SharePoint® 2007 and Office Development Expert Solutions

Chapter 2. Understanding SharePoint 2007 Services and Architecture

Microsoft's SharePoint technology architecture provides a foundation for developers to create web sites, collaboration tools and enterprise services for web content management, search, records management, and other document management and collaboration functions. One significant improvement in the SharePoint 2007 architecture is the improved integration of the Windows SharePoint Services components with the SharePoint Server technology, which helps developers to leverage their code for small-scale applications that don't require the SharePoint server functions along with larger SharePoint Server application deployments that include the additional services available in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Additional improvements include the areas of search services, including search support for data residing in business applications or third-party databases, and mobile services to enable greater reach for accessing SharePoint applications on mobile devices.

The core components of the SharePoint technology stack are Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. In this chapter we'll cover architectural elements of the SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services products that are relevant to developers, and highlight the key technologies that developers need to understand to build SharePoint applications or to integrate SharePoint features into their existing code.

To understand ...