SharePoint Hosted App & Provider Hosted App

SharePoint Hosted Apps

With SharePoint Hosted Apps, everything including the app files are stored within SharePoint. When an app is installed to a site from the app catalog, a sub- site (sub-web) is created that stores the files that make up the app. This is usually referred to as an appweb. Things like pages, java script, etc… When a user leverages the app within SharePoint, the client will automatically fetch the app contents from the sub-web and client processing occurs to render whatever the app does. In this case, it’s not possible to run servers side code and app processing occurs client side.

Why use Provider Hosted Apps and not SharePoint Hosted Apps?
There are two answers to this question.

1. The first is you need to run some server side code which is not possible with a SharePoint hosted app.
2. The second is if SAML Claims authentication provider is setup with ADFS 2.0. This isn’t compatible with SharePoint hosted apps so you must use Provider Hosted Apps.

Note: If customer is using ADFS 3.0, they can leverage and use SharePoint Hosted Apps.

Provider Hosted Apps

Provider Hosted App is one where the app is hosted outside of SharePoint. For Example, a server hosting IIS can host the app contents in a site. This is referred to as a remoteweb. This is more of a hybrid in that it can run a mix of both client and server side code.