Friday, June 21, 2013

SharePoint 2013 Interview Questions for Developers – Part 2

Q41: Whats are the new Delegate Controls in SharePoint 2013?
Ans: 
In SharePoint 2013, three New Delegate Controls have been Introduced for the purpose of displaying the new Top Suite bar (with links SkyDrive, NewsFeed,Sync,follow). These Controls are -
  • SuiteBarBrandingDelegate delegate Control
  • SuiteLinksDelegate delegate Control
  • PromotedActions Delegate Control
Q42: What is SuiteBarBrandingDelegate delegate Control used for?
Ans:
 SuiteBarBrandingDelegate Delegate Control is responsible for displaying ‘SharePoint’ or ‘Office 365′ text on top left of the new SharePoint 2013 site (in the blue bar). This text can only be replaced by Overriding SuiteBarBrandingDelegate Delegate Control with a custom Custom Control Created using Visual Studio.
Q43: What is SuiteLinksDelegate delegate Control used for?
Ans:
 SuiteLinksDelegate Delegate Control is responsible for displaying Links “NewsFeed, SkyDrive and Sites” in top right of the new SharePoint 2013 site (in the blue bar). These Links can be replaced by Overriding SuiteLinksDelegate Delegate Control using a Custom Control Created using Visual Studio.
Q44: What is PromotedActions delegate Control used for?
Ans:
 PromotedActions Delegate Control is responsible for displaying Links “Share,Follow,SYNC,EDIT” in top right below SuiteLinksDelegate Control. These Links can be replaced by Overriding PromotedActions Delegate Control using a Custom Control Created using Visual Studio.
Q46: What are Callout Popups in SharePoint 2013.
Ans:
 Similar to Dialog framework in SharePoint 2010, Microsoft has added a new Callout Popup framework to Create Hover Popups that you know as Preview Windows as well.These Notification\Tooltip\Help (whatever you call it..) Callout Popups can be fully Customized to add Custom Text & Actions for guiding End-users.
Q47: Is Callout Popups a replacement to Dialogs in SharePoint 2013.
Ans:
 No. Dialog Framework still exists.
Q48: Can we view PDF files in Callout Popups?
Ans:
 Yes. A Custom Result type and Display template would be needed.
Q49: What’s the new “SPField.JSLink” property used for?
Ans:
 New “SPField.JSLink” property has been added to help specify any external JavaScript file Containing any Rendering logic for Out-of-Box or Custom field type.With JSLink developers can now Control the Rendering (the presentation and validation) of any Field (Custom or Out-of-box) on List forms as well as in Views by simply adding a reference to an External or deployed JavaScript file.
Q50: What’s the new SPSecurityEventReceiver?
Ans:
 In SharePoint 2013, MS has added “SPSecurityEventReceiver” class to handle events for SharePoint Groups, Users, Roles and Permission Inheritance.
Q51: Can I turn off Social – Follow & Site Feed in SharePoint 2013?
Ans:
 Yes.You Can de-activiate Follow & Social by disabling “Following Content feature” and “Site Feeds feature” on the Team site(in the written Order).By default, the Site feed feature on a team site is enabled.

Using Content Search In SharePoint 2013

The Content Search Web Part (CSWP) is a new feature in SharePoint 2013. It can be most accurately compared to the Content Query Web Part that we have in previous SharePoint versions. The one striking difference between Content Search and Content Query is that Content Search allows you to query and show information from any site collection. As long as your search is configured to crawl the information it can be pulled into your CSWP!
This blog covers a basic scenario that will show you how easily the CSWP can be configured and ready for use.
Scenario – A research organization is putting together a SharePoint 2013 Community site to enable all of its top scientists to communicate. It would like to have a section on the site that shows all the organization’s scientists in a functional image slider. The problem is that the photos are spread throughout the site collection in different libraries. The one positive is that the organization uses Enterprise Keywords and all the photos have been tagged with the keyword Scientist. (At the end of this blog, I will show how to activate Enterprise Keywords on a library.)
Here are the steps the organization will follow:
1- The first step is to edit my Community site and add my CSWP which can be found in the Content Rollup category.
2- To configure the web part first click anywhere in the web part, then choose the Web Part tab in the ribbon. From that tab click Web Part Properties

3- We first need to setup the query. To do so click Change query from the web part properties box.
4- A Build Your Query dialog box will open. There are four tabs available Basics, Refiners, Settings and Test. From the Basics tab you should see Switch to Advanced Mode in the upper right corner. If you see Switch to Quick Mode click it. We will start this query from the Quick mode.


5- From the Select a query menu I have several options. In this situation I could either choose Items matching a tag (System) orPictures (System).  I also have the option of just querying documents, items matching a specific content type, popular items, etc.
6- Under Restrict by app I can decide to query the Current Site Collection, Current Site, Specific URL, or I can choose Don’t restrict results by app and query everything that I am currently crawling.
7- If you remember, in my test scenario I am looking for items that have a specific keyword of Scientist. So here I will choose Restrict on this tag: and enter Scientist.
8- You can add additional filters here or Switch to Advanced Mode for even more options. On the right hand side you can see what your query is currently returning to the web part.
9- The Refiners tab will allow you to filter your query even further. Currently, my query is returning any item that has been tagged with the keyword Scientist, but let’s say in my results I am finding that some documents had also been tagged with that keyword. I only want images to display so I can use this tab to add the ContentType of Picture to my refiners.
10- The Settings tab has a few additional options including the use of Query rules and the loading behavior of your query. For this example I will leave everything at the default.
11- The tab Test gives you your final query text for testing purposes. When finished simply click OKat the bottom of the Build Your Query dialog box.
12- The final step is to setup how results will display. From the Web Part Properties box you have the following options (the settings I choose for this solution can be seen in the image below.)
  • Number of items to show
  • Under Display Templates: Control (List, List with Paging or Slideshow)
  • Under Display Templates: Item (determines how the image and text will display, if you are just listing documents “two lines” would be the best option)
  • Under Display Templates: Don’t show anything when there are no results (leave this checked to avoid blank space, especially when using the slideshow control.)
**Note- If you want to get your hands on the code behind these display templates they can be found under Site Settings > Web Designer Galleries > Master pages > Display Templates > Content Web Parts
When your settings are right click OK to close your web part and you’re done!


Thursday, May 30, 2013

Deploying SharePoint 2010 Solution on SharePoint 2013

As you know, in SharePoint 2010 there was 14 hive where you deploy your files. And then you reference them like below:

Physical Path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
Virtual Path: “/_layouts/<your folder>/<your files>”

In SharePoint 2013, there is new 15 hive
Physical Path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
Virtual Path: “/_layouts/15/<your folder>/<your files>”

If you have SharePoint 2010 solution (.wsp file) and you need to deploy it on SharePoint 2013, then you have the following options:
First, you have to add the solution to your farm using PowerShell as following:
  • Add-SPSolution C:\SP2010Project.wsp

Now,
  • Deploy to 14 hive Ã¨
    Install-SPSolution sp2010project.wsp
  • Deploy to 15 hive Ã¨ Install-SPSolution sp2010project.wsp -CompatibilityLevel 15

Friday, May 10, 2013

Split CSV file based on content using PowerShell


You have a CSV file that contains department employees in a format like this:
Department,Employee
Sales,emp1
HR,emp2
Sales,emp3
Finance,emp4
Finance,emp5
Security,emp6
Security,emp7
Security,emp8
HR,emp9
And you need to split the contents of this file to separate files based on department name. So for the above example, we should get four files, Sales.csvHR.csvFinance.csv, and Security.csv. Each file contains only its employees.
And the solution really shows the power of PowerShell pipelining:
Import-Csv file.csv | Group-Object -Property "department" | 
 Foreach-Object {$path=$_.name+".csv" ; $_.group | 
 Export-Csv -Path $path -NoTypeInformation}
Dissecting the above commands:
  • Import-Csv file.csv: Parses the CSV file and returns an array of objects.
  • | Group-Object -Property "department": Since we need to split by department, it makes sense to group objects by the department property.
  • | Foreach-Object {...}: We need to apply an action for each group (department). So we pipeline the resulted groups to Foreach-Object.
  • $path=$_.name+".csv": Within the foreach, we need to create a temporary variable ($path) to be passed to the next pipeline responsible for the actual saving. Note that I use the semicolon ";" to separate this part from the next. And I used the name property of the group (which maps to department name in our case) to format the file name.
  • $_.group | Export-Csv -Path $path -NoTypeInformation: Then for each group we have, we need to export its contents (CSV file rows) to the file path created in the past step. So we again pipeline the group property of the group item (which is an ArrayList of original objects) to the Export-CSV Cmdlt.
And the result should be files like:
Finance.csv:
"Department","Employee"
"Finance","emp4"
"Finance","emp5"

List Google Docs using PowerShell


Are you looking for a quick and easy way to access your Google Docs from PowerShell? The Google Data Providerprovides an easy-to-use ADO.NET interface that you can take advantage of with your PowerShell Scripts. Simply use the included SQL like .NET objects (GoogleConnectionGoogleCommandGoogleDataAdapter, etc.) in your PowerShell scripts to connect to your Google Apps accounts and synchronize, automate, download, and more!

Using the Google Data Provider in PowerShell to List Google Docs:

# Load the Google Data Provider assembly 
[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile("C:\Program Files\RSSBus\RSSBus 
        Google Data Provider\lib\System.Data.RSSBus.Google.dll")

# Connect to Google 
$constr = "User=[username];Password=[password]"
$conn= New-Object System.Data.RSSBus.Google.GoogleConnection($constr)
$conn.Open()

$sql="SELECT Name, AuthorName, Type, Updated, Weblink from Documents"

$da= New-Object System.Data.RSSBus.Google.GoogleDataAdapter($sql, $conn)
$dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable
$da.Fill($dt)

$dt.Rows | foreach {
 Write-Host $_.updated $_.name
}
Listing is only the first step. With full CRUD support, you can use the Google Data Provider to easily upload and download documents as well. The following bit of PowerShell code downloads one of the documents listed above:

Download a file from Google Docs:

$cmd= New-Object System.Data.RSSBus.Google.GoogleCommand("DownloadDocument", $conn)
$cmd.CommandType= [System.Data.CommandType]'StoredProcedure'
$cmd.Parameters.Add( (New-Object System.Data.RSSBus.Google.GoogleParameter("@Type", "TXT")) ) 
$cmd.Parameters.Add( (New-Object System.Data.RSSBus.Google.GoogleParameter("@Name", "myfile")) ) 
$cmd.Parameters.Add( (New-Object System.Data.RSSBus.Google.GoogleParameter("@LocalFile", "d:\myfile.txt")) ) 
$reader = $cmd.ExecuteReader()
Likewise, calling the UploadDocument Stored Procedure allows your scripts to upload documents directly to Google Docs.

As you can see, the Google Data Provider provides a hassle-free way to access the features of Google Apps directly from PowerShell script, and eliminates the headache involved with authentication, security, etc. 

Happy scripting!

Partial page load issue with ASP.NET MVC and head.js


I've been working with a small team over the past year or so on a large-scale web application built in ASP.NET MVC 3. We're using some of the best new client-side technologies with it as well - jQuery,Bootstrap and head.js to name a few. Overall, the project has gone very smoothly, with only a few minor hiccups or delays.
Well, except for one lingering issue.
We began experiencing intermittent partial page loads almost as soon as the first draft of the UI was released to our testing servers. The following behaviors were exhibited:
  • This issue could happen on any page in the application when it loaded.
  • 65-70% of the time a page would load correctly.
  • Pressing F5 (refresh) would reload the page and always fixed the issue.
  • Generally, either part of the main menu bar wouldn't load, or our datagrid wouldn't load. Both controls could have a problem on a given page if you reloaded it multiple times.
Perplexing and frustrating to say the least. First, we thought it was a problem with the tiny VMs we had in our testing environment. Then we guessed it might be a packet delivery issue with the VPN tunnel between the testing network and the office network. Then we supposed maybe our self-hosted CDN wasn't set up correctly, and switched to using Amazon S3 (which we were planning on doing anyway).
Each of these theories (and others) were tested and debunked. No love. There's no way it could be in our code, right??
What ended up working for us was moving our "core" libraries outside of head.js and using their "execute in-order" method for the rest of our libraries. Our _Layout.cshtml page looks like this:
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>

(... stylesheets and other head content ...)

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.company.com/JS/head.min.js" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.company.com/JS/jquery-1.7.1.min.js" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.company.com/JS/jquery-ui-1.8.18.min.js" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.company.com/JS/modernizr-2.5.3.min.js" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.company.com/JS/bootstrap-2.1.0.min.js" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.company.com/JS/flexigrid.pack.js" />

<script type="text/javascript">
    head.js(
        "http://cdn.company.com/JS/jquery.validate.min.js",
        "http://cdn.company.com/JS/another.script.js",
        (... other javascript files ...),
    );
</script>

(... other code / markup ...)

</html>
We implemented this change about a week ago, and have yet to experience the issue once since then. Couple of additional notes / comments to share about the change:
  • This seems to work because generally all of the other javascript files you'll want to load probably depend on one or more of these "core" files to work properly. Letting head.js handle this becomes even more delicate when you consider the fact that ASP.NET is trying to load multiple Partial Views per page, many of which contain controls that need the "core" in place to be built properly. Any interruption of loading a "core" file before a control needs it may break part of the page.
  • While the head.js usage documentation lists what we have here as a correct way of using the library, this is not how their demo is built ('View Source' to check it out).
  • The most similar issue we could find was here on the head.js GitHub project site. This is where we got the idea to try an alternate implementation.
  • Since the purpose of head.js is to improve page load times, you may be wondering if this change hurt our delivery speed. Unfortunately, because pages weren't reliably loading for a number of months, it was hard to measure where we were at before the change, so I'm unable to determine a speed difference.

I decided to document this because we weren't able to find any instances online of someone else having the problem; hoping this post will save a few other teams some time and headaches.

Clean up old files using PowerShell


Doing a quick Google search (which may be what brought you here) will show you a number of variations on PowerShell scripts for deleting files. I'm sure many of them are perfectly adequate for the task, and in some cases, have features that mine doesn't. My solution excels at code readability and control, the latter of which I feel is fairly important when deleting files in bulk.
Not much else to say about it I guess; the purpose and uses of this script are pretty straightforward.
Here's the code:
# |Info|
# Written by Bryan O'Connell, February 2013
# Purpose: Delete files from a folder haven't been modified for the
# specified number of days.
#
# Sample: DeleteOldFiles.ps1 -folder "C:\test" -days_old 7 [-only_this_type ".xls"]
#
# Params:
#   -folder: The place to search for old files.
#
#  -days_old: Age threshold. Any file that hasn't been modified for more than
#  this number of days will be deleted.
#
#  -only_this_type: This is an optional parameter. Use it to specify that you
#  just want to delete files with a specific file extension. Be sure to
#  include the '.' with the file extension.
#
# |Info|

[CmdletBinding()]
Param (
  [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,Position=0)]
  [string]$folder,

  [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,Position=1)]
  [int]$days_old,

  [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,Position=2)]
  [string]$only_this_type
)

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------#

# Determines whether or not it's ok to delete the specified file. If no type
# is specified, all files are ok to delete. If a type IS specified, only files
# of that type are ok to delete.

Function TypeOkToDelete($FileToCheck)
{
  $OkToDelete = $False;

  if ($only_this_type -eq $null) {
    $OkToDelete = $True;
  }
  else {
    if ( ($FileToCheck.Extension) -ieq $only_this_type ) {
      $OkToDelete = $True;
    }
  }

  return $OkToDelete;
}

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------#

$FileList = [IO.Directory]::GetFiles($folder);
$Threshold = (Get-Date).AddDays(-$days_old);

foreach($FileToDelete in $FileList)
{
  $CurrentFile = Get-Item $FileToDelete;
  $WasLastModified = $CurrentFile.LastWriteTime;
  $FileOkToDelete = TypeOkToDelete($CurrentFile);

  if ( ($WasLastModified -lt $Threshold) -and ($FileOkToDelete) )
  {
    $CurrentFile.IsReadOnly = $false;
    Remove-Item $CurrentFile;
    write-Output "Deleted $CurrentFile";
  }
}

write-Output "Press any key to quit ...";
$quit = $host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho, IncludeKeyDown");


NOTE: If you run into problems getting the script to run on your machine, there are a few troubleshooting tips in my original article.

Extract worksheets from Excel into separate files with PowerShell

I recently had need to dust off an old VB script I'd written years ago to get worksheets out of Excel files. I've also been curious about doing more with PowerShell, and besides feeling guilty about putting a VB script into use in 2012, it seemed like a really good learning opportunity.

So why not just rewrite the script in .NET? Well, you can definitely do that; in fact, the code would look very similar. However, not everyone is a .NET developer. I wrote the original VB script on a team where we were building C++ DLLs for ETL processing; .NET wasn't part of our code base. I also think there are plenty of IT roles - DevOps, DBAs, Network Admininstrators to name a few - that might find a simple PowerShell tool like this a little easier to use and/or modify for their needs.

So that being said, just copy & paste the code below into an empty .ps1 file, and you should be good to go. To use it, simply execute the following command (should work from command-line, batch file, or managed code):

PowerShell.exe -command "C:\ScriptFile.ps1" -filepath "C:\Spreadsheet.xls" -output_type "csv"

I did run into one problem / issue while writing this script - getting it to run the first time! Thanks to this great article by Scott Hanselman, I found out that there are some very tight Windows security restrictions on PowerShell scripts - particularly the ones you didn't write yourself. After reading his article, it seemed easier for me (and for anyone who wants to use my code) to just post the source code rather than a downloadable script with certificates, at least in this instance. Maybe if I write another PowerShell article I'll give the certificate thing a go.

If you get the error message I got - "The file C:\ScriptFile.ps1 cannot be loaded. The execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "Get-Help about_signing" for more details." - you can enable execution of PowerShell scripts you'vecreated by running the following command 'As Administrator':

PowerShell.exe Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Anyway, here's my script:


# Purpose: Extract all of the worksheets from an Excel file into separate files.

[CmdletBinding()]
Param ( 
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,Position=0)] 
    [string]$filepath,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,Position=1)] 
    [ValidateSet("csv","txt","xls","html")] 
    [string]$output_type 
)

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------#

# Figures out and returns the 'XlFileFormat Enumeration' ID for the specified format.
# http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb241279%28v=office.12%29.aspx 
# NOTE: The code being used for 'xls' is actually a 'text' type, but it seemed
# to work the best for splitting the worksheets into separate Excel files.

function GetOutputFileFormatID 

Param([string]$fomat_name
    $Result = 0 

    switch($fomat_name
    { 
        "csv" {$Result = 6
        "txt" {$Result = 20
        "xls" {$Result = 21
        "html" {$Result = 44
        default {$Result = 51
    } 
    
    return $Result 
}

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------# 

$Excel = New-Object -ComObject "Excel.Application" 
$Excel.Visible = $false #Runs Excel in the background. 
$Excel.DisplayAlerts = $false #Supress alert messages. 

$Workbook = $Excel.Workbooks.open($filepath

#Loop through the Workbook and extract each Worksheet in the specified file type.  
if ($Workbook.Worksheets.Count -gt 0) { 
    write-Output "Now processing: $WorkbookName" 
    
    $FileFormat = GetOutputFileFormatID($output_type

    #Strip off the Excel extension. 
    $WorkbookName = $filepath -replace ".xlsx""" #Post 2007 extension
    $WorkbookName = $WorkbookName -replace ".xls""" #Pre 2007 extension 

    $Worksheet = $Workbook.Worksheets.item(1

    foreach($Worksheet in $Workbook.Worksheets) { 
        $ExtractedFileName = $WorkbookName + "~~" + $Worksheet.Name + "." + $output_type 

        $Worksheet.SaveAs($ExtractedFileName$FileFormat

        write-Output "Created file: $ExtractedFileName" 
    } 


#Clean up & close the main Excel objects. 
$Workbook.Close() 
$Excel.Quit() 

Deploying Workflow as WSP File


In this article we can learn how to:
  • Create WSP using Visual Studio 2010
  • Deploy WSP to another SharePoint site
  • Export a Workflow as WSP

WSP Extension


A file with WSP extension represents SharePoint Solution Package. It is actually a cab file. When we create a workflow and make a WSP file we can use the file to deploy the Workflow to multiple SharePoint sites.

Creating a WSP File inside Visual Studio


We have to use the Package command for the solution to create the WSP file.


You can get the WSP file inside the bin\Debug folder of the solution.


The WSP file is actually a cabinet file. You can try opening it with Winzip/Winrar as shown below to see the contents.


Deploying WSP to SharePoint


Now we can deploy the WSP file to SharePoint. For this do the following steps.
Open the SharePoint site and use Site Settings > View All Site Content > Site Assets.


Click on the Add document link as highlighted above.



In the appearing dialog box select the WSP file we generated and click the OK button.

After this step we need to activate the solution from Site Settings > Galleries  > Solutions.

Deploying using stsadm

We can deploy the solution using the command line tool of SharePoint. You can open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell console from the start menu.  Execute the following command once in the debug folder.

Stsadm –o addsolution –filename YourSolution.WSP

Once done with the above command open SharePoint Central Administration and from System Settings > Manage Farm Solutions > Select the workflow and click on Deploy Solution button as shown below.


Now go back to the SharePoint site and use Site Actions > Site Settings > Site collection features to activate the workflow.


Now use the Site Actions > Site Settings > Workflow settings page to add the workflow.

The deployment is completed and the Workflow is activated. You can access the workflow from List > Site Workflows > WF2.

Export a Workflow as WSP

Now we can try exporting a WSP file from an existing SharePoint site. The exported file can be used to deploy to another SharePoint server. For exporting follow the steps below.

Open Site Assets from Site Actions > View All Site Content.


Click on an existing Workflow, for example Contact Workflow in the above screen. The browser will prompt with the Save As dialog. Click the Save button to get the WSP file. This file can be used to deploy the solution to another SharePoint server.

Apps in SharePoint 2013

 Why Apps? What's wrong with Solutions?

The world is getting smaller day by day, thanks to technology. Big desktops became Bulky laptops. Bulky laptops became Notebooks. Notebooks became Ultra books. Now the trend is moving towards Tablets and Smart phones. So does our applications. Web applications becoming Apps. "Apps" is not just a marketing strategy to increase use of SharePoint in wider markets, but also a complete replacement of sandbox approach with many other Pros for both Development, Deployment and Usage.

Do you know that sandbox solutions are deprecated in 2013?

Sandbox Solutions are introduced in SP 2010 and now they are off, to encourage the usage of Apps. May be we should understand the seriousness of Microsoft towards "Apps" in future. Of- course the conventional SP solution approach is still there.

SP 2013 Development Options

  1. Full-trust SharePoint Solutions (WSP)
  2. Apps

Main reasons for "Apps" development

  1. Custom code will not be executed on server. So this can avoid, Application / Server outages.
  2. Custom code will be executed in Client-Browser or may be in some other scope like IIS or Windows Azure, which is completely out of SharePoint scope.
  3. Server Object Model (SOM) code is replaced by Client side object model (CSOM) / Rest Services using which Apps can communicate with Server. Authentication is done by OAuth.
  4. Installing / Updating / Uninstalling of apps can be done without  affecting the SharePoint site.
  5. Better usability in Tablets and Mobile devices.
  6. Taking SharePoint to next level in terms of  Usability, Development, Deployment  and  Hosting(cloud).
  7. Finally, everything in SharePoint 2013 is an App.
I know, the next question is "Most of these reasons are just sounding like reasons for Sandbox Solutions?" Well I have a question for you, how many times we have chosen sandbox solution for real-time implementation?
  1. No full object model . . .
  2. Understanding of Sandbox architecture
  3. Not an easy task to create proxies for execution of full trust code.
What ever may be the reason, real-time applications are tough to develop using a Sandbox solution. That is why "Apps" are introduced in SharePoint 2013 for ease of development and deployment.

Hosting Options in Apps

  1. Provider-hosted
  2. Hosted in the cloud (Windows Azure autohosted)
  3. Hosted in a SharePoint environment
  4. Several combinations of these options.


How apps for SharePoint Work


In above case, App1 is a Provider-hosted or a Cloud-Hosted (Auto-Hosted) app and App2 is a SharePoint Hosted App. So anything related to App1 will be created/Maintained in respective locations, either on Provider or Azure servers. This makes App1 safe and secure in execution perspective.
Now we need to look at App2.
When you create/Imported/Added a SharePoint-Hosted App, it will create a separate sub-web under your SP Web application. This app will be executed in a separate App Domain different from Farm App Domain. So, as process runs under App Domains, any exceptions in Apps will not cause any Outage to SharePoint Farm.


We will see the creation of an SharePoint-Hosted App and issues involved in doing so, in our next post.