WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007

Overview

SharePoint is often used to collectively refer to two of Microsoft's products. MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server) of which there are both standard and enterprise version, and WSS (Windows SharePoint Services). These products evolved form three other products; CMS the Content Management Server which Microsoft acquired, STS the SharePoint Team Server which emerged from an internal project and SPS the SharePoint Portal Server.

WSS is SharePoints core which allows for web based collaboration and document sharing model.

MOSS Standard and Enterprise bring more features and functionality for business. While WSS is free MOSS is not and the enterprise version is more expensive than the standard.

Typical Applications

SharePoint provides collaborative workspaces and document management in a centralized repository. Other features include customizable portals Microsoft Integration and support for blogs, wikis and browser based administration.

As such it is very popular with business intranets, SNS sites and collaborative enterprises. It is not intended to be a file server.

Languages & Components

SharePoint is considered to be a ASP.NET application running through IIS. SharePoint is customizable with web-parts. Web-Parts are small widget like apps you can add into your portals to get the data you need about your business in the way you need it.

Silverlight, which is Microsoft's answer to flex, is also rapidly taking hold to provide a more appealing and rich interface for users and their web-parts.

Server Technology

SharePoint 2007 version run on IIS 7, require an MSSQL database and ASP.NET version 3.0

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