OK, I couldn’t pass this one up. Mark Jones has posted an article at Collaboris about a potential SharePoint App Store. There are a number of sites that offer marketplaces for SharePoint applications. To my knowledge, Microsoft sanctions none of them. The cool thing about an officially sanctioned app store would be the tight integration to search, find, buy, and user a new application.
Collaboris seems to have found indications that SharePoint is going to get an app store and here’s their reasoning:
- The SharePoint 15 object model SDK code has reference to an app store
- SharePoint 2013 will support oauth (yeah!)
- App store database provider classes
- Various App store sources.
A quick quote:
Well, it looks like SharePoint’s going to get some tight integration with an App Store (aka market place). This has been on the cards for quite a while, but I thought they’d have to get the API developed to support it eventually. Reading between the lines, I think there’s going to be somewhere in the SharePoint GUI to browse for an “App” in an on-line App Store. Once selected you will pay (or trial it) then using the SPWeb’s new LoadAndInstallApp() method it will stream the App into the App database (and install it as a Sandboxed solution). It’s more than likely going to be be a bit like the Web Part Gallery on steroids – (I also wouldn’t be suprised if the web part gallery gets replace with the ‘Corporate Catalog’ see below).
I would also imagine there’s a few timer jobs that poll the “App Store” (or package source) to check for updates and ‘news’. Obviously, this is all guess work based on looking at a few barely document classes, but it’s fun! It also looks like there is a method at the web application level to see if a user is licensed, which again adds weight to new App Store support!
Read the whole article
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