I love the meme phenomenon. The recent transmission of the "What's Wrong with SharePoint" idea across the blogosphere is something I wanted to get in on before it passes us by and the next meme surfaces.
This is like one of those "SEND ME TO THE PDC!" posts, telling you why I'm qualified to join the party. Let's just say I know SharePoint well enough to both love it and hate it. Been makin' bricks with the SharePoint Mud Dance since 2001, starting on SharePoint Portal 2001 and migrating 10 gigs of SP2001 Server docs (with all metadata) to Windows 2003 Sharepoint Services, something unsupported by Microsoft, but something I built because I refused allowing our small company to pay $30,000 for a Microsoft Server product we didn't need.
Okay, this is a meme, so it needs to be short and flow-of-conscious-like.
- NO UNDELETE. HELLO!!?? "Want a great doc management system? $30,000 will get you there! Need to undelete a document? Uh, we don't support that and we probably won't include it in the next version either." Hell, I had undelete in Novell 3.11 in 1991!
- Permissions at the workspace level in SPS2003 SQL, not at the folder level like SPS2001.
- Database bloat. Everytime your fingers slip over CTRL-S a new copy of a document is saved in the database. Damn little ability to manage document copies.
- Transaction logs from hell. And you thought a 15GB SQL database for 40 users was big??? Sharpen those SQL maintenance script chops, boys.
- WTF table design. Ever look at the UserData table? It works in conjunction with the Docs table to provide document and object info. To support document metadata there are--let's see--64 nvchar(255) fields, 16 int fields, 32 float fields, 16 datetime fields, 16 bit fields, 1 uniqueid field, 32 ntext fields, and 8 sql_variant datatype fields. I'm not making those numbers up.
- Complete lack of coordination between the SharePoint Team with the Visual Studio Team in the development cycle, hence .NET Beta 2.0 destroying any and all SharePoint functionality when installed on the same machine. I don't know nothin' about the particulars, but that's....okay? I'm guessing that SharePoint will work in harmony with the 2.0 RTM in November, but that's only a guess.
My meme offering will probably get flamed. That's okay. It only takes a spark to get a fire going...cause I waaaaant...to paaaasssss...it on!