Developing Business Intelligence Apps for SharePoint

Chapter 2. Choosing the Right Tools for the Job

As the builders of applications, our clients trust us to solve problems with technology. We are trusted to create a solution that will be maintainable and that will grow and scale with the client’s needs. Finally, we’re typically trusted to choose the right technologies and platforms to build our applications.

It’s good to keep in mind that we are creatures of habit. If I’m a web forms developer, then it’s tempting to see everything as an ASP.NET application. If I’m a SharePoint developer, then I see the world as a collection of WSP packages with some list or site definitions. As an XAML developer, I may see a Silverlight application with some web services providing data access.

In this chapter, we’ll explore each of the technologies we’re going to use in this book and why we chose them. This is a time of great change and opportunity in the world of Microsoft application development. Before we get into the tools, let’s agree on a set of goals that we’ll use for technology selection.

Technology Selection Goals

• Reduce the time to solution delivery

• Leverage tools that generate much of the code

  • Use the capabilities already built into our platforms

  • Be able to respond to changes with an iterative approach

• Build a lasting solution

  • Capture our data in a scalable relational database management system (RDMS)

  • Use web services to support multiple clients

  • Break the solution into appropriate components

• Provide end user self-service capabilities

  • Give the user ...