SharePoint Online Beta primer for developers

Overview: The development API is based on SharePoint 2010 server side object model so it's robust, flexible subset of SharePoint 2010 on-premises editions.

• You obviously can configuration SharePoint Online using your browser, or SharePoint Designer 2010·
• You can use VS 2010 to write custom code and this is what i am interested in.
• My understanding is that SharePoint developers should have an easy path to SharePoint Online development.
• For a test environment you will have the same API that is available as a sandboxed solution on the on premises version depending on licencing selected.
• Your local SharePoint 2010 development environment is where you will write code that will be uploaded to SharePoint online via a solution package.
• You will be able to intelletrace (VS universal and debugging) on the uploaded code in production.
• Development teams will find it alot easier to develop locally and then deploy the finalised code.
• Custom code can either be deployed in a sandbox solutions or a custom application can be written that will make use of the Client Object Models (Silverlight, .Net framework or ECMA Script)
• Sandbox custom code is deployed through SharePoint solutions (wsp packages)
• You won't have access to deploy Full trust proxies so this means functionality that you usually write as FullTrustProxies will not be available. A common example is logging to the ULS. Similarly you won't be able to log to your own custom logging system unless you offer an accessible interface that can be called from the sandboxed code.

This post is based on the SharePoint Online Developer Overview beta documentation.

Update: 25/02/2011 - Steve Fox wrote this recently for SharePointPro Connections, "What Will it Be Like to Develop for SharePoint Online?"