Benefits of Sharepoint sandboxed solutions

Use and benefits of sandboxed solutions

There are two common scenarios where it is appropriate to use sandboxed solutions:

• When an organization wants to run code for employees on a production SharePoint Server site, and that code has not been rigorously reviewed and tested.
• When a hoster wants to let the owners of hosted SharePoint Server sites upload and run custom code.

The main benefits of using sandboxed solutions are as follows:

• Sandboxed solutions can be added to a production SharePoint Server environment without the risk of affecting processes outside the sandbox.
• Site collection administrators can deploy sandboxed solutions. This frees farm administrators from this task.
• Scalability and flexibility are increased because sandboxes run in a separate process that can be restricted by quotas, and their effect on the farm can be monitored.
• A solution does not have to be modified or recompiled if it is moved from a sandbox to running directly on the farm.

Comparison of sandboxed and farm solutions

Aspect	Farm	Sandbox
Deployment process	Add the solution, and then deploy it to the farm.	Upload the solution to a site collection, and then activate it in the site collection.
Who can deploy	Farm administrator.	If the solution contains an assembly, only a site collection administrator can deploy it. If the solution does not contain an assembly, a user who has the Full Control permission level at the root of the site collection can deploy it.
Data access	Unrestricted.	The solution can only access content from the site collection in which it was deployed.
Process the solution runs in	Unrestricted IIS worker process or whichever process the solution is deployed into.	Separate worker process that has restricted permissions.
Code access security	The solution developer can set the code access security policy when packaging the solution.	Restricted.
Monitoring	Not monitored.	Monitored, and limited by quotas set by the farm administrator.
Load balancing	Varies, based on the kind of solution.	Configurable separately from non-sandboxed solutions.
Solution functionality	Unrestricted.	Restricted, as described in What sandboxed solutions cannot do, earlier in this article.