What Does WSS 3.0 Provide?

WSS 3.0 is the foundation technology on which SharePoint Server 2007 is built. The following features of WSS 3.0 are the most important:

Lists and document libraries. WSS 3.0 provides facilities for creating, editing, and storing tabular lists of information relevant to site visitors. Lists are SharePoint's most ubiquitous form of content, and WSS provides a wide variety of prebuilt list types, such as lists for contacts, announcements, and task tracking; customers and partners can also create custom list types. A special list type called the document library supplies the base features for storing and managing documents. All items in lists and document libraries are stored in SQL Server databases.

Security. WSS supplies a role-based security model that maps groups of users to preconfigured sets of permissions that specify and limit the actions users can take on sites and site content. WSS 3.0 administrators can apply security settings at the item level (an individual document in a library, for instance).

Site templates for team collaboration. WSS 3.0 supplies a variety of Web site and page templates geared toward team collaboration. A WSS team site consists of a set of ASP.NET pages for site administration (such as creating sites and assigning permissions to users and groups), and a set of team pages that allow workers to view and manipulate the actual team data.

Prebuilt Web Parts. WSS 3.0 ships with a collection of prebuilt ASP.NET 2.0 Web page controls (Web Parts) that provide capabilities ranging from simple image display to document library management. Web Parts are one of SharePoint's most powerful features; without writing any code, ordinary users can quickly build custom, interactive Web pages by dropping Web Parts on pages and arranging and configuring them.

Management utilities. WSS 3.0 provides a set of tools and utilities for managing settings and configuration of Web sites and applications, and the infrastructure those sites run on.

Programming model. WSS 3.0 provides a .NET programming model that partners and customers can use to extend and customize the product. For example, partners can use the model to build Web-based applications, such as self-service portals for business applications and custom site templates for market verticals.