Sharepoint portal server (SPP afterwards) provides a set of COM API that can be used to access its functionality from .NET applications via COM Interoperability (Interop afterwards). In this article, I will show you how to import SPP functionality in your .NET application.
To access SPP from a client machine, you must have SPP client installed on that machine. When you install SPP client, it copies pkmcdo.dll (Publishing & Knowledge Management Collaborative Data Objects) library in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Folders directory. This library defines the functionality that is used to work with SPP. Before you start using the SPP functionality, you must import this library in your .NET application. You can import it using the Project->Add Reference->.NET->Browse and select the appropriate folder and file as you can see from the following figure.
Importing pkmcdo.dll converts the COM library to .NET assembly and adds PKMCDO namespace to the application as you can see from the following figure.
SPP allows developers to use ADO to access the database. To access the SPP functionality, we also add reference to the ADO as you can see from the above figure. To import ADO in your .NET application, you simply select Project->Add Reference->COM->Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 2.7 Library as you can see from the following figure.
This action adds ADODB namespace to the project, which provides the functionality defined in ADO.
Now you are all set to use SPP in your application. In my next article, I will show you how to connect to SPP and call its functionality to work with folders.