Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2006 (Day 1)

I am in Seattle to attend the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2006 on the latest Office SharePoint 2007 technology. In this blog, I will keep you post my update everyday. Hope you enjoy it.

15 May 2006 Day 1
- Opening keynote by Bill Gates. First time to see the REAL Bill Gates, it's cool. Seems like everyone loves to see him, just like a star in the hall :)
- Breakout 1: Overview of the Web Content Management Features of MS Office SHarePoint Server 2007
- Breakout 2: Building a Community, Wikis and RSS
- Breakout 3: Compliance and Record Management with MS SharePoint Server 2007
- Hands-on lab until 8pm

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Operating System and Database Services
Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on the technologies and services provided by Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and SQL Server 2005 (as well as SQL Server 2000).
The core and development-platform operating system services include:
• Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework which comprises:
• ASP.NET 2.0 master pages, content pages, and Web Parts
• Pluggable service-provider models for personalization, membership, navigation, and enhanced security
• Database access services
• Internet Information Services
• Windows Workflow Foundation
• Windows desktop indexing and search services
SQL Server is the relational database used for storing all content, data and configuration information used by Office SharePoint Server 2007. SQL Server 2005 is recommended; SQL Server 2005 Express is included as a default part of the installation. SQL Server 2000 can be used as an alternative.

Windows SharePoint Services
Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) builds on the operating system and database services to support requirements ranging from a team site for a workgroup, to large enterprise portal solutions serving over 100,000 employees and staff (such as Office SharePoint Server 2007), to a corporate Internet portal supporting millions of users.
Windows SharePoint Services platform services provide the following security-enhanced, scalable, reliable, high-performance capabilities:
• Storage
• Management
• Deployment
• Site Model
• Extensibility

In addition, Windows SharePoint Services, a feature of Windows Server 2003, implements the collaboration features of the 2007 release of Office SharePoint Products and Technologies:
• Document collaboration
• Wikis and Blogs
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS) support
• Discussions
• Project task management
• Contacts, Calendars, and Tasks
• E-mail integration
• Integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system client applications
• Offline support for SharePoint lists and document libraries, using Office Outlook 2007 as the offline client application.

Office SharePoint Server 2007: Applications and Services
Architecturally, Office SharePoint Server 2007 consists of a common set of Shared Services that support five server application components.
Server Applications
Office SharePoint Server 2007 comprises five application components:
• Portal
• Search
• Content management
• Business process
• Business intelligence
Each of these is built upon the platform services and collaboration components of Windows SharePoint Services and the Shared Services components of Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Shared Services
Conceptually similar to Shared Services in SharePoint Portal Server 2003, the Shared Services component has been completely restructured and redesigned in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 using a new services provider model.
Shared Services include virtually all of the services that are used by multiple applications in Office SharePoint Server 2007:
• Full-text and property indexing and search services
• Business Data Catalog
• Notification service for generating alerts
• User profile store
• Audiences
• Usage reporting
• Single sign-on services