Beginning SharePoint® 2007 Administration: Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

1.3. Differences between WSS and MOSS

When thinking of WSS and MOSS, the important thing to understand is that WSS is the foundation and MOSS is an optional add-on. In fact, you cannot install MOSS by itself. If you try to do this, you will be requested to install WSS first. So, the question is: What differs between WSS and MOSS? If you have never seen SharePoint before, some of these answers might be hard to understand. Give it a try anyhow. The following chapters further flesh out the following points.

1.3.1. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

WSS 3.0 has the following characteristics:

• It is a web-based application.

• It stores all information in an MS SQL database.

• It displays information using web parts.

• It has good document-management features.

• It has a number of list types that you can use for storing all kinds of information.

• It allows you to build workflow solutions that start when a document is changed.

• It is perfect for simple, but effective, intranet solutions.

• It is ideal for collaboration on project data, meetings, social events, and the like.

• It has its own index and search engine.

• Its lists and libraries can operate as RSS Feeds.

• It comes with site temples for creating Wiki and Blog sites.

• It is a free add-on to MS Windows 2003 Server (any edition).

In other words, WSS is the perfect place to collect information for your projects, your customers, and your meetings. You can move all documents from your file system into WSS and by doing so get access to the powerful document-management ...