Microsoft Developer Platform at a Glance

This is my yearly roundup of the Microsoft developer platform.  It includes Visual Studio 2012, .NET Framework 4.5, Windows Azure, Windows Phone, Office 2013, and more. 

I’ve included key links and starting points at the end to help you find your way around the vast Microsoft technical playground.

 

Category	Items
Application Infrastructure	.NET Framework 4.5 Base Class Libraries (BCL) Common Language Runtime (CLR) LINQ (Language-Integrated Query)
ALM (Application Life-Cycle Management)	Visual Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server Team Foundation Service (TFS in the Cloud)
App Frameworks / Extensions	Enterprise Library MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) 4.5
Cloud	Windows Azure SDK Blobs Caching Content Delivery Network (CDN) HDInsight (Hadoop) Queues SQL Data Sync SQL Reporting SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines StreamInsight Tables Windows Azure Active Directory Windows Azure Active Directory Graph Windows Azure Authentication Library Windows Azure Cloud Services (Hosted Services) Windows Azure cmdlets Windows Azure Management Portal Windows Azure Marketplace Windows Azure Media Services Windows Azure Mobile Services Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio Windows Azure Service Management REST API Windows Azure Service Bus Windows Azure SQL Database Windows Azure Virtual Machines Windows Azure Web Sites Windows Azure Workflow Manager patterns & practices Transient Fault Handling Windows Azure Autoscaling
Collaboration / Integration / Workflow	Windows Azure Service Bus Windows Azure Workflow Manager
Data Access	ADO.NET 4.5 DataSets, DataTables, and DataViews Entity Framework LINQ (Language-Integrated Query) WCF Data Services
Database Server	SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 Database Engine SQL Server 2012 Express LocalDB Windows Azure SQL Database
Development Tools	Visual Studio 2012 Visual Studio LightSwitch Windows Azure SDK Windows Phone SDK
Devices	Kinect for Windows SDK Microsoft Surface
Games	Kinect Game Development Windows Phone Game Development Xbox Live Game Development Xbox Live Indie Game Development
Identity	Active Directory Federation Services Windows Azure Active Directory Windows Azure Active Directory Graph Windows Azure Authentication Library Windows Identity Foundation 4.5
Languages	Common Language Runtime (CLR) JavaScript in Visual Studio 2012 Visual Basic Visual C++ Visual C# Visual F#
Mobile	Windows Azure Mobile Services Windows Phone Windows Phone SDK
Modeling	Modeling Tools for ALM in Visual Studio 2012 Visualization and Modeling SDK – Domain Specific Languages
Office Applications	Office 2013 Office Development in Visual Studio SharePoint Development in Visual Studio
Parallel	C++ AMP F# Parallel Extensions for .NET PLINQ (Parallel LINQ) TPL (Task Parallel Library)
RIA (Rich Internet Applications)	Microsoft Silverlight WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) 4.5 Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML)
Services	WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) 4.5 Windows Azure Cloud Services (Hosted Services)
Web	ASP.NET ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET Web Forms HTML / CSS Windows Azure Web Sites Windows Store Apps
Web Server	Internet Information Services (IIS) 8
Windows Store Apps	Windows Store Apps Windows Runtime Windows Library for Javascript Windows Store app APIs
Windows Server	Windows Server 2012
Windows Services	Windows Service Applications

Here are some links you may find useful ...

Key Links

• MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) Home
• Developer Quick Links (MSDN)
• Channel 9

 

• ASP.NET
• Game Development
• Kinect
• SQL Server
• Windows Azure
• Windows Phone

Dev Centers

• Office Dev Center
• Visual Studio Dev Center
• Windows Azure Dev Center
• Windows Dev Center
• Windows Phone Dev Center

Getting Started

• Getting Started with .NET Framework 4.5
• Getting Started with Visual C#
• Getting Started with Visual C++
• Top Silverlight Features
• Windows Store App Development

What’s New

• New Namespaces in .NET Framework 4.5
• What’s New in the .NET Framework 4.5
• What’s New in F# in Visual Studio 2012
• What’s New in IIS 8
• What’s New in SQL Server 2012 Database Engine 
• What’s New in Visual C# for Visual Studio 2012
• What’s New in Visual C++ for Visual Studio 2012

You Might Also Like

• Office 365 at a Glance
• Windows Azure at a Glance
• Microsoft Explained: Making the Most of the Microsoft Platform Story
• The Microsoft Story

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 30, 2012
  Some glaring omissions: DirectX C++ AMP HPC Server

• Anonymous
  December 31, 2012
  @ Josh -- Thank you. C++ AMP is definitely worth adding.  Done. I can't find a page on DirectX that I'd want to point to. The page on HPC Server I found shows 2008: http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/

• Anonymous
  January 07, 2013
  JD: Thank you for taking the time to compile this list, as I have previously communicated this is a very useful way of navigating the Microsoft application space and something that I wish someone editing MSDN would recognise and provide (and maintain). Sometime there is simply too much content to deal with without something like this.

• Anonymous
  January 07, 2013
  @ Carl -- Thank you. Information Architecture is always a challenge with gigantic warehouses of content.  One of my last projects a few moons back was helping MSDN with their IA.  I was amazed by the sheer volume and entry points and what it takes to really create a simple, but useful experience. I think that experience really taught me the value of being able to start simple, but be able to really dive into the complex and complete.