Microsoft SharePoint

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Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer

In computing, the Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies sold by Microsoft includes browser-based collaboration and a document-management platform. It can be used to host web sites that access shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications like wikis and blogs from a browser. SharePoint is not intended to replace a full file server. Instead, it is targeted as a collaborative workspace, a tool for the management and automation of business processes, and a platform for social networking. Microsoft markets this as Collaboration, Processes, and People. SharePoint interface is through a web interface, such as a task list or discussion pane. SharePoint sites are actually ASP.NET 2.0 applications, which are served using IIS and use a SQL Server database as a data storage backend. All site content data is stored within a SQL Server database called WSS_Content.

The term "SharePoint" collectively refers to two products, the platform and the services; this can be very confusing to beginners since it is counter-intuitive. WSS 3.0 is the platform while MOSS 2007 provides additional services. As of 2008 the most current of these two are:

Previous versions of this software used different names (SharePoint Portal Server 2003, for example) but are referred to as "SharePoint".

In the beginning, SharePoint was a mixed bag of products and technologies. Among them was Site Server in 1998. The SharePoint initiative was collectively called Tahoe.

The SharePoint family also includes the Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer

Contents

[edit] Collaborative Tools

Collaborative technologies are tools that enable people to interact with other people within a group more efficiently and, in many cases, more effectively. This includes familiar tools like email discussion lists and tele-conferencing. Recently, a number of new collaborative tools have emerged that have much to offer groups of researchers looking for new ways to increase their productivity and overall effectiveness. They are particularly relevant to groups where individual members are not all geographically co-located.

SharePoint is one such collaborative tool.

Microsoft SharePoint enables groups to configure portals and hierarchies of websites without specifically requiring web-development. This allows groups of end-users, as participants, to have much greater control in finding, creating, collecting, organizing, and collaborating on relevant information, in a browser-based environment. It also allows views of the different collections of information to be easily filtered, grouped, and/or sorted by each consumer according to their current desire. It has a robust permissions structure, allowing organizations to target users' access and capabilities based on their organizational role, team membership, interest, security group, or any other membership criteria that can be defined.

[edit] The SharePoint family

[edit] Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) comprises a free add-on to Windows Server. It is included with Windows Server 2003 R2. WSS offers the base collaborative infrastructure, supporting HTTP- and HTTPS-based editing of documents, as well as document organization in document libraries, version control capabilities, wikis, and blogs. It also includes end-user functionality such as workflows, to-do lists, alerts and discussion boards,[1] which are exposed as web parts to be embedded into SharePoint pages. WSS 3.0 is built on top of ASP.NET 2.0. WSS was previously known as SharePoint Team Services. Out of the box, only one workflow is available, which is the tri-state workflow for simple workflow control. Additional workflows can be created via SharePoint designer or Visual Studio .NET. The major limitation is that workflows in WSS 3.0 are unable to use InfoPath 2007 for the state forms and use ASP.NET pages instead.

[edit] Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is a package that provides additional functionality on top of WSS 3.0. The standard version includes out-of-the-box workflows and reporting, additional policy management, auditing and records management for the file sharing capabilities, greater personalisation of the sites, as well as further search capabilities including enterprise search and people search. The enterprise edition includes business data search, the Business Data Catalog, e-forms and Business Intelligence capabilities such as Excel Services, Report Center and Dashboarding.[2]

[edit] Microsoft Search Server

Microsoft Search Server (MSS), an enterprise search platform from Microsoft, builds on the search capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.[3] MSS shares its architectural underpinnings with the Windows Search platform for both the querying engine as well as the indexer. MOSS search provides the ability to search metadata attached to documents.

Microsoft has made Microsoft Search Server available as Search Server 2008, released on March 2008. A free version, Search Server 2008 Express, is also available. The express edition features the same feature set as the commercial edition, including no limitation on the number of files indexed; however, it is limited to a stand-alone installation and cannot be scaled out to a cluster.[4]

[edit] Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer

The WYSIWYG HTML editor Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer primarily targets the design of SharePoint sites and end-user workflows for WSS sites. It is the sucessor to FrontPage 2003. It shares its rendering engine with Microsoft Expression Web, its general web designing sibling, and Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 IDE. SPD represents a next-generation Microsoft replacement for Microsoft FrontPage. SPD requires that IIS has Frontpage extensions installed on the server.

Microsoft SharePoint [Portal] Server 2003 used Microsoft FrontPage. FrontPage is not compatible with SharePoint 2007 or MOSS.

[edit] The SharePoint Open Source Community

CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. There are many SharePoint projects available here.

[edit] Similar products

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Windows SharePoint Services Overview". Retrieved on 2007-10-01.
  2. ^ "Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server overview". Retrieved on 2008-10-28.
  3. ^ "Microsoft Unveils Enterprise Search Products". Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
  4. ^ "Microsoft Gives Away Search Server 2008". Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
  5. ^ Darrow, Barbara (2005-08-22). "New Oracle Collaboration Suite Takes Aim At Microsoft SharePoint". InformationWeek. Retrieved on 2008-07-29.

[edit] External links


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