Introduction
What do we need most in today's internet world? A web with a large ability to store information securely and to present it with a good look and feel in various ways based on the appropriate users.
To achieve that, there are many Content Management frameworks available across the world. To suit the world's requirements, Microsoft introduced the initial version of SharePoint in 2001 to do the basic work of content management compared to today's great improvements.
SharePoint is just a framework and gives a secure place where the user can store, manage and share the contents securely and provide the flexibility for the various services to associate and present the data.
Now we are in 2015 and we have the current version of SharePoint, SharePoint 2013, and the next version of SharePoint 2016 is expected to be available from Q2 2016.
SharePoint is built on the Windows platform and the ASP.NET Framework and uses all its features across SharePoint. Microsoft SQL Server is used for storing the back end information and the framework provides many API options to acquire the data from the SQL Server.
The following are the things achievable in today's SharePoint (SharePoint 2013):
- Create collaboration sites, intranets and public-facing websites
- Leverage sets of services to power the SharePoint sites
- Store and retrieve structured or unstructured data through a variety of options in SharePoint. The APP Model is newly introduced to access the SharePoint data using the standard web technologies (REST, OAuth, ECMAScript).
COLLABORATION
Create, manage and share the collaborative content securely.
Create: Provides the easy way to create sites, lists, document libraries and and so on.
Share: Share the created content, intranet and public facing websites within the organization and also extend that to outside of the organization.
Customize: Using Web-Authoring OOTB features and tools, enables the customization and personalization of the sites and contents based on the user's needs.
LEVERAGE SERVICES
SharePoint has the flexibility to include many services in its framework and use their functionality to do the in and out operations.
Some of the services are:
- Business Connectivity Services
- Branding
- Web Content Management
- Mobile Devices
- Identity Management
- Business Intelligence
- Records management and Compliance
- Social Computing
- E-Discovery
- Search
- Workflow
STORAGE
Store: SharePoint stores the content in the form of lists and document libraries. So that users can easily access the data.
Access: SharePoint provides many of the following ways to access the data stored in list and libraries.
Server-Side Access: Server-Side Object Model
Client-Side Access: .Net Managed Client Object Model, Client-Side Object Model via JavaScript.
REST/OData endpoints: Standard web technologies is newly implemented in SharePoint 2013, to access the SharePoint in an easier way by creating APPS.
ASP.Net (asmx) web services and direct Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) calls to the owssvr.dll also helps to access and update the SharePoint information. But these items are depreciated items in SharePoint 2013 and they have this for backward compatibility.
Summary
SharePoint is a framework that gives the place to manage and share the contents within the organization and provides the option to share with external users.
Stay tuned to learn more concepts across the SharePoint ocean.