In this post I am going to look at comparing four technologies that can be used to build business applications easily. This post was inspired by how similar a number of products have become over the last few years and more importantly how the new kid on the block Visual Studio Lightswitch, which is a specialised rapid business tool development platform built on top of Visual Studio, is going to affect this eco-system. It is important to also remember that this is being written in the Lightswitch Beta 2 timeframe, so some details may change by launch.

Lightswitch feels very similar to me, to another product I have worked with in the past: Dynamics CRM, which is a CustomerRelationship Management tool from Microsoft. CRM does very well in the xRM (x = extensible) scenario, where I think it will come up against Lightswitch a lot. I haven’t had an opportunity to use the latest CRM release yet, so I have had to rely on the help of experts to fill in my gaps!

SharePoint 2010 is another product I have worked with, can of course be used for building business applications quickly cause it is the “operating system of the enterprise” and has good features for these types of applications.

Finally, while watching Scott Hanselman do the ASP.NET MVC 3 demo in the MIX 11 Keynote, I was struck with how that is very close to a rapid business user development tool with all the new scaffolding features. ASP.NET MVC is a real outsider in this group because it is first a development toolset for web development and, maybe a rapid tool second where the rest are rapid development platforms or tools first.

I think the differences between these four are very interesting and while each has it’s strong & weak points, this should definitely not be looked at as a pick one only post. There are many scenarios where you want to combine them for even better experiences.

I have broken down the issues into twenty one(!) aspects (key points we can compare them against each other) which are grouped into six scenarios to make it easier to digest. Each scenario starts with a list of the aspects and a brief description followed by a comparison table of those aspects.

Starting

• Ready to go out of the box: Once installed, can it do anything? Seems silly, but quick turn around at the start, even if actual development is longer is important as it helps with prototyping, shows some rapid development and hints at how hard it is to learn (for me at least, if it does something I find I can experiment and learn quickly). Important to note, we are not looking at making it align with your company needs here, we just want it to do something. Eating CPU cycles & RAM is not something either.
• Northwind Style Sample development costs: This aspect looks further than the above aspect and looks at how much more would it take to get it tailored for a company, like the fictional Northwind, to have a XRM type system as it can be done across all four. Fewer $ signs means less time and/or resources for the functionality.

Finishing

• Cost for on-premise deployments: This looks at the money cost for licensing to get the solution up and running on premise (i.e. in your company). Licensing is, of course, flexible and this will vary based on who you are – so this is not indicative for all. It does not include such things as server hardware or common costs, for example operating system licensing.
• Deployment Complexity: Getting a solution up and running shouldn’t be difficult for an organisation and a lot of time can be lost (and costs incurred) changing, upgrading and troubleshooting systems that do not want to be deployed.
• Deployment Documentation: When it happens that you need to deploy, having a wealth of documentation (be that video’s, best practice guides, troubleshooting material) is vital and plays a large part in getting a solution up that works every time.

User Experience

• Front End Technology: A good looking, feature rich UI can seriously ease adoption, and what we are looking at here is the richness level of technology used for the out of the box front end user interface.
• How good the standard UI looks: Completely subjective and really this is based on what I think looks best.
• Flexibility of out of box front end: In this aspect we are concerned about how easy it is to adjust and tweak the out of the box front end.
• Themability : Corporate branding is massive business and making sure the application out of the box looks like it is part of your business is important. It is important to note that both CRM & SharePoint can have custom front ends built which enable this scenario, but that requires extra development, and we are focusing on the out of the box options here and assuming you have the theme built already.

Extensibility

• API for integration: In the short term having an API means it is easy to get data into your new solution, in the medium term it means more ways to sync data and mash up your systems and in the long term it gives you a way to get your data out. It is vital to have an API.
• Marketplace: Apple kicked the idea of having an AppStore into reality for many of us and now having a marketplace to get extensions, customisations or themes is an important aspect. I am ignoring public sites, like Codeplex for example, and only focusing on an official marketplaces. Galleries are just marketplaces with no vetting, which means they are bigger but the quality bar is not guaranteed.
• Additional Authentication Options: Only your employees or customers (which may be everyone if you are lucky enough) should access your solutions. What do we get out of the box to limit access to the system? All four systems support Windows & Forms based authentication so I am only listing other options which are available.
• Permission Structure (Authorisation): Being able to control what parts of a solution you can access, once you have logged in is also vital and having a lot of flexibility in this space is also important as very seldom will one structure work for everyone.

Information Worker Features

• Offline support: Being able to work when you are not in the office is a vital need for many people. So how do these platforms enable that scenario. In theory it is always possible to build this, so we are just looking at the out of box offering.
• Easily Import Data: How do we get information into the solution, besides the API? Does the product make this easy with out of the box tooling?
• Printing: Despite the promise of a paperless office, it still is not the case and being able to print is important, even if it is just to XPS or PDF for invoicing.
• Office Integration: Integration into Microsoft Office products (i.e. Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, InfoPath & OneNote) means that your IW’s will be able to work in the tools that they are comfortable with, easing adoption and productivity.

Other

• Databases Supported: Where the data can come from for your application is a critical piece of the puzzle because it means the difference between building ETL solutions to handle moving it around if the source is supported or having it just work.
• Minimum Skills For Tailoring: Tailoring is what I refer to when I think of customisation of a system, without the need for a programming language. At some point you will need a developer but how far away that is and what can be done by a analyst or super user early on is important from a time to solution and cost perspective. Lower is better here.
• Can run in the cloud?: If you not thinking about how you can leverage the cloud, then you are not thinking. Making sure the solutions can cater for the cloud is an important consideration. All four solutions can run in the cloud but how do they run is also important
• ALM Experience: How does this tool work with a full ALM experience? Can I unit test it easily? Will it go into source control easily and what happens when multiple developers are updating the same files? How about build server and development tool integration? All important questions in understanding a complete picture of that these tools cost or what you sacrfice with some of them.
• Requires Silverlight: Despite decent market penetration and ease of deployment in corporate scenarios, the requirement for Silverlight can be a deterrent to business, especially those where the CEO uses an iPad2 . This is not answered in the table as only Lightswitch requires Silverlight. CRM has no dependencies, SharePoint has a fall back mode and if you used Silverlight with MVC it would be possible to have a fallback mode, provided you developed it.
• Data performance: This is also not in the table since it only applies to Lightswitch. For CRM, MVC & SharePoint I assume your front end (web) is always close enough, for example the same LAN, to the database but in Lightswitch you can really separate them. Here it is important to note Lightswitch is NOT great with data performance between backend & frontend. It sends massive amounts of data around. In my view it really does not feel optimised for WAN scenarios.

Special Thanks

A post this in depth could not have been done without input from my “brain trust”, and I thank each one of you for your help:

• Bruce Nicholson
• Michael o’ Donovan
• Adam Cogan
• Zlatan Dzinic
• George Doubinski (he has an awesome site, just go an admire the work he put in it)