2.4. Introducing WSS and MOSS Technologies

The current version of SharePoint (including WSS v3 and MOSS) is the third generation of office document management, collaboration, and publishing products offered by Microsoft. As discussed earlier, this lineage started with SharePoint Team Services (supported by FPSE 2002) offered with Office XP and has now grown into a robust, scalable, and extendable platform for Web-based application development for intranet, extranet, and Internet scenarios.

Out-of-the-box installation of SharePoint provides for a large number of features that can be configured and used just as they are or exploited by application developers for custom implementation and business logic architecture.

2.4.1. Comparing WSS and MOSS offerings

When choosing between WSS and MOSS, know that WSS is freely downloadable on Microsoft's Web site (www.microsoft.com/downloads). MOSS relies on the infrastructure that WSS provides for SharePoint sites, so that when you install MOSS, the setup program first installs WSS by itself on the machine.

However, while WSS only provides you with basic collaboration features, MOSS offers a more complete collaboration and publishing feature set and includes advanced functionality for enterprise-level implementation. These features include user profiles and personal sites; audience targeting; advanced search capabilities; and add-on services, such as Excel Services, Form Services, and Business Data Catalogs.

2.4.2. Understanding basic SharePoint ...

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