Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Applications on Windows Phone 7–book review
Recently I had the opportunity of reviewing a new book on developing Windows Phone 7 applications that interact with SharePoint 2010 – Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Applications on Windows Phone 7.
What I expected
I’ve done some Windows Phone 7 development previously. I have experimented with MVVM and with different WP7 controls but none of my apps communicated with SharePoint so reading this book seemed to me like an opportunity to pick up some more knowledge of how to get the most out of SharePoint for developing Windows Phone 7 apps. Reading the book’s title I expected to see some real-life examples of different scenarios for interacting with SharePoint data on Windows Phone 7 devices – the Enterprise Applications.
What I got
The first part of the book covers a lot of introduction topics about Windows Phone 7 devices, mobile browsers and SharePoint development. In fact if you own a WP7 device yourself, have created a ‘Hello World’ app and have done some SharePoint 2010 development you can skip most of the content in the first 5 chapters. While the book covers many different topics (from WP7 device introduction to web development for mobile devices) it doesn’t cover any of them in depth. Especially for the SharePoint development part there are other, more resourceful, books available on the market, that provide better explanation of the platform.
Chapters 6 and 7 are the most interesting chapters in the book. In those chapters the author discusses some practical scenarios of communicating with SharePoint 2010: from authentication to data retrieval. The code samples provided in those chapters are useful for understanding the basics behind interacting with SharePoint 2010 from a WP7 device but in my opinion far away from Enterprise Applications.
Unfortunately chapter 7 is where the book ends: right where it starts to pick up the speed and content level.
Summary
Writing a book on Windows Phone 7 development interacting the SharePoint 2010 platform is an opportunity to present great stories and showcases. Both platforms are very rich and provide great extensibility capabilities: both for end users and enterprises. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Applications on Windows Phone 7 is a fair reading if you are relatively new to both worlds but the topic hasn’t been fully covered yet and I’d still like to hear and read about great examples of making Windows Phone 7 devices interact with the SharePoint 2010 platform.