I'm currently working on moving a legacy Visual FoxPro app to the web. Our plans included purchasing an application framework such as Strataframe or MM .NET, both VFP friendly, and also some third-party controls to speed up development.
Well, we recently heard that we're probably going to have to host this app using "out of the box" Sharepoint and I'm not entirely sure what that means. I know that you can use Visual Studio to extend the out of the box features but I'm assuming that's out of the question.
Has anyone had to deal with something like this?
I would assume that "out of the box" SharePoint means you can't use Visual Studio to extend it. I'm not sure whether using SharePoint Designer would count or not.
Out-of-the-box SharePoint can be pretty powerful for something that requires no development. However, if you're trying to solve a complex problem, the OOTB SharePoint application will likely have some very rough edges. You may also run into a wall where OOTB functionality simply won't allow you to mimic a particular data structure or process in a useful way.
Should you ever have to get into customizing and extending SharePoint, the learning curve gets steep. SharePoint development takes some dedication to be proficient--that is, it'll likely become a primary focus of you or other programmers on your team. The book Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is a good introduction to the development side of things.
Before you commit to SharePoint, I'd make sure to get a fairly clear roadmap of where the application will be going. Then, I'd take some time to get familiar with the basic OOTB features of WSS3 (Microsoft has an evaluation Virtual PC image) to make sure it will handle it. You want to clearly set up expectations for what you can and can't do out of the box, and how it will affect your team of programmers if you have to go beyond that.