7 Things You Need to Know About SharePoint Services

More and more companies are rolling out Windows SharePoint Services to exploit the product's Web-based collaboration, information-sharing, and workflow capabilities. Microsoft once positioned Exchange Server as its workflow and collaboration tool, but the company's Exchange road map now focuses Exchange exclusively on messaging, and SharePoint has assumed the role of Microsoft's workflow and collaboration technology.

As you might know, SharePoint is a very different animal from Exchange, and although you'll find integration points between SharePoint, Exchange, Outlook, and Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA), they come with a few important caveats. Given that Exchange administrators are typically the go-to people for rolling out and administering SharePoint, you would do well to heed these seven points I've come up with in regard to supporting all these technologies.

#1: SharePoint Is an IIS Application
End users and management frequently confuse SharePoint with its overall relationship to Exchange and Outlook, thanks to the way marketing hype presents these technologies as occupying a seamless environment. Under the hood, however, SharePoint is a distinct application. Like OWA, SharePoint is a Microsoft IIS application, but instead of accessing Exchange, SharePoint stores all its content in a Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) database. Therefore, if you need to be able to perform full text searching of content (including uploaded documents), you must use SQL Server or implement Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. Internally, SharePoint uses an Internet Server API (ISAPI) filter, but it's primarily implemented in ASP.NET, so that advanced configuration of SharePoint sometimes involves modifying XML files that ASP.NET uses. Although not strictly required, some familiarity with ASP.NET and XML will help you if you need to perform more advanced SharePoint administration tasks, such as customizing SharePoint or installing extensions called Web Parts. A basic IIS understanding is a must. . . .