Today (or yesterday!)
Sharepoint (in the good ol’ days) used to be about building
bulky custom full trust farm based solutions and deploying them to the GAC on
the farm servers to achieve even the most basic of customizations. Developers
usually would have resumes flooded with C#, VB, ASP.NET, SQL and Oracle
expertise. Most of us have even invested many years and had ups and downs along
the way which have brought us to our current state of comfort with the complex
world that is Sharepoint.
Those days (although still valid in some companies) are soon
becoming a thing of the past.
With Office 365, Sharepoint Online and days of
the cloud environment upon us, Developers now should be focused on client side
technologies with the new App model and client side development using CSOM,
REST API’s. No matter for how long developers maintain their stand to remain
with server side technologies, Microsoft (and businesses, eventually) will make
the push to Online and client side development.
Next Steps
With the new App model, Microsoft is clearly pointing
developers to the way forward for Sharepoint as a whole. Let’s face it, major
problem with Sharepoint environments (except for the rare incidents with pesky
CU or Service Pack bugs), is because of poorly designed code or customization.
Microsoft is proud of Sharepoint as a product and is just gearing up the
environment to make it more robust for end users by allowing for developers to
interact through the app model exclusively.
The good news is that the App model and client side API’s
are just growing. The Sharepoint (Office) community as a whole needs to grow
with it and (and as with early versions of Sharepoint, I am sure) will build a strong practice with tools and
helpful API’s to make developing and deploying with the App Model a much easier
and smoother experience.
Invest time with JavaScript API for Office, the new OAuth
support, REST end points, and expanded JavaScript CSOM for SharePoint and learn
to adapt with App Model. The technology not only bridges Sharepoint but applies
also to Office apps. The App model does not limit you by the technology or platform and allows for you to use your expertise (or lack of) and build apps without having to worry about learning complicated Server side Model.
Office app developer can extend this knowledge beyond Sharepoint and start developing for Office applications and the Office Store.
Check out Office 365 Developer Patterns and Practices on
GitHub.
Here are ten tips from Jeremy Thake's blog on things to look for when moving to the Sharepoint App Model:
Should I be changing my blog name to Office Daily? hmm!
