1.2. The History of SharePoint
In order to understand how to install and manage SharePoint, you need to know its history. This will help you understand not only where it comes from but also some abbreviations that are used in SharePoint 2007.
Around 2000, Microsoft unveiled an application called a Digital Dashboard. This web-based application used a new concept called web parts, which are rectangular areas on a web page that display some type of information, such as a list of contacts, links, or documents. This was innovative because the user could now arrange the web parts on the web page herself, without any help from an HTML programmer.
In 2001, Microsoft released its first two SharePoint products. One was SharePoint Team Services (STS), and the other was SharePoint Portal Server (SPS). Only a few organizations implemented these products, which was a pity since they offered a number of advanced collaboration features, especially for MS Office users. STS was a free web-based product used for collaboration. You could use it to share contacts, calendar events, and documents within teams and small departments. The information was stored in an MS SQL database. It was a nice application, but it did not have any document-management features, and it was not built for creating intranet solutions for larger organizations.
SPS was a separate product, initially made as an MS Exchange 2000 public folder application (under the beta name Tahoe). However, during the beta phase of Tahoe, Microsoft ...
