What is Service Application Framework?
- Replacement for the Shared Services Provider in MOSS 2007
- API provided by backend application servers and consumed by front-end application servers.
- Used for developing middle-tier applications that are hosted in SharePoint and provide data and resources to other SharePoint features
- Enables services to be shared between computers on a server farm
- Load balance and manage services
- Out of the box - 20 built in services
- Certain objects automatically backed up and restored
- Ideal for deploying, managing and discovering WCF service clients and endpoints.
- Windows Powershell support
- Timer job infrastructure available at Service-scope
- Use of SharePoint configuration store and support for storing data in SharePoint managed custom database is available.
Load Balancing
- Use Round robbing load balancing
- Service application proxy method invocations must be routed thru the front end web server to an appropriate app server by using a load balancing tool.
- Calls between frontend and app servers to require separate external load balancer than the load balancing for front-end web servers
- SPRoundRobinServiceLoadBalancer can be enhanced or replaced by third party
Management and Administration
- Services plug their management UI into SharePoint Service Management page
- Common admin tools such as upgrade, backup, restore and account management
- Common UI to manage, start, stop, group, associate, federate and backup SharePoint services.
- Can define specialized admin roles and can be delegated to users who are not farm admins
- Security trimmed
Security
- Claims-based identity model
Example - Search service
Benefits
The Service Application Framework allows developers to provide load balanced middle-tier resources that can be managed through SharePoint and leverage the full power of SharePoint 2010.
NOTE: These notes are based on the Microsoft documentation on SharePoint 2010 and is subject to change.