SharePoint Products and Technologies: Overview and New Features

Abstract

SharePoint Products and Technologies is a term that is used to describe Microsoft’s collaboration platform widely. More specifically, this term today refers to two distinct applications: Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). Windows SharePoint Services provides the foundation for the platform and is actually a component of the Windows Server 2003 operating system. It provides core functionality such as the ability to quickly provision collaboration sites, and a sophisticated document repository featuring collaboration necessities such as versioning, checkin/checkout, as well as a metadata system. Whereas WSS provides collaborative sites to facilitate teams of users, MOSS provides features to the enterprise. With MOSS, the focus is on distributing information, application integration, search, and content-management features targeted beyond basic document sharing.