Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 42: Upgrading and Migrating to SharePoint Products and Technologies 1123
Developing Dashboard Web Parts That Are Easy to Convert
As you continue to develop dashboard Web Parts for SharePoint Portal Server 2001,
use the following recommendations to facilitate moving to the Web Part infrastructure.
■ Keep the following general recommendations in mind:
■ Use Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) instead of
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). 2
■ Do not use deprecated DDSC objects, properties, or methods, for example
the Item object and the LoadItem method.
■ Do not use deprecated base class properties, for example, ContentType
and Content.
■ Do not use deprecated tokens, for example, _WPC_ and _LogonUserJS.
■ Be aware of the caching behavior changes in the Web Parts architecture.
■ Use .NET code as much as possible to reduce or eliminate server-side script
code in your Web Parts. To do this, use one of the following methods.
Using a Web Service for Data Manipulation
To use a Web Service for data manipulation, design your dashboard Web Parts to
separate the presentation code from the nonpresentation code. When you move to
the Web Part infrastructure in Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal
Server 2003, you can retain the Web Service and the custom XSLT data manipulation.
However, you must use the Web Part base class or one of the built-in Web Parts in
the Web Part infrastructure to rewrite the client-side script and the user interface.
Using an ASP.NET Page for Data Manipulation
This method represents a larger departure from the dashboard Web Parts programming
model, but it presents far fewer migration challenges. To use an ASP.NET page
for data manipulation, follow these steps:
1. Create an ASP.NET server control that contains as much nonpresentation code
and as much presentation code as you want.
2. Embed this server control in an otherwise empty ASP.NET page, and set the
margins for the page to zero.
3. Specify the ASP.NET page as the content link in your dashboard Web Part.
4. Configure the dashboard Web Part as “isolated.” When you do this, the Web
Part is rendered in an IFrame.
2. When Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 was released in 1998, the Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) included an
implementation of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) that was based on a working draft. If you have any
legacy XSL, you must convert this to XSLT compatible with the XSL transform engine in the .NET Framework.
An xsl-xslt-converter is available from Microsoft’s XML download page at http://msdn.microsoft.com
/downloads/list/xmlgeneral.asp.