SharePoint

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Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer

SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. 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 does not intend to replace an entire file server (e.g., an imposed 2 gigabyte file size limitation). SharePoint functionality is exposed as web parts, such as a task list or discussion pane. These web parts are composed into web pages, which are then hosted in the SharePoint portal. SharePoint sites are actually ASP.NET 2.0 applications, which are served using IIS and use a SQL Server database as data storage backend.

The term "SharePoint" is commonly used to refer to one of the following two products:

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS)

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

The SharePoint family also includes the Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (SPD)

1 The SharePoint Family
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] The SharePoint Family

[edit] Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a free add-on to Windows Server. 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 was previously known as SharePoint Team Services. Out of the box, only one workflow is available, which is the tri-state work flow 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 form for the state forms and use ASP.Net pages instead.

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

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is a costed component of the Microsoft Office server suite. MOSS is built on top of WSS and adds more functionality to it, including better document management, enterprise search functionality, navigation features, RSS support, as well as features from Microsoft Content Management Server. The Enterprise edition of MOSS also includes features for business data analysis, such as Excel Services and the Business Data Catalog. MOSS also provides integration with Microsoft Office applications, such as project management capabilities with Microsoft Project Server and the ability to expose Microsoft Office InfoPath forms via a browser.^[2] It can also host specific libraries, such as PowerPoint Template Libraries, provided the server components of the specific application are installed. MOSS was previously known as SharePoint Server and SharePoint Portal Server.

[edit] Microsoft Search Server

Microsoft Search Server (MSS) is an enterprise search platform from Microsoft, based 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 Search Server has been made available as Search Server 2008, which was released on March 2008. A free version, Search Server Express 2008, 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 SharePoint Designer (SPD)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (SPD) is a WYSIWYG HTML editor, which is primarily aimed at designing SharePoint sites and end-user workflows for WSS sites. It shares its rendering engine with Microsoft Expression Web, its general web designing sibling, and Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 IDE.

Microsoft Sharepoint 2003 used Microsoft FrontPage. FrontPage is not compatible with Sharepoint 2007 or MOSS.