C. Johnson said
This book is great. I spend a lot of my time developing governance plans for SharePoint and underlining problems and security concerns my clients will have. I use this book at least 3 times a week. SharePoint Administrators or Developesr doesn't just mean provide development and administration it means you must understand every single aspect of the application your responsible for.
By the way this doesn't mean you have to know the answer to every question but you must know how to come up with a solution in a timely matter. If you are a SharePoint Consultant buy this book. You will not be sorry. Even with MOSS 2010 right around the corner, organizations are still using MOSS 2003. This book will be a great investment for years to come.
- Carl
Glenn Fullerton said
Do not under estimate the amount of up front planning you need to deploy sharepoint. I have not found many resources that adequately guide you through the process. Every installation is different and the standard Microsoft material is to generic to be useful.
This book describes the pitfalls and suggests real life scenarios in which to help better guide you. This book you will give Architects and Designers a good grounding in how the technology should be used and some of its pit falls. It is NOT a step by step how to install Sharepoint guise. In fact I do not think there is one of those even though we would all love to have one.
Ajay I. Shankar said
Best Practices is an excellent reference material while planning deployment, be it a new farm, search etc. Fantastic book. Use it often for a lot of things.
kiki-knows-best said
This book is an essential part of any MOSS professional's toolbox. You will read and re-read this book several times. There is currently nothing like it in the field. It doesn't give hard core answers to your MOSS questions, but will give you plenty to consider in your MOSS projects. I am continually amazed at how much there is to learn about MOSS and this book is a wealth of knowledge.
MikeW said
My own Sharepoint 2007 book came out recently and so I have been constantly checking the Amazon US "hit parade" to see how it's been doing.
Well it's doing OK, but the book which at the moment seems to be selling in vast quantities is this MOSS 2007 Best Practices book.
Now I'll admit that before I got a copy for myself I was hard put to understand why. After all this was a book by the two people (Bill English and Ben Curry) who had (organised or) written the two existing Sharepoint Administrator Books from Microsoft Press - the massive (and, through the many authors, slightly unbalanced) Administrator's Companion and the small, but full of quality information "Administrator's Pocket Consultant - so what else could there be in this one ?
Actually there's a lot because this is probably a completely different book to any of the - by now almost 100 - SharePoint 2007 books that have gone before.
It's probably the first one that you can **and should** read without having a computer handy.
The book doesn't concentrate on teaching you how to do things - which is naturally what most of the other books do - but instead concentrates on making you THINK. Think, that is, about your options BEFORE you do things.
The other thing I've noticed is that it's the kind of book where you can dive into a topic that's maybe only a part of a section of a chapter and read just that and you will have learned something useful.
My favorite example of that is the few pages in the Document Management chapter that discuss whether or not you should use SharePoint (document libraries) as a replace for a File Server system. First there's the single line with the answer (No) but that's followed by some indication of what could be moved and what not and why. These are inter-spaced with several in-boxes containing examples from the real-world - one of which to my delight (and this IS a Microsoft Press book) actually suggested that in certain circumstances you should keep your non-Microsoft application and NOT move to SharePoint 2007!
In fact the only thing I found to object to in that section of the text was the fact that whereas "SharePoint Server" had been given its "2007" to complete the product name (unnecessary - there isn't any other "SharePoint Server"), Windows SharePoint Services had been left without it's (essential) "3.0". This comment, however, is rather like the car tests of old where the car was highly praised in all essential details but for balance it was mentioned that the ash tray was badly located!
The only other aspect I have a problem with is that it is 800 pages thick. As it's the kind of book that in my opinion you should carry around with you and just read bits of in odd moments, it's a pity that it's not thinner and lighter and is instead the size and weight of book that is more suited to being permanently located on the desk next to the computer.
Microsoft Press France actually did make two volumes out of the 1000 page Administrator's Companion when they created the French language translation of that, so it's possible and it's a pity to my mind that Microsoft Press US didn't make two volumes out of this. It would need those two 400 page volumes because there is good stuff throughout, but to my mind this book cries out to be as easy to carry around as the Pocket Consultant is and it isn't.
Maybe they are planning a Kindle version. That would at least help US readers take this "book" with them everywhere.
Comments