In SharePoint there are a lot of terms that may be confusing to new SharePoint admins, or even to existing ones. Since a lot of the words have other meanings than what SharePoint uses them for, it can be a bit tricky. so let's take it from the top

1. SharePoint Terminology
Microsoft SharePoint Server

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Overview
SharePoint – Terminology
Source : MSDN Blogs

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SharePoint - Terminology
• In SharePoint there are a lot of terms that may be
confusing to new SharePoint admins, or even to
existing ones.
• Since a lot of the words have other meanings than
what SharePoint uses them for, it can be a bit
tricky.
• so let's take it from the top:

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Authorization and Authentication
• Authentication is the process of deciding WHO a user is.
• Authorization is the process of deciding WHAT they can do.
• IIS (the web server) handles Authentication alongside things
like Active Directory and SharePoint handles authorization.
• Authentication methods include things like Anonymous,
Basic, Forms, Integrated (NTML/Kerberos and Claims).

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Business intelligence
• Provides infrastructure to create dashboards that
allows decision-makers to access information.
• Excel Services server technology, is a shared
service that enables you to load, calculate, and
display Excel workbooks.
• By using the Business Data Catalog, you can bring
key data from different business applications to
SharePoint lists, Web Parts, search, user profiles,
and custom applications.

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Document Workspace
• SharePoint Services site that contain a document
library, tasks, links, and other information.
• Document workspaces can be created directly in
SPS as a new site, or they may be created ad-hoc
from within an Office product.
• End users can collaborate without having SPS
open alongside Office.

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Enterprise Search
• Enterprise Search provides extensive and
extensible content gathering, indexing, and
querying ability.
• This service supports full-text searching by using a
Structured Query Language (SQL-based) query
syntax, and provides a new keyword syntax to
support keyword searches.

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Farm
• A collection of servers (web, database, index) that
together make up a SharePoint Installation – aka
Topology.
• You can do all this (web/datababase/index etc) on
a single server in “Simple Installation” mode in
which case you don’t need a NLB. For many small
businesses this is plenty enough.
• Medium sized businesses usually start with at least
2 Web Front Ends (WFE’s) and a database server.

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Farm
A common small SharePoint Farm topology - two WFE
servers and a database server.

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Levels of the SharePoint Hierarchy

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Libraries
• In order to share files:
SharePoint makes use of libraries.
• The three types of libraries available :
• Document libraries.
• Form libraries.
• Picture libraries.

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Lists
• Along with document libraries, lists form the
foundation of content within SPS.
• A list is a collection of information items displayed
in an area or on a site. List types include:
Announcements Contacts
Links Events
Tasks Issues

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Pages
• Sites are made up of pages.
• A page can have a list or library of information,
various web parts, be wiki pages, or hold blog
information.
• SharePoint pages are no different than a regular
website's pages.
• Pages can be edited using the text editor.

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Top Level Site
A Top Level Site is a site… at the top level… see – this terminology is
not that confusing after all .
Most of the time we can use Top Level Site and Site Collection
interchangeably - in fact Microsoft do this all the time.
Each Top Level Site has zero to many sub-sites (simply called sites)
This is the lowest level that many things can be scoped to,
For example
Only the Top Level site contains a web part Gallery so you can’t say
Collection X, Site A can have a web part but Collection X, Site B can’t.

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Site
• (aka Web’s) – these are the actual sites that you
use.
• A site can be a top-level site or a sub site of the
top level site.
• A site can also have other sites – these are called
sub-sites.
• Sub sites can also have other sub sites and so on.

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Site – SP2010

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Site – SP2013

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Site Templates
• Whenever you create a new site, SPS use
predefined templates to simplify the creation of
the new elements for the site.
• These templates allow you to create everything
from a specialized team site to a blank site you
can use to create content from scratch.

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Site Definitions
• A Site Definition consists of a series of files that
define the components, including;
lists, libraries, features, master pages, and page
layouts that make up a site.
• Site Definitions may contain (and usually do
contain) multiple configurations, these
configurations are surfaced through the interface
as site templates.

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SharePoint Designer
• This is a separate product from SharePoint.
• It works with SharePoint for people who want to
significantly alter the design of a site layout.
• Creating workflows and custom entry forms
without code are other uses of Designer.
• Essentially SharePoint Designer customizes the
way the site looks, behave, and what they are
made of.

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Web Application
• Authentication method is set at the Web
Application level.
Though you can have the same content
(i.e. SharePoint site) delivered by
Two different web applications
with
Two different authentication methods.

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Web Front Ends – (WFE)
• A collection of servers that take requests from
users (via the NLB), process them and return the
data.
• This is the primary method for scaling – as the
number of users grow you add more WFE’s.

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Web Application
• An IIS Website that has been configured to run
SharePoint.
• Can only be created in the Central Admin UI
(or via the STSADM tools etc)
• A Farm has one running the central administration
site and 1 to many others running normal
SharePoint sites.

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Web Application
• This is generally how the main part of the URL is
defined
http://somesite.yourcompany.com
http://othersite.yourcompany.com
• Will be separate Web Applications.

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SharePoint 2010

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SharePoint 2013

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Web Parts
• Web Parts in Windows SharePoint Services
provide developers with a way to create UI
elements that support both customization and
personalization.
• A site owner or a site member with the
appropriate permissions can customize Web Part
Pages by using a browser or Microsoft Office
SharePoint Designer to add, reconfigure, or
remove Web Parts.

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Workflow
• Workflows implement custom business processes
that you can attach to SharePoint documents and
list items.
• You can use workflows to control almost any
aspect of an item in Windows SharePoint Services,
including the life cycle of that item.

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info@asheta.com
NYC - London
Ayman M Sheta
•Thank You