies inform about best practices they actually mean: what does MS say is the best practice. It’s also possible that people are referring to what are in fact practices, but not necessarily the best ones. And then there are true best practices.

The following Wiki page: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/8666.sharepoint-2010-best-practices-en.aspx contains a considerable list of SharePoint 2010 Best Practices. They are not best practices of the first kind we’ve mentioned (as they are not officially dictated and endorsed by MS), so we’ll leave it to you to decide if they are of the 2nd or 3rd kind. Or, heck, you can even contribute if you like!

Should you use an AD group or a SharePoint group as the basis of your SharePoint farm security infrastructure: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/10550.sharepoint-2010-best-practices-ad-groups-or-sharepoint-groups.aspx

It’s an interesting question: should you keep relational data in a database or migrate it into a custom list? We’d love our readers to contribute to the discussion at the TechNet Wiki page at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/9638.sharepoint-2010-best-practice-keep-relational-data-in-a-database-or-migrate-it-into-a-custom-list.aspx

The discussion as it stands so far:

If you need relational database capabilities (transactionality, triggers, real constraints (not the approximation of that in SharePoint)): use the existing database (and create a BCS external list to access the data).

– Are there existing apps using the current relational database? If yes, create a BCS external list to access the data.

– If no reasons prevent it, migrate the data into a custom list as this makes the solution less complex.

You need to make sure you play nicely and keep the data within the limits of capacity planning (https://sharepointdragons.com/2011/12/05/sharepoint-capacity-planning/ ). If there is absolutely no way that you can’t, keep the data where it is.