Data Mining / .NET Components and .NET Controls / SharePoint Tools & SharePoint Utilities

What is a .NET component? .NET components are pre-built pieces of software that you can re-use within the Microsoft .NET Framework (pronounced dot net framework) to help you create your application faster and hopefully with fewer bugs. By re-using .NET software components you not only save time and money, but you also get the opportunity to use other people's expertise and knowledge that will give your app extra functionality and features - fast. In this filtered view of our product catalog you will only find .NET compatible products, these products include both .NET Components and .NET Controls as .NET downloads for you to try and buy.

What is a .NET Control? A .NET Control has a visual aspect and can be used on a form or Web page to control the behavior of the user interface, so the user of the app can use a .NET UI Control to: enter data, click on a button, select from items displayed on a drop down list, draw a chart or graph based on data that they have entered into a .NET datagrid control etc.

What is the difference between a .NET Component and a .NET Control?

A .NET Component does not always have to have a visual interface, for example a .NET Component could work behind the scenes on a server and be used to calculate the tax due on an invoice for goods sold to a customer or to create a PDF version of that invoice and then email it to the customer's email address. .NET Controls are User Interface (UI) controls and they are a subset of .NET Components and as such all .NET Controls are therefore .NET Components, however, the reverse is not true, a .NET Component is not also a .NET Control, as a .NET Component does not have to have a visual or visible interface and it does not have to appear on a Windows form, Web Form or Web page as part of the UI.

In this .NET Components marketplace you will find both .NET Controls and .NET Components - available as commercial grade, quality .NET software component products. You will find ASP.NET controls that you can use as an ASP.NET developer for your latest Web site or Intranet project, VB controls for your Visual Basic app and there are numerous VB .NET control products listed here as VB.NET Controls. If you are a C# developer looking for a C# component or C# controls you will also find a wide selection of C# .NET controls, C# .NET component products and .NET custom control products that will meet your needs.

The range of .NET Component and .NET Control products includes: .NET WinForm Controls, ASP.NET Controls, ASP.NET AJAX Controls, .NET Class Components or .NET Class Libraries, .NET Web Services, .NET Compact Framework (.NET CF) products for mobile & hand-held device apps, .NET LINQ Classes for data access, WPF Controls or Windows Presentation Foundation Controls and Silverlight Controls for the latest .NET Framework 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 environments. Finally you will also find a special form of ASP.NET server control that can be used inside SharePoint, these are called Web Part Controls.

Our .NET component product range will give you a choice of controls for .NET, whether you are using them as a control in C# or as VB NET controls for your next VB project or in any other .NET development language or .NET based IDE that supports the use of .NET software components. There are well over 1,000 commercial grade, high quality .NET component based products available in this .NET component product gallery that you can search for, compare, download, review, try and buy!

Microsoft SharePoint is a suite of products and technologies that allow users to create Web sites, corporate Intranets or portals to enable them to share information, collaborate on documents or files and communicate by various means, including wikis and blogs. SharePoint has had several enhancements over the years, the most recent being Microsoft SharePoint 2010, that was released in April 2010. The version before that was known as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, sometimes called MOSS 2007. SharePoint uses the main Office components and technologies to allow people to edit and update Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations etc. with familiar editors and technology. Microsoft used Office in the MOSS SharePoint name to show this link, but it has been dropped now in the latest release and it is just called Microsoft SharePoint 2010. Prior to this there was also an earlier MS SharePoint 2003 Server version of the technology.

SharePoint has been adopted by a large number of organizations and as such demand for the creation of robust and reliable SharePoint applications has grown. SharePoint developers are now creating SharePoint Web sites, SharePoint portals, SharePoint based corporate Intranets in a fraction of the time than if they had tried to create the complete data sharing and collaboration application themselves. A SharePoint developer can now use MS Visual Studio 2010, (launched in April 2010 too), to more easily create SharePoint based information systems to run in SharePoint 2010. SharePoint developers can also add SharePoint Web Parts to their application Web pages to extend their functionality. A SharePoint Web Part control is a type of ASP.NET Server control and is a reusable software component that a SharePoint programmer can use to build his Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) app rapidly. These SharePoint Web Parts are sometimes called SharePoint controls or SharePoint widgets by SharePoint programmers.

IT Pros are also now managing larger MSFT SharePoint farms (large groups of SharePoint servers working collectively), that are used by 1,000's of people daily. There has therefore been a steady growth in demand for additional SharePoint tools or SharePoint utilities and Web Parts to help SharePoint admins and SharePoint developers build better SharePoint apps and then manage and maintain those SharePoint systems reliably.

This filtered view of our main product catalog only shows tools, utilities and Web Parts that are compatible with MSFT SharePoint. There are MOSS tools that are SharePoint 2007 tools and hence compatible with MS Office SharePoint 2007 and there are SharePoint 2010 tools that are compatible with the latest release of the MS SharePoint tool. In our SharePoint product gallery you will find SharePoint products that extend the document management and the workflow capabilities of SharePoint. For example, you can find a third party SharePoint tool here that allows you to convert Office documents to PDF from within SharePoint itself. Plus there are SharePoint data access tools and Web Part controls to help you create sophisticated digital dashboard SharePoint solutions to give you SharePoint data visualization and SharePoint BI solutions using: SharePoint gauges, SharePoint maps, SharePoint charts & graphs.