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As the name change implies, Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 offers a lot more than just portal capabilities. MOSS, the successor to Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server, is one of the best platforms for developing .Net applications for the Web. Developing in a MOSS environment is all about speed. The MOSS site template library that's available out of the box also provides extra value to customers that are not eager to implement enterprise solutions with new open-source frameworks such as DotNetNuke.
In addition to its template applications, MOSS developers can purchase SharePoint Designer separately to quickly build new applications without having to rely on plain vanilla Microsoft design tools. SharePoint Designer eliminates most, if not all, of the coding when developing SharePoint workflows. Designers and business users can develop complex business rules to generate actions based on conditions that occur in the workflows. From SharePoint Designer, users can tap CSS to design a single site and propagate the changes to multiple sites.
Configuring MOSS to function on a global scale is only a matter of selecting a different set of installation options and database servers. Creating services for a Web farm requires just a few more steps than setting up services on a Web server. Administrators do not need to know what files are being generated during an installation. The only critical configuration file to maintain is the one with the name of all the databases.
MOSS 2007 has also simplified application management. After a developer creates a simple Web site in IIS with extensions for SharePoint, it is automatically treated as a Web application in SharePoint. The next...