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Chapter 1: Social Computing
HTML. Using these method calls, a developer can access many aspects of SharePoint with simple calls
to the URL protocol, but it is important to understand that not all actions can be performed this way.
There are certainly cases where more complex programming that takes advantage of the SharePoint web
services API is required.
Web Services
Web services are what is known as a standards-based way of retrieving data. Web services declare a set
of method calls that can be called from another set of code using XML messages and the SOAP standard
as the method of communication. Although it is possible to create RESTful web services, most of the web
services today are based on remote procedure calls (RPC) web services. RPC web services use a different
XML based standard to pass requests and data around the Internet. This RPC communication requires
that each side of the communication agree to a contract that defines the available commands and the
expected return data types. To define a contract for the two endpoints to communicate, web services use
a language named Web Services Description Language (WSDL). The WSDL file will contain information
such as the endpoints, the data types, and the interfaces that will be used.
SharePoint 2007 provides many web services that can be used to work with the system either from remote
machines or code that does not have direct access to the object model. One major difference between
anon-SharePointwebserviceandaSharePointwebservice is that the endpoint in a SharePoint web
services is virtualized. Every call to SharePoint web service is in the form of the site location followed
by the web service file, such as
http://<Site>/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx . There are many SharePoint web
services, and the full description of each web service is outside the scope of this book. Feel free to refer
to other Wrox Press books such as chapter 5 of Professional SharePoint 2007 Development or the SharePoint
documentation on MSDN for more information on the SharePoint web services API.
Software Services
Many social computing services today provide free software use. These types of software can range
from blogs to social networking pages. The next generation of software will most likely have a service
offering as well as a standalone offering. This might even include full applications such as Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server 2007. The trend with software as a service is to have a free basic version and
then charge for support, nonadvertising sites, and larger-scaling capabilities.
Microsoft Online Services already provides Office Live Meeting, Exchange Hosted Services, Exchange
Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Communication Online. This provides a solution for com-
panies that want leading-edge capabilities, but do not want the burden of hosting these services
themselves.
Summary
This chapter has provided an overview of what social computing is and the types of applications that
are created to achieve the benefits of social computing applications. The chapter explored each appli-
cation’s characteristics and demonstrated an implementation of social media on SharePoint with the
beginnings of a YouTube-style site in only eight steps. The chapter closed with a brief explanation of the
core technologies available to designers of social applications in the Web 2.0 world.
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