12 Microsoft SharePoint Sites - Winners of the International 2008 Information Style Award
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Wonderlane

Here is a combination of free webcast tutorials on SharePoint for Developers.

You must click on this link to see a library of webcasts:SharePoint Videos

Is another name for SharePoint. SharePoint is not a single product – unambiguously it is a cluster of products that include these:

  • Web browser based collaboration functions
  • Process management modules
  • Search modules and a document-management platform

SharePoint can be used to host web sites that access:

  • Shared workspaces
  • Information stores
  • Documents
  • Host defined applications such as wikis and blogs

All users can manipulate or interact with:

  • Web parts
  • Document libraries
  • Lists

Background:

SharePoint refers to a base platform and a variety of services. The platform is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), which is included with Windows Server and available as a free download for those with Windows Server licenses. (If you do not have Windows Server and you are a Vista user, you can use a Bamboo Nation free product to run SharePoint.) Services such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) provide additional functionality and features and are licensed accordingly.

SharePoint Products:

SharePoint consists of these components:

  • Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer
  • Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS)
  • Search Server 2008 Express
  • Search Server 2008
  • Forms Server 2007
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 MOSS Standard
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 MOSS Enterprise
  • Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007

SharePoint, as a collection of technologies, is not intended to simply replace a full file server or to be a single use solution. Rather, SharePoint provides a variety of solutions to several problems in the business world. These several solutions that SharePoint provides fall under three different heads: Collaboration, Processes, and People.

Users access SharePoint through a web browser. All browsers are supported, but only Internet Explorer provides you with full functionality.

SharePoint sites are functionally ASP.NET 2.0 web applications, which are served using IIS and use a SQL Server database as a data storage back end. All site content data, such as items in document libraries and lists, are stored within an SQL database named by default as “WSS_Content_ID”.

Microsoft Search Server:

Microsoft Search Server (MSS) is an enterprise search platform from Microsoft. It builds on the search capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. MSS is based on the Windows Search platform, and they both use the same querying engine and indexer. MOSS search allows one to search metadata attached to documents.

Microsoft has made Microsoft Search Server available as Search Server 2008, released March 2008. A free version, Search Server 2008 Express, is also available. The exprss edition is limited to a stand-alone installation and cannot be scaled out to a cluster.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer is a free WYSIWYG HTML Editor that administrators can use to customize the design of the SharePoint site and that end users can use in designing workflows. SharePoint Designers is the successor to Microsoft FrontPage and replaces it.

More Resources: