I'm trying to better understand the "right way" to develop custom WebParts. I have never developed using asp.net (and MOSS uses asp.net 2.0) so I'm thinking I may need to pick up a book on that as well. I saw "Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services" and another "Inside SharePoint (2007)" book listed as two of the best developer books, so I will check those out and possibly buy those. Lately, one of my tasks has been to reproduce the BDC List WebPart -- but in a Search WebPart. I have had a tough time reproducing the "filter/sort menu" functionality (e.g. in a BDC list when you click the column name, a menu drops down, with a list of items in that column you can filter on, and with "ascending/descending" so you can sort). I'm trying to learn more about WebParts in general, and also learn more about how SP's OOTB WebParts work -- the column menu I just described being an example. For example, in this case, I know that when you click on the column menu a Callback is performed with the eventTarget (the ID of the bdc webpart) and eventArgument (the sort or filter that will be performed) but I don't know the details of how the Callback actually filters or sorts the data, or how/if it is stored in an intermediate form. When working with OOTB WebParts, I'm constantly running into problems like this that deal with internal code and I'd like to learn more about how that internal code works (so I can reproduce the functionality) and how to properly create custom webparts in general. Thanks.

The easiest way to learn about internal code is to decompile the sharepoint dll's with reflector (or something similar now that reflector has become not-so-free-anymore). You can search specifically inside the dll's to the codebehind of the pages, webparts, timerjobs, ... of the functionality in SharePoint that you need. Good luck, JeroenMy blog on WSS / MOSS development is found at http://jebass.blogspot.com