SharePoint 2013 App Model, Deployment Model & Developer Tools

Types of SharePoint 2013 App Model:

• Apps for Office
• Apps for Office use a non-managed code approach to building in-context document and mail apps (think Excel, Word, and Outlook add-ins). These apps enable you to use HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to build lightweight apps that integrate with cloud-based apps
• Apps for SharePoint
• Apps for SharePoint (or SharePoint App) is the official name for apps you build and deploy to SharePoint. For those familiar with SharePoint, think of the SharePoint App as the evolution of the SharePoint Solution (that is, WSP).
• The SharePoint App uses the .APP extension (whereas the SharePoint Solution uses .WSP).

Type of SharePoint Deployment Model:

• SharePoint-hosted
• The SharePoint-hosted app model should be used for lightweight, smaller apps where you don’t need server-side code. You can build them using the client-side object model, HTML and JavaScript. The scope for a SharePoint-hosted app is the site collection.

• Auto-hosted
• The Auto-hosted app model is also used for lightweight apps, but the code for this app is automatically deployed to Windows Azure. You can tap into the power of Windows Azure Web Sites and SQL Database to build data-driven apps. The scope for Auto-hosted apps is at the site or tenancy level.

• Provider-hosted
• The Provider-hosted app model is about power and flexibility. The code does not live in SharePoint, but lives in a separate domain. This could be Windows Azure — in which case you can take full advantage of all of the features of the Windows Azure platform, or it could be IIS (by leveraging the Provider-hosted template in Visual Studio), or even a completely separate PHP app that lives in your own domain-hosted environment. There is quite a bit of flexibility built into this app model, but what comes with it is the need to manage your own code that lives in this separate domain.

SharePoint 2013 Developer Tools:

• Napa Development App
• This browser-based development tool enables you to build a variety of apps for SharePoint.
• SharePoint Designer
• You can use this designer tool to create and edit sites, pages, content types, and columns, build workflow, design master pages, and much more.
• Visual Studio
• This development IDE offers project-and item-level templates for you to build a variety of SharePoint apps and solutions
• Expression Blend
• This rich design tool integrates with Visual Studio and enables you to build Silver light and rich media applications
• Fiddler
• You can use this Web-debugging tool to help you understand network traffic, metadata, and data transactions in your applications.