How to build complex UI on Sharepoint?

Question

All, We’re building an intranet on Sharepoint 2010. One of the requirement is to have a custom webpart/sharepoint page as a view to an Oracle EBS and HRMS.

• This view have little (if at all any) interactions with Sharepoint functionalities.
• This view is pretty complex in terms of layout, so we will definitely benefit of using asp.net user controls, rather than building all controls programmatically.
• All operations lives in a WCF service which encapsulates all calls to Oracle.

Here are initial ideas:

• Control.Load through a WSP – is this still valid with Sharepoint 2010?
• use SmartPart to encapsulate the user control
• Other ideas? Stand alone aspx page perhaps?

I would be keen to know the pros and cons of the approach. Cheers

Answer 1

Simplest solution might be to use the Visual Web Part -project type in Visual Studio 2010. It allows you to build Sharepoint Web Parts like regular ASP.NET User Controls. Because of Visual Web Parts SmartPart is no longer needed in Sharepoint 2010.

You can consume the WCF service in the web part or you could use Business Connectivity Services to create External Lists and use the Web Parts to interact with those lists.

If you are familiar with Silverlight I believe you can also use that to build the UI for your Web Parts.