SharePoint 2010, just like its predecessor, supports the fundamental elements that made SharePoint 2007 such an important platform. Content types, site columns and lists. In the sense of SharePoint, everything is a list.
A site column is a definition of a reusable -within the specified web site that they’ve been defined in- column. That means that a site column can be defined once, at web site, or site collection, level and be used again and again within the web site, or site collection.
For example, one could create a site collection column called Tax. This column could be embedded with a calculation to determine Taxes and using the column throughout the web site, or site collection, would guarantee uniformity and avoidance of errors.
A content type is another form of reusable functionality. However, contrary to site columns, which can only be various forms of columns, a content type can be much more than just one thing. A content type is defined at site (or site collection) level and can be a collection of site columns or something entirely different. For example, one could create a custom document template, bind it to a new custom content type and then create a library (for example) to support that specific content type. What this achieves is to have a library of custom documents. For example, one could create a legal document template and by using a custom content type, to create a library that facilitates this custom format documents.
If you’ve ever worked with SharePoint (or, even if you’re now starting out), you must have noticed that lists are behind everything. SharePoint defines everything as a list. In fact, when the SharePoint 2007 platform was being demonstrated, the ruling mantra was that “everything is a list”.
Lists drive the functionality behind Tasks, Calendars, workflows, etc. Lists can be reusable as well. They also support rights inheritance, and you can easily draw from ready (or custom) made lists to create new ones.
There is actually a number of ways to create new content types and list definitions. The straight forward way is the web interface, of course. However, both of these tasks can be achieved through SPD10 and VS2010 as well. In fact, using Visual Studio 2010 allows the developer to integrate list definitions in other applications or, to deploy a custom list definition across multiple SharePoint sites.
Examples to follow.
[…] columns, as we discussed in a previous post, differ from list columns in that they are reusable and guarantee uniformity across the lsits that […]
[…] columns, as we discussed in a previous post, differ from list columns in that they are reusable and guarantee uniformity across the lsits that […]