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Microsoft SharePoint Server

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Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
Developer(s)Microsoft
Stable release
2010 (v14.0.4763.1000) / April 22, 2010
Operating systemWindows Server
PlatformIntel 64-bit x86
Available inMultiple languages[which?]
TypeCollaborative software
LicenseProprietary commercial software
Websitesharepoint.microsoft.com

Microsoft SharePoint Server (formerly known as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server[1])[2] is a product in the Microsoft SharePoint family of products.

Microsoft SharePoint Server is a Microsoft proprietary software product. SharePoint Server works with Microsoft IIS web server to produce sites intended for collaboration, file sharing, web databases, social networking and web publishing. SharePoint server farms can host web sites, portals, intranets, extranets, Internet sites, web content management systems, search engine, wikis, blogs, social networking, business intelligence, workflow as well as providing a framework for web application development.

Product Overview

SharePoint provides messaging, collaboration, publishing and document management features in one server. SharePoint is hosted on a central server or server farm and is accessed by users either through a compatible web browser or directly via Microsoft Office.

Sites

SharePoint 2010 Sites provides infrastructure for business Web sites. SharePoint supports Interenet and extranet applications, intranet portals, blogs, wikis and team collaboration sites.

Communities

​SharePoint 2010 Communities provide collaboration tools including a social community and collaborative content creation. Tools include collaborative document management, discussion forums, blogs, wikis and Social Networking (MySites).

Composites

SharePoint 2010 introduced Composites, which comprises tools and components for creating and distributing "do-it-yourself" business solutions. Composites apply WYSIWYG tools to accelerate the process of solution production, without manually creating or compiling code. Composites allow users to share solutions on the server. Composites allow web distribution of Microsoft Office products such as Visio, Excel, and Access. Uses can employ the web page to build custom web parts. Separately, SharePoint Designer also offers users the ability to create solutions without code.

Content

​SharePoint provides a Web Content Management platform for publishing web sites. It also provides a Document Management solution for collaborative document production.

Insights

​SharePoint 2010 can be used to supply information from databases, reports, business applications and other "line of business" applications.

SharePoint 2010 supports "enterprise search" internally and also supports Fast.com for greater power and access to as many as 500 million documents.[3] SharePoint 2010 search added explicit boolean logic (OR, AND and NOT) and wild cards.[4] SharePoint 2010 cab access MySites data. Search provides tacit knowledge about users and authors as well as semantic meaning.[5]

Architecture Overview

A SharePoint Server requires an external database to operate. SharePoint can only work with Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Express for Databases, the latter only on a single server (recommended only for development.)

A group of SharePoint Server installations can work together to increase capacity, security and availability. Sets of roles can be shared by some or all servers in a group. For example in SharePoint 2010, servers can be dedicated to crawling (analyzing) content to create the search index. All servers in a group share a common database instance.

SharePoint does not require LDAP and supports Active Directory, other LDAPs, or forms [[[authentication]].

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enhancements over Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

SharePoint 2010 was released to manufacturing (RTM) on April 17, 2010[6]

SharePoint 2010 is distributed in three editions: SharePoint Foundation 2010 which comes as a free download, SharePoint Server 2010 Standard and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise which both have a licensing fee.[7][8] Microsoft has described the new version as the "Business Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise and the Web".[9] SharePoint 2010 has the following significant enhancements and changes over the previous edition.

  • SharePoint 2010 farms will only run on 64 bit servers, though 32 bit client machines are still supported;
  • SharePoint 2010 will no longer be supported on IE 6;
  • SharePoint 2010 UI makes significant use of JavaScript and Ajax;
  • Introduction of the editing Office Ribbon in line with Office 2007;
  • Web Edit, allowing easy customization of a site;
  • Easier ability to package and publish modifications made in the UI, SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio;
  • Silverlight Web Part, allowing rapid integration of rich Silverlight applications;
  • Rich Theming, allowing improved skinning of a SharePoint 2010 site;
  • Support for multiple browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (amongst others);
  • Enterprise Metadata Management ("SharePoint taxonomy"), which enables a centralized taxonomy;
  • Records Management features provided throughout the document management;
  • Inline editing of lists and forms using Ajax, reducing the number of post-backs to the Server;
  • Closer confirmation to WCAG 2.0 AA standards (though not full compliance);
  • More master pages including a "simple" master page to make web design with SharePoint much easier;
  • Improved Search function, including bring Fast in to the SharePoint stack;
  • Improved two way integration with Line of Business (LOB) applications;
  • Expanding social computing features from previous MySites;
  • Adoption of Rest web service along with SOAP.

The product includes a collection of other new features relevant to IT professionals,[10] developers[11] and partners.[12] Complications in upgrading to SharePoint 2010[13][14] include a lack of support for Internet Explorer 6, only 64-bit architecture is supported, and businesses will need to run the latest versions of other Microsoft products (notably Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Office 2010) to take advantage of full functionality.

Features

Microsoft Office integration

SharePoint Server integrates closely with Microsoft Office. It can render documents in web pages. Documents can be edited from within an Internet browser. Users can directly edit Excel and InfoPath documents, using server resources to perform calculations, layout forms, etc.

Microsoft Office Outlook can be used to access and synchronize document libraries.[15] The library and its files and metadata can be viewed and searched using the familiar Outlook interface. Documents/libraries can be "synchronized" allowing access when not connected to the server. Locally changed documents can be copied back to the server upon reconnecting. Additional integration includes:

  • Calendar synchronization and overlaying server and local calendars
  • Task synchronization
  • Offline document synchronization
  • RSS feed access
  • Allow other users to interact with Access databases from browsers.[16]

SharePoint Server can search across document libraries and user groups.[17] SharePoint Server indexes library documents, external databases that support ADO.NET or web services with a well-defined WSDL schema, file shares, Microsoft Exchange "public folders", and databases. The portal interface or client applications can then search this index.

The indexing system is a tuned variant of Windows Desktop Search. The indexer uses specified crawling rules to decide what to index. The indexer continuously propagates its results, allowing searches of partial indexes. Administration is via a visual application. The search interface suggests search terms in case of typographical errors.

Sharepoint Server can search for people, based on their affiliation and expertise. It can search from SharePoint user groups, as well as Active Directory and other LDAP directories provided the information has been imported into SharePoint Server.

Business Connectivity Services

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) enables presentation of business data from server applications such as SAP or Oracle. Databases can be viewed by the web-based interface without writing code.

BCS comprises a metadata repository and an object model. It presents a consistent, object-oriented interface to business logic in typical business applications. The Business Data Catalog (BDC) provides homogeneous access to the underlying data via a simple client object model. The BDC Definition Editor (BDC/DE) is now included in the SharePoint Server SDK.[18] BDC/DE can connect to a database or a web service provided by a LOB system and generate the Application Definition File from information the service supplies. Catalog maintainenance involves four roles: a business analyst identifies the data to be presented; a metadata author creates the tags to identify the data to SharePoint, an administrator, and a developer.

MySites

MySite enables users to obtain access to a personalized view of the information that is relevant to them. Users control access to information that they put in a MySite. They and select whether their colleagues, manager, or everyone in the organization can see individual items. The Private view of a user's MySite enables them to see:

  • Workspace - Aaccessible workspaces
  • My Links - User-chosen web links.
  • Personalization Sites - List of sites derived from the user's organizational role (HR, Facilities, Finance, etc.) Role-based personalization templates ease setup.
  • Colleague Tracker - (Permitted) changes in colleague's MySites.
  • Outlook e-mail - Exchange/Outlook e-mail and calendar information.
  • Distribution Groups - Groups that the user is a member of and or that the user has in common with another user
  • SharePoint Services - Recycle Bin, Version Control, Workflow, etc.
  • Language packs and templates allows users to create their MySites in their preferred language instead of the language of the public areas.

Accessibility

Sharepoint web sites typically do not adhere to the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 1.0 specification.[19][20] Sharepoint 2007 relied extensively on table-based layouts, especially in the Web Parts Framework. Sharepoint's built-in controls produce markup that does not validate under XHTML doctypes.[21] Substantial custom development is necessary to comply with these standards.[22] Sharepoint solutions are rare in situations where strict adherence to accessibility standards is required, such as the public sector.[19]

SharePoint 2010 produces XHTML that is more compliant with WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards. However, in "standard discussion" users can post content from non-compliant web pages, compromising accessibility.

Previous Versions of SharePoint Server

MOSS 2007

In 2007 Microsoft released Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). This product was licensed in standard and enterprise versions. The 2007 release also included a free version called Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0. MOSS 2007 was the first release that joined Web Content Management to SharePoint. Before that Microsoft had a WCM product called Microsoft Content Management Server last released in 2002.

SPS 2003 and WSS 2.0

In 2003 Microsoft released SharePoint Server 2003 and the free WSS 2.0.

SPS 2001

In 2001 Microsoft released SharePoint Server 2001, SPS' first commercial release.[23], code-named Tahoe.

References

  1. ^ Official website of the previous version
  2. ^ "Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010". Microsoft TechNet website. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 2 September 2010.
  3. ^ Vedant Kulshreshtha Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products
  4. ^ Mirjam van Olst: What’s new for end users in SharePoint Search 2010
  5. ^ Jed Cawthorne "How Search Has Improved in SharePoint 2010" CMSWire
  6. ^ [1] SharePoint Team Blog
  7. ^ http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Editions-Comparison.aspx
  8. ^ http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167092
  9. ^ Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Site 2009 Microsoft Corporation
  10. ^ SharePoint 2010 Benefits for IT Professionals 2009 Microsoft Corporation
  11. ^ SharePoint 2010 Benefits for Developers 2009 Microsoft Corporation
  12. ^ SharePoint 2010 Benefits for Partners 2009 Microsoft Corporation
  13. ^ [2]
  14. ^ http://wiki.softartisans.com/display/~jonathanb/2010/08/13/Adventures+upgrading+to+SharePoint+2010
  15. ^ "SharePoint & Outlook – The Perfect Link". Retrieved 2007-10-02.
  16. ^ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff402351.aspx
  17. ^ "Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007". Retrieved 2007-10-01.
  18. ^ "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK". Retrieved 2007-10-01.
  19. ^ a b "SharePoint Accessibility - Is SharePoint Server 2007 accessible?". Retrieved 2007-05-11.
  20. ^ "Focus on Accessibility". Sharepoint2007.com: the business portal for SharePoint 2007 information. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
  21. ^ Zac Smith. "Guide to making Sharepoint XHTML Compliant". Retrieved 2007-05-11.
  22. ^ "Another day, another accessible MOSS website". Retrieved 2007-05-11.
  23. ^ Joining the dot blog: Sharepoint history
Official resources
Third-party resources
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