Sean Laberee (lead program manager on SharePoint and office development tools) started by describing the impression that most people have of the current state of the art of SharePoint development by asking: what do these have in common?
- Dentist visit
- Public speaking
- SharePoint development
So the purpose of his talk is to show that SharePoint development has become Agile, and most of the pain/panic associated with it can go away.
The main topics were the following:
Office store
- A nice way to find relatively cheap business apps for common needs
- Nice sandbox app isolation – apps from store can’t take over SharePoint data without explicit permission
Better App Management
- Nice interface to manage app licenses
- Both a catalogue and license manager
Developer sites
- Able to configure a developer box in no less than 5 hours before, now it takes 15 minutes
- Microsoft NAPA is a SharePoint app for development that does not need SharePoint – you can start in Office 365 and develop for 365
New Cloud App model
- provides a simpler, neat model for app development (Office and SharePoint)
- SharePoint app dev now seamless look like normal web development
- See more comments below on options for hosting
Continuous Integration Improvements
SharePoint app hosting options:
SharePoint hosted
- Supported on premises and on office 365
- Most flexible if you don’t need server code
Auto hosted
- New Azure website and SQL Azure DB per app instance
- Best suited for store apps for office 365
Provider hosted
- Use any provider to host your web server
- Support on premises and on office 365
- One server supports all instances of the app
He finalized by mentioning that this talk is about making SharePoint more like normal web development – that’s why not much of SharePoint was shown in the presentation. I agree: it looked a lot more Agile in the sense that it flowed naturally, no snags/impediments that normally come from infrastructure. I will finally go back to the dentist, err, SharePoint development in the near future.