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 ...

 

Dev Centers

Getting Started

What’s New

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