The architecture in SharePoint 2010 has completely changed from its predecessor, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). In the previous version of SharePoint a Shared Services Provider (SSP) was used to provide services for a group of applications which were associated to a SSP. These included the following services:
- Office SharePoint Server Search: Necessary to crawl web applications in order to index content into a single index.
- Excel Services: Used to provide access to Excel workbooks in trusted data connection libraries
- My Sites: Provide a method for web applications to leverage the mysite functionality
- Usage Data: A Central location to store site usage data
- Business Data Catalog: A schema for stored business data
A web application in this case would only be associated with one SSP.
In SharePoint Server 2010 the architecture has been redesigned to be far more flexible and scalable. The ‘Service Applications’ are now what make up the above Shared Services with some additional services included in the new version. These are as follows:
(Read the full TechNet article here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc560988.aspx)
| Access Services | Lets users view, edit, and interact with Access 2010 databases in a Web browser. |
| Business Data Connectivity service | Gives access to line-of-business data systems. |
| Excel Services Application | Lets users view and interact withExcel 2010 files in a Web browser. |
| Managed Metadata service | Manages taxonomy hierarchies, keywords and social tagging infrastructure, and publish content types across site collections. |
| PerformancePoint Service Application | Provides the capabilities of PerformancePoint. |
| Search service | Crawls content, produces index partitions, and serves search queries. |
| Secure Store Service | Provides single sign-on authentication to access multiple applications or services. |
| State service | Provides temporary storage of user session data for SharePoint Server components. |
| Usage and Health Data Collection service | Collects farm wide usage and health data, and provides the ability to view various usage and health reports. |
| User Profile service | Adds support for My Site Web sites, profile pages, social tagging and other social computing features. |
| Visio Graphics Service | Lets users view and refresh published Visio 2010 diagrams in a Web browser. |
| Web Analytics service | Provides Web service interfaces. |
| Word Automation Services | Performs automated bulk document conversions. |
| Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service | Provides multi-tenant functionality for service applications. Tracks subscription IDs and settings for services that are deployed in partitioned mode. Deployed through Windows PowerShell only. |
The farm services are now far more extensible and scalable and can be shared with other farms via service application proxies.
I’ll be writing more about service applications in future posts.
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