A Software Development Kit (SDK, sometimes also called Platform SDK) is a set of development tools that allows for the creation of applications for an operating system and/or a software or hardware platform. The SDK is a collection of APIs (Applications Programming Interfaces, a very large set of libraries and functions that a developer can use for developing the source code of an application) and tools (like compilers and linkers, that create the executable files for an application starting from the source code written by the developer); having the SDK a developer can build any applications that targets the platform the SDK is built for (using or not a development environment like Microsoft Visual Studio that allows the developer to use the tools provided by the SDK in a more comfortable way).
Richard Mueller edited Revision 5. Comment: Removed (en-US) from title, added tags
Carsten Siemens edited Revision 4. Comment: typo fixed
Luigi Bruno edited Revision 3. Comment: Added the "See Also" section.
Luigi Bruno edited Revision 2. Comment: Added "Windows Server Solutions SDK Forum" in the "Forums" list of the "Community Resources" section.
Pantelis44999 edited Revision 1. Comment: Added Wiki Pages reference in Community resources
Luigi Bruno edited Original. Comment: Edited the "What is the SDK?" section. Added the "Forums" section.