The User Information List is still there in each top site collection where SharePoint foundation manitains the basic user data. A record will be added to the User Information List when a user or a group is first referenced by the SharePoint environment. The initial User Information data, like title, user login, email address, etc., are imported from the authentication provider such as Active Directory. In SharePoint Foundation 2010 the User Information List is updated when you modify user info through "My Settings". All User Information List data are stored in the UserInfo table in content database:
Once the User Profile Service is enabled in SharePoint Server 2010, the User Information List became read-only for end user except the "Mobile Number" property, and user profile database is updated when the user modifying "My Settings", instead of the User Information List (UserInfo table). A timer job is responsible for replicating the user profile data to User Information data for each top site collection, and User Information List data will be overridden unless the corresponding property is not set to "Replicable" in User Profile Service:
Sometime it would cause some confusion when the User Information data are not synced to the User Profile data. Remember regular SharePoint sites always get user info from the User Information List but the User Profile content are the original data source when User Profile Service is enabled.
There's slight difference in SharePoint 2010 when accessing or updating the user profile data comparing with SharePoint 2007. In MOSS 2007, Microsoft.Office.Server.ServiceContext is available and you can create a UserProfileManager object from a ServiceContext. In SharePoint 2010 ServiceContext is replaced by the new Microsoft.SharePoint.SPServiceContext:
The method simply goes through each user profile, and updates the user photo by some custom logic (GetUserPhotoLocation method). Notice Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles has become a separate dll in SharePoint 2010, so in order to get above code compiled you need to add Microsoft.Office.Server and Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles to the references.
void UpdateUserProfiles(string siteUrl)
{
string userName = null;
using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite(siteUrl))
{
//ServiceContext is obsolete in SharePoint 2010
//UserProfileManager userProfileManager = new UserProfileManager(ServerContext.GetContext(spSite));
UserProfileManager userProfileManager = new UserProfileManager(SPServiceContext.GetContext(spSite));
foreach (UserProfile profile in userProfileManager)
{
string account = Convert.ToString(profile[PropertyConstants.AccountName].Value);
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(account) || account.IndexOf("\\") <= 0)
continue;
userName = account.Substring(account.IndexOf("\\"));
profile[PropertyConstants.PictureUrl].Value = GetUserPhotoLocation(userName);
profile.Commit();
}
}
}
