SharePoint 2010 Ups the Developer Ante
If you've been following the pre-release trajectory of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, you probably aren't surprised to hear that the latest version of Microsoft's evolving knowledge and collaboration platform is gaining a lot of dev-centric capabilities. Throughout its decade-long (more or less) run, SharePoint has consistently outgrown its mission. What started as a content management and portal platform grew rapidly into a knowledge sharing and collaboration center, and from there morphed into a platform for application development.
With Visual Studio 2010 (released last month) and SharePoint 2010 (due later this month), Microsoft is delivering a one-two punch that should open the floodgates for SharePoint-based application development. The work toward this day started back in 2003, says Microsoft director of SharePoint Products and Technologies, Arpan Shah.
"In the 2007 wave, actually starting in 2003, we started cementing SharePoint as a platform by building on .NET," Shah told me during a recent interview, adding, "In 2010, the developer was a core, core segment that we looked at."
A lot of the dev goodness comes not from SharePoint, but from the SharePoint-enabling features now cooked into Visual Studio 2010. Shah says the SharePoint and Visual Studio teams worked closely to align the two products and finally close the gap for developers targeting SharePoint. From a host of SharePoint-specific project templates to one-click F5 debug/deploy to advanced test and lifecycle management capabilities, Visual Studio 2010 seems to deliver on that mission in spades.
We'll be exploring SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 development in our June issue. If you are looking to develop for SharePoint or Office 2010, we'd love to hear from you. Tell us what you think of the new platforms. You may find yourself featured in the pages of our June issue. You can email me at mdesmond@1105media.com, or simply leave your comments below
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 05/04/2010