sharepoint development concept issue — about site and application

0
votes

I am developing on SharePoint Service 3.0/SharePoint Server 2007. I always read document says create an application or create a site (collection). The term application and site always make me confused. Could anyone help to clarify what is the relationship between a SharePoint application and a site (collection)?

For example, here is one of the case when I am confused,

http://weblog.vb-tech.com/nick/archive/2006/06/14/1617.aspx

"1, Create a new site – go to Office Server Central Administration -> Application Management -> Create or Extend Web Application -> Create a new Web Application Enter the settings to create a new SharePoint site." -- mixing site and application make me confused.

"Once the Application has been created choose to ‘Create a new Windows SharePoint Services site collection’." -- seems application has 1:1 relationship with site collection?

thanks in advance, George

2
sharepointsharepoint-2007

2 Answers

2
votes

Yes, that's a bit confusing. In the first instance he is using the term "site" to mean preparing the SharePoint installation to serve content, basically enabling it to become a web site; in the second instance he is talking about creating actual sites within SharePoint.

There are basically four different levels to think about in SharePoint:

  • Farm - all the SharePoint servers (even the database server) taken as a whole. This is what you interact with via Central Administration
  • Web Application - the software that serves SharePoint content via IIS
  • site collection - a hierarchical collection of sites
  • site - the actual site that the user interacts with within a site collection

If you find that confusing, wait until you program against it where you'll find a site is called SPWeb and a site collection is SPSite...

1
votes

In real development terms - A SharePoint Application is an IIS site with nothing configured, while the site collection is the initial base configuration of the IIS App, sites in the site collections can be thought of as virtual directories.

This is not entirely accurate, but its a good way to generate a mental picture.

And you're right to be confused, welcome to the world of MOSS! Its gets even better.