Professional SharePoint® 2007 Development

1.2. The Microsoft Application Platform

An application platform is a reliable, reusable set of products and technologies on which to develop and host applications that may span disparate environments and technologies. Each component in an application platform provides a service, which may be used by any application in an enterprise. An application, in turn, simulates or provides business capabilities to the people who use it. An application platform has a service-oriented architecture (SOA), meaning that each component provides a standard service which may be replaced with an equivalent provider of that service. Figure 1-1 illustrates the general structure of an application platform.

Figure 1.1. Figure 1-1

SOA has evolved to describe mainly XML web-service-based architectures, but in the context of an application platform a service is simply a platform service and not necessarily an XML web service. An application platform interface may provide access to platform services via a variety of methods. However, the application platform interface does not necessarily act as a broker for service consumers to discover or be matched to service providers. Instead, it is up to the application platform architect to identify and install appropriate service providers to meet the needs of the enterprise.

The Microsoft Application Platform (MAP) is a consistent, reusable platform upon which ...