My friends-
I have a technical question about Developer Desktops for SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio, and Custom Development. I get conflicting answers.
We have many Developers customizing SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise using Visual Studio. Each Developer has one “Developer Desktop”. We have a dedicated two-tier Farm for DEVELOPMENT, and three dedicated three-tier farms for UA TESTING, STAGING, and PRODUCTION.
The FIRST explanation I hear is this:
Because we have a dedicated DEVELOPMENT farm running an instance of SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, it can act as the TARGET for development work with Visual Studio. Many Developers, using many “Developer Desktops”, can TARGET this one SharePoint Server 2010 DEVELOPMENT instance. It is not absolutely necessary for every one of the many Developers to have (more expensive) Server-Licenses and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Instances running on their “Developer Desktops”.
DEVELOPERS ONLY NEED: SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise CAL-Licenses (less expensive), Visual Studio, and Visual Studio Licenses. Developers can use the Object Model on the DEVELOPMENT Farm.
The SECOND contradictory explanation:
Regardless of having a dedicated DEVELOPMENT farm, every Developer needs their own private copy of SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, their own running SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Instance, and their own SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Server-License on every “Developer Desktop”. (Of course, Developers also need Visual Studio, and Visual Studio Licenses.)
DEVELOPERS ADDITIONALLY NEED: an absolutely necessary copy of SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, a corresponding running Instance, and a corresponding Server-License for each Developer and each “Developer Desktop”.
QUESTION:
I can see how the second case may be correct for one person working alone without an accessible DEVELOPMENT environment; however, I believe that it is not absolutely necessary to buy multiple Server-Licenses when there is a DEVELOPMENT environment already available. Is this correct?
-mrkcc