Microsoft SharePoint

Omicron has been helping companies develop and integrate systems to enable collaboration, information sharing and business process automation since the personal computer was first introduced. These systems were mostly custom developed and loosely coupled together. Today however, Microsoft’s SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is a development platform which enables the deployment of a personalized environment including collaboration technology, integration of disparate systems and data, workflow and business process automation all within a common architecture and framework while inheriting all of the corporate security.

Omicron has been involved with this exciting technology since it’s inception by Microsoft. In fact Omicron was asked to be part of the SharePoint Server 2003 Joint Development Program (JDP) with the Redmond based SharePoint Product Team. This program included less than 50 companies throughout the world. As part of the JDP, Omicron worked closely with the SharePoint Product Team for over one year on the SharePoint Product. In this program, Omicron had early and frequent access to the Microsoft product managers, architects, project leads and software. We worked closely with Microsoft, often on site in Redmond, to provide detailed requirements and feedback to the team about the detail workings of the SharePoint System.

Being one of the world leaders in SharePoint Technology knowledge enabled Omicron the ability to develop a commercial software product which extends the functionality and usefulness of SharePoint Portal Server. Since its release Omicron has had the opportunity to develop and deploy many corporate solutions based upon SharePoint Portal Server 2003 saving companies millions in operation costs.

So what makes the SharePoint Portal technology so powerful? It is simple; SharePoint’s ability to be a flexible and scalable platform for delivering services, aggregating information and disparate systems while incorporating workflow. SharePoint’s flexibility is the result of its ability to separate or combine the system’s services which include:

• One or more front-end Web servers
• One configuration database
• One or more content database servers

These three components can be installed on a single computer, or you can distribute them among multiple computers within a server farm. All state information is maintained through the content and configuration databases in Microsoft SQL Server.

In addition to SharePoint’s implementation and scalability flexibility, Sharepoint development is completed by deploying Web Parts. Web Parts enable information workers to create powerful personalized interfaces by simply dragging and dropping pre-defined Web Part Components. Web Parts are components that enable non programmers to gather information they care about and customize the appearance of Web pages. For example, one Web Part might display a user's appointment calendar; another might create a graph showing current sales figures; and a third might show a list of new business topics, each of which functions as a link to a video or audio presentation. Developers create these Web Part components and make them available to SharePoint users, letting them build customizable pages that meet their needs. SharePoint’s Web Part Infrastructure provides safe mode handling to Windows SharePoint Services, allowing Web Parts to be added to an ASP.NET page based on the page URL, the current user ID, and other information stored in the database.

When a Web Part Page is opened in the browser, Windows SharePoint Services uses the page URL and user ID to return from SQL Server a list of the Web Parts specified for the page, and to build an ASP.NET page object; this populates the Web Part zones on the page with the specified Web Parts. For example, the Home page of a SharePoint site by default includes two Web Part zones containing Web Parts that display summary views of the Announcements, Events, and Links lists, as well as an Image Web Part that displays a logo. However, if the administrator allows personalization of the page and a user customizes the page, Windows SharePoint Services displays different Web Parts depending on the user.

The Windows SharePoint Portal Server offers modifications that directly address scalability and performance and expands and diversifies itself as a Web development platform because it integrates the .NET Framework into its own functionality. In addition, significant changes in its database integration offer the ability to take better advantage of SQL Server features. Understanding this architecture enables the understanding how SharePoint can be utilized to develop custom applications upon the SharePoint Portal platform.

See also Network Services Group.