SharePoint Technology Stack

A unified Web hosting technology supports Microsoft’s latest team site and corporate portal products.

Data Tier. Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Office SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) 2003 both store user, site, profile, and configuration data in SQL Server databases. A SharePoint installation will have a single configuration database, provided by WSS, that contains information such as global configuration data (e.g., information on the Web servers in the installation) and server settings (e.g., team site-to-content database mapping). WSS also maintains all team content, such as lists and documents, in one or more SQL databases. SPS adds databases for specific content such as topics and news, profile information imported from Active Directory, and SPS services, which includes data for searching and indexing support.

Web Tier. The Web tier includes sites for central administration and end-user interaction (WSS and SPS sites), providing one administrative virtual server for each physical server in a group of WSS or SPS servers and a single end-user virtual server for each domain name in the group (e.g., http://portal). A single SPS portal site resides at the root of the end-user virtual server, while a virtual server can support many top-level WSS team sites (e.g., http://portal/sites/team_site_1, http://portal/sites/team_site_2). Top-level team sites can, in turn, support many subsites and workspaces.