Web Site and Security Framework
In ASP.NET, you have to design the architecture for your application. But SharePoint Server 2007 includes a common security framework, common navigation framework, and common extensibility framework. You can easily add new technologies like wikis and RSS subscriptions because these components are already built in.

Role-based security is common when building applications. In SharePoint Server 2007, you'll find role-based security built right into the Web framework. So you can assign users to different roles more easily, trimming their UI so that they see only functions available to their roles.

For more information:

• Windows SharePoint Services
• Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Document: Using Blogs and Wikis in Business
• Security Architecture for SharePoint Products and Technologies (older documentation, but still relevant)
• Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Relationships

Search
How do you look for information today? You run a Web search or perhaps a desktop search. You search your Inbox and subfolders. Then you get hardcore—you start going through individual documents, Web sites, and e-mails. Essentially, you search several different islands of information. With the adoption of Web technologies in the enterprise, people have gotten used to using search as the model for finding information. But your first hurdle is just getting a handle on your resources—not only all the content you have available, but also what content you have permission to see in the first place.

New search capabilities in SharePoint Server 2007 allow you to search both structure and unstructured content, including Web pages, blogs, and documents for which you have permissions. Using SharePoint Server 2007 search component, you can build an app with very powerful search functionality, fully integrated into your business process.

For example, you're designing a new product that will be just perfect for Acme, Inc. You want to talk to your contacts at Acme, so you go into a business app and type "Acme". Up comes your company’s primary contact, their street address, a link to their site, an internal SharePoint Server 2007 page showing recent account activity, a few Word docs with the most recent contracts, perhaps even a PowerPoint of a presentation given by one of your associates. In other words, you get all of the information you need to make your business decisions.

In addition, this functionality can be integrated with LOB data and custom content using protocol handlers. They can also be consumed through Web services and integrated throughout your platform.

For more information:

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search
• Find It All with SharePoint Enterprise Search
• SharePoint Server 2007 Presentations: Enterprise Search Deep Dives

Office Open XML File Format
A standardized XML format for all Microsoft Office documents allows you to programmatically access and manipulate document data without opening the Microsoft Office app itself. While it existed in 2003, the file format has improved in 2007. Microsoft Office Open XML has also become an open standard, approved on December 7, 2006, by Ecma International. With Open XML, you can generate custom documents on demand, for example, making them available for download. Or you can programmatically scan a collection of documents for data extraction or replacement, without having to create an instance of the Microsoft Office app with every iteration.

Microsoft realized that most business data usable to knowledge workers is embedded in one document or another. Perhaps you have key data in a PowerPoint slide or in a Word document. This data becomes cumbersome to access, even with search functionality, while doing so manually also increases the potential for error. When the data is accessible, and shareable, outside of any Microsoft Office application, then you're able to integrate the data into other business documents, increasing data availability and decreasing or eliminating errors.

For more information:

• Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File Formats
• How to Manipulate Office Open XML Formats Documents
• Ecma Office Open XML File Formats Overview
• OpenXMLDeveloper.org
• Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Client-Side Extensibility
As you already know, Microsoft Office got a major UI overhaul with 2007 with ribbons. But the overhaul goes deeper in the amount of extensibility that has become available. Using Visual Studio Tool for the Office system, or even just markup XML and macros, you can add new ribbons to Office clients like Excel or Outlook. You can add new buttons to those ribbons. You can add custom task panes that can be triggered by one of those new buttons, as well as programmatically.

For example, a manager gets a customer-specific request via e-mail from a member of her sales team. She clicks on the e-mail and a custom task pane opens in the Outlook client itself with more detail about that customer, including history, purchasing records, etc. She can see this data right in Outlook without having to open other apps. Her employee has also embedded an InfoPath form in the e-mail, which he generated using a custom button. The manager fills out the form and submits it, sending the data to the departmental database and kicking off a new workflow.

As you can see, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System and client-side extensibility is a key component to OBA and the primary means by which you, as the developer, will be designing this type of application.

For more information:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Landing Page
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System
• Automating a Word 2007 Document Using Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office SE Ribbon Support
• Adding Tabs and Controls to the Office Fluent Ribbon in Access 2007 (extensibility without using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System)