Using sharepoint as a CMS

Question

I would really like to use Sharepoint (any version really) to create a content repository for my WPF application.

I have the need to create massive amounts of product info, such as images, thumbnails, pricing info, descriptions, etc... and we really need to use a CMS for this.

We have licenses for Sharepoint so it seemed like an obvious choice.

Im not sure whats available, I know you can access document libraries and custom type using web serivces, so thats ok. But it seems so basic. Is there any real world CMS hooks in sharepoint for this type of thing? I would love to set my Image source to be a sharepoint URL, or rip out the details of all of my products via JSON or XML using REST.

But I'm open to suggestions here.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Answer 1

First, I want to say that I love this as a use for SharePoint. Many people fail to recognize the platform services side of SharePoint, but it is well-suited for what you are trying to accomplish. SharePoint was written with flexibility in mind, so I doubt that you will find a real world WPF example with CMS hooks. I would not let that stop you, though, as you are on the right track. I encourage you to also consider the Client Object Model as it pertains to WPF development.

I'll add that the legendary Tim Huckaby (now of Interknowology fame) presented the keynote at a conference I attended in Nashville this year. His company wrote a multi-touch Surface application using WPF. The application made use of a 3D modeling engine his company developed and is used in medical research. After showing us how well the application performed and the unbelievable things you are able to do with multi-touch, he added that the data was all being pulled over the wire from SharePoint libraries via REST. Here is a link to his presentation, but you would have benefited more from the live demo and explanation.

Answer 2

Im sorry for the long delay on the response for this, I follow many web articles and such and found out that SharePoint 2010 does indeed have what I wanted in the form of REST based services.

I created a custom type and a new list that holds those types which I then access through REST to populate my client application.

Very simple and clean.

Some of the links that helped me out where:
http://scottcurrier.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/rest-and-sharepoint-2010-quick-start-guide-table-of-contents/

http://willhlaw.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/linq-and-rest-in-sharepoint-2010-live-from-spc09-las-vegas/

http://sharepointdevwiki.com/display/sp2010/REST+APIs