Microsoft® SharePoint® Designer 2010 Unleashed

Flow of SharePoint Information: Inheritance Model

As you work with sites, subsites, and other SharePoint content, you’ll realize the concept of inheritance, or content inheritance. Nearly everything you do in SharePoint, such as working with SharePoint permissions, is inherited from the parent, or parent of the current object. For example, in the SharePoint model shown in Figure 2.1, notice the downward flow, starting from the SharePoint farm and ending in the subsite. Subsites inherit from a site collection, which inherits from a Web application, which inherits from the farm.

Features, such as content types (metadata), inherit from the parent. In a site collection, you may choose to break inheritance; for instance, you might want to break permission ...