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Let me guess, every software program that you’ve ever worked with stores data. SQL server stores data, excel stores data, even notepad saves data. What differentiates one program with another is in their ability to manage the data they store. Put very simplistically, SharePoint is nothing but a huge data management and storage engine. However, it is in the management aspects of its data storing where SharePoint truly shines.The SharePoint platform comes with many features that allow you to effectively manage and control the collection, lifecycle, and presentation of this information in your organization. It is all these functions combined together that allow SharePoint to act as a very effective content management system. At a very fundamental level, SharePoint stores all of its data in lists.

Lists are represented by the SPList object in the object model. Another class that inherits from SPList is the SPDocumentLibrary class. SPDocumentLibrary is a document library. Therefore, all document libraries are lists.In my previous writings I was talking about the ability to create some basic lists and document libraries. Many of these lists were based on certain preset definitions. For example, there was the announcements list and there was the contacts list. There was the wiki page library and a simple document library. By creating any such list, you got certain facilities out of the box. These are the views that were created on the list, the columns that were created for you and perhaps a few other things. All of these constitute the list definition.

Based on existing list definitions, you could create newer list instances. Once you create a list instance then in that list instance, or in short, list, you can add new items. Once you create such a list various other questions arise. What rules can be associated with such a list? How can I use this data properly? What conditions or validations can I put in this list? How much data can I put in this list? You may be able to answer a few of these based on what you saw in Chapter 2. In this section of the book, I will delve into all of these details in much further detail. Another concept that may not have been very apparent yet was the concept of content types. Content types are an invaluable tool that allows you to organize and manage information in SharePoint.

Content types are an indispensable feature of SharePoint foundation, and by defining a content type you really are defining a number of things for your data. You are defining the structure, workflows, policies, etc., in a content type. Also, content types can inherit from one another. In defining the structure of a content type, you also define the various columns that can exist in the content type based on existing field definitions. A field definition controls various aspects of the kind of data you can put in a field and some rules around such data.