Windows SharePoint Services
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Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) currently in version 3 provides all the objects underpinning all Microsoft SharePoint technology. WSS is provided as a free download from Microsoft for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or later and is added to the Microsoft .NET Framework. WSS 3 is an object model for creating web pages and developing web based collaboration, document management, and content publishing. WSS is only provided for Microsoft servers and cannot be deployed on any other OS.
At the time of this writing WSS is in its third release from Microsoft. WSS 3 is the framework that underlies Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as WSS 2 was the framework beneath SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
The SharePoint Object Model provided by WSS offers objects to support collaboration and document management functionality, centralized repository for shared documents. WSS also provides support for blogs and wikis. WSS supports browser-based management and administration.
WSS allows web based document collaboration can be shared for collaborative editing. SharePoint provides access control and revision control for documents in a library.
Installation of WSS on a server makes available a collection of web parts that can be embedded into web pages to provide a certain functionality. SharePoint includes web parts such as workspaces and dashboards, navigation tools, lists, alerts (including e-mail alerts), shared calendar, contact lists and discussion boards.
SharePoint serves content via IIS Web Sites. These use SQL Server technology to store content.
The web sites can be configured to return separate content for Intranet, Extranet and Internet locations. In WSS these deployments have no licensing implications but do so when Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is used.
SharePoint uses a similar LDAP permissions model to Microsoft Windows, via groups of users. This can be provided via Active Directory. Alternatively, other authentication providers can be added through or even HTML Forms authentication.
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[edit] Overview
A SharePoint page is built by combining the web parts into a web page, to be accessed using a browser. Any web editor supporting ASP.NET can be used for this purpose, even though Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer is the preferred editor. The extent of customization of the page depends on its design.
WSS pages are ASP.NET applications, and SharePoint web parts use the ASP.NET web parts infrastructure, and using the ASP.NET APIs, web parts can be written to extend the functionality of WSS. In terms of programmability, WSS exposes an API and object model to programmatically create and manage portals, workspaces and users. In contrast, the MOSS API is more geared towards automation of tasks and integration with other applications.[1] Both WSS and MOSS can use the web parts API to enhance the end user functionality. In addition, WSS document libraries can be exposed over ADO.NET connections to programmatically access the files and revisions in them.
At the web server level, WSS configures IIS to forward all requests, regardless of file and content types, to the ASP.NET session hosting the WSS web application, which either makes a certain revision of a certain file available from the database or takes other actions. Unlike regular ASP.NET applications, the .aspx which contains the WSS (and MOSS) application code, resides in SQL Server databases instead of the filesystem. As such, the regular ASP.NET runtime cannot process the file. Instead, WSS plugs a custom Virtual Path Provider component[2] into the ASP.NET pipeline, which fetches the .aspx files from the database for processing. With this feature, introduced with WSS 3.0, both the WSS application as well as the data it generates and manages, could be stored in a database
[edit] History
The first version, called SharePoint Team Services (usually abbreviated to STS), was released at the same time as Office XP and was available as part of Microsoft FrontPage. STS could run on Windows 2000 Server or Windows XP.
Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 was marketed as an upgrade to SharePoint Team Services, but was in fact a completely redesigned application[citation needed]. SharePoint Team Services stored documents in ordinary file storage, keeping document metadata in a database. Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 on the other hand, stores both the document and the metadata in a database, and supports basic document versioning for items in Document Libraries. Service Pack 2 for WSS added support for SQL Server 2005 and the use of the .NET Framework 2.0.
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 was released on November 16, 2006 as part of the Microsoft Office 2007 suite and Windows Server 2008. WSS 3.0 is built using .NET Framework 2.0 and .NET Framework 3.0 Windows Workflow Foundation to add workflow capabilities to the basic suite. By the beginning of 2007 WSS 3.0 was made available to the public. Windows 2000 Server is not supported by WSS 3.0.
[edit] Product Features
The WSS 3.0 wiki allows RSS export of content and, when viewed in Internet Explorer, provides a WYSIWYG editor. As with MediaWiki, it produces hyperlinks with a double square bracket but unlike MediaWiki it uses HTML for markup. An enhanced wiki is available for SharePoint on Codeplex and is free to download and install. The service is limited to upload of 50MB and some special characters like &,? .. are not allowed.
[edit] Improvements from WSS 2 to WSS 3
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WSS 3 marked a major maturation of the product. WSS 3 supported far more product features commonly used in Web 2.0 solutions like Blogs, Wiki. RSS. Web Content Management from the Former Microsoft CMS combined with easier administration, and improved UI. Therefore it should be no surprise that WSS 3 is generally accepted as the more mature tool and has seen the greatest adoption in Enterprise solutions.
[edit] The Content Objects hierarchy
Because WSS is primarily used to create html delivered sites in the form of .aspx files it is logical to view the WSS object hierarchy starting from that type of object. WSS represents single web pages with the SPWeb object.
The SPWeb class is part of the Microsoft SharePoint Namespace in the Assembly microsoft.sharepoint.dll. This dll is located in the GAC folder. The Web property of the SPContext class returns the SPWeb object of the current Web site. Thus the following C# code sets WebValue to the SPWeb:
- SPWeb WebValue = SPContext.Current.Web;
SharePoint content model allows the creation of SPWeb objects above and below other SPWeb objects. To enumerate subsites from a given SPWeb instance you use the method Webs.
A set of SPWebs can be collected together in a SPSite object. SPSite represents a Site Collection object in SharePoint. A SPSite will have SPContentDatabase object as a parent. This represents the SQL Server database that stores the Web Applications content. Parent to this class is the SPWebApplication object. The database represented by the SPContentDatabase object stores content for the SPWebApplication object. SPWebApplication inherits from the SPWebService class.
The following C# code will set ContentDatabases to the ContentDatabaseCollection
- public SPContentDatabaseCollection ContentDatabases { get; }
Below a SPWeb object is the SPWebList. SPWebList represents the SharePoint list object. Understanding lists is central to understanding how SharePoint manages information. Essentially everything that is managed by SharePoint will be in a list at some level. WSS 3.0 places emphasis upon lists over pages as such.
For example, the Quick Launch of a Windows SharePoint Services site (of the STS type) presents a hierarchy of sites, subsites, and lists (including lists of lists), instead of pages as such. If you add a page to such a site, the new page appears in the Quick Launch as a new item in a list of shared documents, not as a child node under the home page or some other page[3]
SPList is composed of distinct elements of the SPListItem. Each SPListItem will have a set of SPFields. SPFields is the lowest object of the hierarchy.
[edit] The Physical Objects hierarchy
The physical structure of a WSS deployment starts at the highest level with a farm. A farm is composed of servers. A server contains folders constraints files. Servers in a farm can be scaled out through load balancing and isolation of roles.
[edit] Download and Installation
WSS 3 can be downloaded for free from Microsoft and installed on a Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1 or later [4]
WSS 2 can still be downloaded for free from Microsoft and installed on a Windows Server 2003 or later. [5]
[edit] References
- ^ "Use Windows SharePoint Services as a Platform for Building Collaborative Apps, Part 2". http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/08/WebParts/. Retrieved on 2007-10-01.
- ^ "Discover Significant Developer Improvements In SharePoint Services". http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/07/WSS30Preview/default.aspx. Retrieved on 2007-10-01.
- ^ "Understanding the Administrative Object Model of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0". http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc300138.aspx. Retrieved on 2009-10-01.
- ^ "WSS 3 Download from Microsoft". http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D51730B5-48FC-4CA2-B454-8DC2CAF93951&displaylang=en. Retrieved on 2009-10-01..
- ^ "WSS 2 Download from Microsoft". http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B922B28D-806A-427B-A4C5-AB0F1AA0F7F9&displaylang=en. Retrieved on 2009-10-01.
