SharePoint is like a very complex swing set kit, but without the assembly instructions and picture

I just finished teaching our Exploring SharePoint 2010 and Upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 classes this week in Nashville.  I’ve been teaching these classes around the U.S. on a monthly basis for the last year and a half.  It’s Friday afternoon and my students have headed home and I am reflecting on how much information we covered and how much they learned.  I think it was a great week for them.

It just occurred to me that SharePoint has some amazing similarities to “kits”.  Have you ever purchased a “do it yourself” kit of any kind?  There are kits for a lot of different household and hobby types of things that people have a hankering for and want to assemble themselves rather than purchasing a finished product.

A great example is a children’s swing set kit.  For instance:
These parts in this kit:

GUIDs in SharePoint Database Names and DPM 2010 - Left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing

One complaint about SharePoint 2010 that I have heard consistently for the last year from students in my Upgrading SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 class is that the "Configure Your Farm" wizard automatically adds GUIDs to the name of a number of the new Service Application databases:

SharePoint 2010 database names with GUIDs appended

  

This problem has been written about and discussed on many other blogs, and so I am not going to go into a full explanation here of why it happens.  Suffice it to say that it is a concern of varying degree for many SharePoint Server farm administrators and SQL Server DBAs.

SharePoint 2010 Social Networking: Part 5c - Browsing Bookmarks and Tags

This post is Part 5c of my SharePoint 2010 Social Networking series.  The other parts of Part 5 are all related to the Social Bookmarking and Tagging features of SharePoint 2010:

Part 5a - Intro and Central Database of Bookmarks and Tags For All Users
Part 5b - Bookmarking and Tagging User Experience
Part 5c - Browsing Bookmarks and Tags < You are here
Part 5d - Searching Bookmarks and Tags

(Note: For the first post of the SharePoint 2010 Social Networking series and a table of contents, go here.)