SharePoint Lists

Windows SharePoint Services stores content for Web sites in a SQL Server database. Among the types of data that a Windows SharePoint Services Web site can store is the SharePoint List.

A SharePoint List can consist of many different types of data. Users of your SharePoint site who have sufficient access rights to the application can add information to your SharePoint List directly from the Web site. You can then access the data in that list using the FrontPage 2003 data access toolset. This is an extremely powerful ability.

An example of a SharePoint List might be a list of contacts shared by the team at your office, as shown in Figure 34.2. By configuring this as a SharePoint List, members of the team can update their information directly from the team Web site. Using the data tools in FrontPage, you can then create a Web page that accesses that list in real-time without having to manually connect to the database where the data is stored. Such features can save developers many hours of development time.

Figure 34.2. A SharePoint List displays dynamic content that can easily be updated via the SharePoint Web site.

Another advantage of the SharePoint List is that Windows SharePoint Services allows you to develop a user interface for SharePoint List management by simply selecting options on a Web page, as seen in Figure 34.3. This makes it quite easy to change the fields contained in a list and to modify the list's settings as the need arises. After such modifications, you can quickly modify your FrontPage data-connected pages to connect to any new fields that are configured in the list.

Figure 34.3. Reconfiguring a SharePoint List is simply a matter of choosing which fields you want from a Web page.

Using these tools, it becomes very easy to adapt your Web page to changes quickly and efficiently and with minimal downtime.