Although this book is focused specifically on all things SharePoint, it is also intended to provide a guide to using SharePoint as an application framework and really utilize its full potential. Having been in the business for a few years, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the world of applications and development. I’ve seen methodologies come and go, whole forests of trees wiped out by a new buzzword, and even languages thought to be immortal no longer mentioned.

Over the years, much of the progress in development and application platforms has not been as major as it seemed at first. For example, we all thought Java would shake the world. You might say it did, but that’s the point, it did; it’s over, and we’ve moved on. I’ve seen this over and over, and it seems that most of the time, we still end up doing the same sort of things but using reworked tools and languages. In fact, many times these innovations simply add a new layer of complexity canceling any possible benefit. As developers, we’ve needed new tools for quite a while now and maybe Microsoft’s been listening. The past five years or so have seen somewhat of a quiet revolution in the development of software applications. “Portal technologies will be the new application platform,” was a statement I made in my WatchIT.com presentation back in 2002. Even though I saw it coming, it is amazing where we are today. Not only have portals matured into full-fledged development platforms, but they’ve also brought the enterprise and the office together. Finally, IT isn’t the only player in building applications.

As the proliferation of portals became more intense during the initial boom of the Web, designers building sites and applications saw that reuse and time to market were becoming critical aspects. In addition, designers and web-hosting companies saw that they were spawning a new industry of prebuilt websites in which “mom and pop shops” could be set up quickly—the most successful of these being eBay and the derivative blog spaces such as MySpace. As the business model of such enterprises matured, so did the tools used to create the sites and applications; new products emerged that enabled users to develop and deploy sites using prebuilt tools such as those eBay uses today. In fact, eBay is a perfect example. Although a portal itself, eBay subscribers can set up their own “portals” using eBay’s tools.