Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Building Solutions for SharePoint 2010 (Books for Professionals by Professionals) [Paperback]

This book is about 20mm or 3/4 of an inch thick (so not huge) and manages to dig a little under the surface of a comprehensive range of SharePoint 2010 topics. The level it goes to is enough to get a SharePoint 2010 implementation project off the ground, provides enough detail for simpler site types like publishing webs (content managed sites). In other areas it does no more than get you started. For example, it gave me enough information to be able to set up a Business Intelligence site and author a simple PerformancePoint dashboard given an existing SQL Server Analysis Services Cube but not enough to build a complete production quality site for this purpose. I'm going to need a more detailed book perhaps specialising on PerformancePoint and SQL Server Analysis services to do that.
This said every SharePoint 2010 developer needs this book or one similar to get started, but most developers will soon need to extend their SharePoint 2010 library when they need more detailed information on specific features and site types.
I have given 5 stars because this book is not trying to be the only SharePoint 2010 book you ever need, it sets out to provide the essentials to get you started as a developer. Accepting that some details need to be search out and found on the internet and this book leads you in the right direction I think the books achieves it's aim.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010-Building Solutions for SharePoint 2010

This book is squarely aimed at the "techie developer," you will need to know ASP.NET 2.0 at least, the good news is that if you are familiar with SharePoint 2007 you may be able to skim some chapters although I doubt you will want to once you get into it.

I rather like the "Reading Key" at the start of each chapter which essentially says if you are familiar with SharePoint 2007 then certain bits may be of interest but the rest you can skim.
As you go through this book it becomes clear that you are only scratching the surface of the subject, if you have more than a passing interest, in SharePoint development, you will need to get your hands dirty and look into things much more deeply.

The book is well written by Sahil Malik, although very technical it is written in an engaging manner which helps with the depth of the information it contains. Sahil says that he will focus on what you, as a productive SharePoint developer needs to know, and I feel he achieves this.

Chapter 1 was quite a refreshing introduction, I was a bit unsure with the request to "Please Read!" as a chapter heading, but found it very useful. Better to see this all in one place at the beginning of the book than buried throughout the book and making it difficult to extract the information. At least you should be able to get your environment up and working before you start to get into SharePoint 2010. As a basic introduction it provides you with an approach to constructing your "sandbox" environment.

Sahil goes on to talk about how data is organised and the many SharePoint features available out of the box, this provides the basics you need. Chapter 3 is a different matter, this provides the solution framework and you will come back to the concepts in this chapter time and time again. Although the suggestion is that you read it five times, you will probably go mad if you do but you will find yourself dipping in and out of it.

The final chapters of the book cover, Enterprise Content Management, Business Connectivity Services, Workflow and Business Intelligence which were the icing on the cake for me. The Security chapter is required for completeness but I feel you will need to search out more detailed information regarding this topic.

This is probably not the only SharePoint book you will need but it certainly provides a very good starting point for developers, compared with similar books it provides a deeper understanding of some of the technical issues.

The book was really helpful with detailed descriptions on how to set up my developer enviroment. Nice samples and gets you up an running in no time.