Sharepoint Portal Server

As the volume of intranet content grows, administrators and users are increasingly looking for ways to manage the volume of information. Just as Netscape aggregated the then-growing web content in to a manageable framework (called a portal), application vendors have created many packages that permit their customers to aggregate their intranet content in to corporate portals.

Introduction to SharePoint
Like most portal products, SharePoint allows visitors to generate custom their own views of the Website. This customization can be quite simple or very complex, depending on the type and version of the product that is installed on machine. In addition, SharePoint has a powerful collaboration model that is tightly integrated with the Office 2003 suite.

Architecture
The architecture is composed of Web Server front ends jogging the WSS application with MOSS plugging-in functionality where required, generally a search service which crawls the data store generating an index, a quantity of other services, & the database back-end, a standard enterprise architecture. As such it can be built out by load balancing more web servers on the front end & building larger clusters of SQL Server on the back-end.
SharePoint allows admin to generate Web Applications each user on its own port. A different web application on a different port can contain site collections, each user having its own database in SQL Server. Web Site collections can have sites which can contain subsites. A web server can contain hundreds of site collections.

Features of SharePoint
Normally SharePoint contains all of the features you would expect from a portal or collaboration tool:
Browser-based customization of page
Browser-based content administration
Aggregation capabilities
Document Repository
Message board
Ad-hoc data storage
E-mail notifications
Announcements, event calendar and contact list.
A complete feature matrix that also indicates whether the feature is part of WSS or SPS can be found in the whitepaper Implementing Rich Collaboration Infrastructure Using Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 on Microsoft's Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/evaluationoverview.asp).

Uses for SharePoint
In addition to being the default intranet portal, there's plenty of additional uses for SharePoint. Microsoft has included pre-defined templates for Web-sites to facilitate meetings, manage projects and generate documents. Combined with the "self-service" site generating feature, teams can generate and use a Web-site with minimal assistance from the Information Technology department.
The Document Workspace template will permit a group to work on a document. The template combines a document repository with a task list also a links list. While using Word 2003, a user can have the document open and simultaneously view the task or links list. Changes made to the task list are immediately visible to site visitors. And the document library allows versioning, so edits are not lost.

The Meeting Workspace template aggregates the agenda, attendee list and Outlook's calendar function. When sending a meeting request in Outlook 2003, a user can create a workspace on the centralize server. The URL of the workspace is automatically included in the message and the attendees are added to the site. The meeting materials can be centrally located, and which is preferable for attendees who travel frequently.
The browser-based customization feature, combined with the ability to generate ad-hoc lists allows an advanced user to generate a site for nearly any purpose. A user group could host its meeting schedule, complete handouts. A youth sport organization can post its schedule and roster. An individual can host a blog. The possibilities are countless.