SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. It can be used to host web sites which can be used to access shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications such as wikis, blogs and many other forms of applications, from within a browser. SharePoint functionality is exposed as web parts, such as a task list, or discussion pane. These web parts are composed into web pages, which are then hosted in the SharePoint portal. SharePoint sites are actually ASP.NET applications, which are served using IIS and use a SQL Server database as data storage backend.
The term 'Sharepoint' is commonly used to refer to one of the following two products:
In addition, previous versions of this software used different names (Sharepoint Portal Server for example) but are referred to as "Sharepoint".
The Sharepoint family also includes the Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (SPD)
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a free add-on to Windows Server. WSS offers the base collaborative infrastructure, providing editing of documents, as well as document organization, version control capabilities, wikis, and blogs. It also includes end user functionality such as workflows, to-do lists, alerts and discussion boards,[1] which are exposed as web parts to be embedded into SharePoint pages. WSS was previously known as SharePoint Team Services..
Microsoft Search Server (MSS) is an enterprise search platform from Microsoft, based on the search capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.[2] MSS shares its architectural underpinnings with the Windows Search platform for both the querying engine as well as the indexer.
Microsoft Search Server has been made available as Search Server 2008, which is scheduled to release in the first half of 2008. The pricing has not been decided yet.[2] A free version, Search Server Express 2008 will also be made available. The express edition will feature the same feature-set as the commercial edition, including no limitation on the number of files indexed; however, it is limited to a stand-alone installation and cannot be scaled out to a cluster.[3] A release candidate of Search Server Express 2008 was made available on November 7, 2007; it is scheduled to RTM in sync with Search Server 2008.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is a paid component of the Microsoft Office server suite. MOSS is built on top of WSS and adds more functionality to it, including better document management, enterprise search functionality, navigation features, RSS support, as well as features from Microsoft Content Management Server. It also includes features for business data analysis such as Excel Services and the Business Data Catalog. MOSS also provides integration with Microsoft Office applications, such as project management capabilities with Microsoft Project Server and the ability to expose Microsoft Office InfoPath forms via a browser.[4] It can also host specific libraries, such as PowerPoint Template Libraries provided the server components of the specific application are installed. MOSS was previously known as SharePoint Server and SharePoint Portal Server.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (SPD) is a WYSIWYG HTML editor, which is primarily aimed at designing SharePoint sites and end-user workflows for WSS sites. It shares its rendering engine with Microsoft Expression Web, its general web designing sibling, and Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 IDE.