INTRODUCTION

IF YOU ALREADY HAVE SOME exposure to the SharePoint platform and its complementary technologies, you probably know that SharePoint is a versatile platform for building solutions that address a wide range of business needs. The growing importance and use of SharePoint in general has played an important role in the investment Microsoft has made in this platform over the years. Today, the latest version of this great product is SharePoint 2013!

There are many new features and improvements made to the core platform in SharePoint 2013. However, what is the most exciting addition is the new app model that enables developers to build apps and deploy them in isolation with few or no dependencies on any other software on the platform where it is installed and with no custom code that runs on the SharePoint servers.

In SharePoint 2013, the emphasis is more on the cloud programming and standard web technologies such as JavaScript and HTML. In that respect, it is fair to say that the majority of other changes made to the SharePoint 2013 platform are made to support this new app development model.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

This book is for anyone interested in developing applications on top of SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint Online in Office 365. Although some knowledge is assumed about SharePoint, the examples are comprehensive and easy to follow if you have previous knowledge of web development and development tools.

WHAT THIS BOOK COVERS

SharePoint 2013, just like its predecessors, is a big product and this book is a big, diverse book. So, before you dive into the book, here’s a little about what each chapter entails and what you can expect after you have read the chapter.

This book starts off with giving you an architectural overview in SharePoint and then covers the new features that matter to developers in Chapters 1 and 2. Chapters 3 and 4 walk you through the tooling experience in SharePoint 2013, as well as some important information about Application Life Cycle Management (ALM) in SharePoint 2013.

Due to the importance of the app model in SharePoint 2013, Chapters 4 through 7 are dedicated to app development and the cloud.

Chapters 8 through 15 walk you through some of the important areas in SharePoint 2013, many of which received considerable updates. This section also includes Chapter 11, “Using InfoPath with SharePoint 2013.” Because there is some uncertainty about the future of InfoPath in the SharePoint stack and there are customers with existing investments, that chapter will hopefully shed some light to help developers make better decisions as they move forward.

Chapters 16 through 19 are focused on Business Intelligence (BI) and SharePoint. BI in SharePoint 2013 provides better capabilities in analysis, reporting, dashboarding, and visualizations compared to SharePoint 2010. This is made available through better BI tools and tighter integration between SharePoint, Microsoft Office applications, and SQL Server 2012.

HOW THIS BOOK IS STRUCTURED

This book is structured to build logically on the skills you learn as you progress through it. After the initial introduction and base platform chapters, the book moves into the advanced part of the platform. Each chapter builds on knowledge acquired from earlier in the book, so you should read through the chapters in succession or at least read the introductory and platform chapters before reading later chapters in the book.

WHAT YOU NEED TO USE THIS BOOK

To get the most of this book, and because this is a book for developers, you need a development environment. There are two ways to do this:

• Build your own development machine. The best resource for building a full-fledged development machine is documented at MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx.
• Use an Office 365 developer site. This shortens your setup time and gets you started in less than five minutes. In this setup all you need is to sign up for a developer site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp179924.aspx.

If you choose to use an Office 365 developer site, please note that you can also deploy Napa, which is an Office 365 exclusive development tool, to your developer site. This allows you to build SharePoint-hosted apps without installing Visual Studio 2012 and Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 on your development computer.

Last, but certainly not least, Microsoft has released many code samples for SharePoint 2013 covering almost every area of SharePoint development. You can find these code samples at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj901637.aspx.

CONVENTIONS

To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what’s happening, we’ve used a number of conventions throughout the book.

As for styles in the text:

• New terms and important words are italicized when introduced.
• Keyboard strokes are shown like this: Ctrl+A.
• Filenames, URLs, and code within the text looks like this: persistence.properties.
• Code is presented in two different ways:

We use a monofont type with no highlighting for most code examples.
 
We use bold to emphasize code that is particularly important in the present context or to show changes from a previous code snippet.

SOURCE CODE

As you work through the examples in this book, you may choose either to type in all the code manually or to use the source code files that accompany the book. All the source code used in this book is available for download at www.wrox.com. When at the site, simply locate the book’s title (use the Search box or one of the title lists) and click the Download Code link on the book’s detail page to obtain all the source code for the book.

After you download the code, just decompress it with your favorite compression tool. Alternatively, you can go to the main Wrox code download page at www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/download.aspx to see the code available for this book and all other Wrox books.

ERRATA

Every effort is made to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, like a spelling mistake or faulty piece of code, your feedback is welcome. By sending in errata, you may save other readers hours of frustration and at the same time you will be helping us provide even higher quality information.

To find the errata page for this book, go to www.wrox.com and locate the title using the Search box or one of the title lists. Then, on the book’s detail page, click the Book Errata link. On this page, you can view all errata that has been submitted for this book and posted by Wrox editors. A complete book list, including links to each book’s errata, is also available at www.wrox.com/misc-pages/booklist.shtml.

If you don’t spot “your” error on the Book Errata page, go to www.wrox.com/contact/techsupport.shtml and complete the form there to send us the error you have found. After the information is checked, a message is posted to the book’s errata page, and the problem is fixed in subsequent editions of the book.

P2P.WROX.COM

For author and peer discussion, join the P2P forums at p2p.wrox.com. The forums are a web-based system for you to post messages relating to Wrox books and related technologies, and interact with other readers and technology users. The forums offer a subscription feature to e-mail you topics of interest of your choosing when new posts are made to the forums. Wrox authors, editors, other industry experts, and your fellow readers are present on these forums.

At p2p.wrox.com you can find a number of different forums that can help you not only as you read this book, but also as you develop your own applications. To join the forums, follow these steps:

After you join, you can post new messages and respond to messages other users post. You can read messages at any time on the web. If you would like to have new messages from a particular forum e-mailed to you, click the Subscribe to This Forum icon by the forum name in the forum listing.

For more information about how to use the Wrox P2P, be sure to read the P2P FAQs for answers to questions about how the forum software works, as well as many common questions specific to P2P and Wrox books. To read the FAQs, click the FAQ link on any P2P page.