Oct 20 2009

SharePoint 2010 Service Applications (Shared Services) Overview

Category: — amilsark @ 17:04

In the new service infrastructure powering SharePoint 2010, there are some significant changes and additions.

For starters these services are now called Service Applications and there is no Shared Services Provider (SSP).  Certain service instances can now be used across farms!

 

Configuration Flexibility

Web applications can be configured to only use a subset of the deployed services.

You can deploy multiple instances of the same service in a farm by giving the new service instances unique names.

You can share services across multiple web applications in a farm.

Services Can Even Be Shared Across Farms

Certain services that support sharing instances across farms can be run on a central farm in your company’s WAN and allow you to manage that service in one place.  A good example of this might be the User Profile Import service.  If your LOB system is located in one regional office you can run a specific instance of the Business Connectivity service for communication with that system locally and consume that data from other locations.

Service Application Architecture

These applications are deployed to IIS in a single web site (“SharePoint" Web Services”).  It is recommended to run this web site under one application pool for optimal performance.

Deploying Services

There are 3 ways to deploy services:

1. Selecting services when running the configuration wizard

2. Adding services through the Manage Service Applications page in Central Administration

3. Use power shell (replaces STSADM command line)

Service Descriptions

Service App Description Data Store Cross Farm SharePoint Foundation 2010 SharePoint Server 2010 Standard SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
Access Services View/Edit/Interact with Access 2010 DB’s in the browser Cache       X
Business Data Connectivity Access LOB data DB x x x x
Excel Services View/Edit/Interact with Excel 2010 files Cache       X
Managed Metadata Service Access managed taxonomy hierarchies, keywords, and social tagging infrastructure as well as Content Type publishing across site collections DB x   x x
PerformancePoint Provides the capabilities of PerformancePoint Services Cache       x
PowerPoint View/Edit/Broadcast PowerPoint presentations in a web browser Cache       x
Search Crawls content, produces index partitions, serves search queries DB x   x x
Secure Store Services Provides single sign-on authentication to access multiple applications or services DB x   x x
State Service Provides Temporary Storage of user session data for SharePoint Server components DB     x x
Usage and Health Data Collection Collects farm wide usage and health data and provides the ability to view various reports DB   x x x
User Profile Adds support for My Sites, Profile pages, Social Tagging, and other social computing features DB x   x x
Visio Graphics Service Viewing and refreshing of Visio diagrams in the browser BLOB cache       x
Web Analytics Provides Web Service interfaces   x      
Word Automation Services Performs automated bulk document conversions Cache       x
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service Tracks subscription ID’s and settings for services that are deployed in partitioned mode.  Windows Powershell only DB   x x x
Office Web Apps (Separate SKU)            
Word 2010 Viewing, PowerPoint 2010, Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2010, OneNote 2010 Allows you to create and collaborate with Office documents through the browser.   These documents are no different than creating them in the client applications.          

 

One question i have:  Is there still search functionality in SharePoint Foundation 2010?  I’m assuming the Search Service above refers to the MOSS Indexing style with crawl schedules and such.

Tags: , ,