Thursday 5 May 2011

1.2 History of SharePoint

1.2 SharePoint History

Development of SharePoint has a long history and many pre products were created before actual product came to existence.

Pre-SharePoint
Before SharePoint 2003 arrived, in 1996 Microsoft launched a product called Microsoft Site Server for managing websites and the user's authentication/authorization. In 1998, Microsoft launched Site Server v 3.0 with following features:
• Indexing and Search
• Content Management
• Product Management
• Order Processing
• Site Personalization
• Ad Server

Site server was a low-cost product with good content management abilities but it lacked document management and taxonomical abilities.
In 1997, Microsoft came with Microsoft Office FrontPage, which had a HTML WYSIWYG editor, used to create and administrate websites. Microsoft launched the last version of FrontPage in 2003 and was having abilities to view code and design by supporting asp. NET.

Neither Site Server nor FrontPage provides the ability to integrate & collaborate different information such as videos, files, applications, and documents.
Earliest Versions of SharePoint
Two versions of SharePoint came out in 2001.
1. SharePoint Team Services (STS)
2. SharePoint Portal Server (SPS)

The SharePoint Team Services (STS) developed from the Microsoft FrontPage was considered a bottom’s-up technology that means creating websites were still left to end users. The websites created using STS supported a maximum of 75 users. STS was also known as Office webserver. SharePoint Team Services (STS) was intended as a departmental Intranet and used SQL Server as its backing store.

The SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) was developed from the Site Server, for site administrators. SPS is used to index and search files stored on STS.
There was still a clear disconnect between the STS and SPS. The move to integrate their functionality drove the development of SharePoint.
SharePoint 2003
Microsoft launched WSS 2.0 and SharePoint Server in 2003 separately.

Windows SharePoint service 2.0 was made freely available as a component with Microsoft windows server 2003. WSS 2.0 enables organizations to create websites and portals easily for information sharing and document collaboration.

SharePoint 2003 was considered the first integrated and comprehensive solution for sharing information, files, applications, and websites. It integrates the capabilities of the STS and SPS. It allows website & dashboard creation using easy user interface. SharePoint 2003 server is a licensed product. It provides all the features of WSS 2.0 and many additional features.

SharePoint 2003, stores the entire top-level site configuration and data in a single database. This limits the effective size that a site collection could grow; even backups and restores were time- consuming. The web parts (web parts are reusable components that display content on web pages) available were more compatible but they were very complex to create. Permissions were clumsy and difficult to maintain.

SharePoint 2007
Microsoft upgraded WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0 by still keeping it as freely available.
Until now, end users started enjoying the experience of SharePoint and providing feedback with the demand of more and more new features. In 2007, Microsoft came up with the new product termed as “SharePoint 2007”. This product was in integration with the Microsoft base office user product called “Microsoft office,” so Microsoft termed this product as “MOSS 2007 [Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2007]. Moss 2007 integrates with windows server, SQL Server and the .Net Framework.
In the earlier versions of SharePoint, the primary site-editing tool was FrontPage that at least in theory could be used for other web creation projects as well. With SharePoint 2007, FrontPage was extensively updated and rebranded as Office SharePoint Designer. SharePoint Designer allowed easy customization of sites without needing to write any code. Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is a new product for creating and customizing Microsoft SharePoint Web sites and building workflow-enabled applications. It provides the professional quality design tools that you need to create great-looking SharePoint pages that are compatible with a wide range of browsers.

SharePoint 2010
The hunger and desire to add more and more user-friendly features according to user needs continued and in April 2010, Microsoft came up with the latest version called “SharePoint 2010”. The technology WSS 3.0 is upgraded to “SharePoint Foundation Server”. Like WSS 3.0 Microsoft continued its practice to keep the technology SharePoint foundation server as free version. SharePoint latest versions 2010 centers its focus on the Sites, Communities, Content, Search, Insight, and Composite.

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 was upgraded to SharePoint Designer 2010. Microsoft designed SharePoint 2010 as a 64 bit Product. The two main reasons behind this are:
1. Improving the performance
2. Flexibility

Feel free to ping at vguptadelhi@gmail.com, in case of any queries.

No comments:

Post a Comment