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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T22:22:49+00:00

I would like to create a custom document library where I use the standard

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I would like to create a custom document library where I use the standard UI but implement a different persistence layer. Basically fetch and display documents from a different source system. This way I can use my existing object model but leverage the great office integration within SharePoint.

I found a decent article here but they are cheating, they have coded a completely new UI for the external persistence.

I have looked at the SPList and SPDocumentLibrary objects but I can’t override the necessary methods.

I have looked at the event framework and it is closer but it lacks important events such as ‘GetFile’ or ‘PopulateList’.

Any thoughts?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This isn’t a perfect (or probably even a “good”) fit for what you’re trying to do, but I mention it primarily for awareness and to possibly give you some additional ideas (and warnings).

    SharePoint’s storage architecture leverages two different back-end stores: one for metadata (always SharePoint’s SQL databases), and another for BLOB storage (also SQL by default). In its current form, though, SharePoint allows you to “wire-in” your own BLOB storage provider via a type that implements the ISPExternalBinaryProvider interface. Wiring in a type that implements this interface allows you to continue storing metadata in SQL while storing documents and other BLOB item types in a different store of your choice.

    This probably sounds somewhat promising, but there are a couple of serious considerations:

    1. Wiring-in your own ISPExternalBinaryProvider has a farm-wide impact. It’s all or nothing, so once the provider is wired in, all sites and libaries will use the new provider.

    2. You’ll need to dive into unmanaged code, as the ISPExternalBinaryProvider is doing to require you to work with some IDL.

    You can read more here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb802976.aspx

    My take is that the external BLOB storage (EBS) system is something of a “prototype” at this point — not ready for prime-time. If nothing else, though, it gives you something to think about. SharePoint Server 2010 will hopefully do more with it and make it more attractive and easy to implement.

    For what it’s worth!

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