Sharing Your Data with SharePoint

It seems that every couple of years something new occurs in technology that causes a stir. For Microsoft, the latest hot buttons are .NET, XML, and now SharePoint. In all three cases, the technologies (.NET and XML) and product (SharePoint) have increased productivity and made life simpler for developers and users alike.

Introducing SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint consists of two components: Microsoft SharePoint Team Services (STS) and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server (SPS). STS allows teams of people to collaborate and share documents, tasks, and schedules. SPS is a Web portal that lets you set up your server to handle the searching and storing of documents. You can think of STS as a front end to SPS, where multiple but separate team services might use the same portal service. You can see an example of a SharePoint Team Services Web site in Figure 25-8.