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
ServerSite 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
yusuf.talk786@gmail.com, in case of any queries.
