SharePoint is one of the buzzwords that are used almost in every office. When a newbie enters in the world of the SharePoint technologies, one of the first questions  is: “What is the difference between the available distributions?” Generally there are two main distributions: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). This article compares the WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 and outlines the differences between them.

The long story short: WSS comes as a free download if you have Windows Server 2003 or 2008. MOSS is build on top of WSS and must be purchased separately. Depending on the version (Standard, Enterprise, etc.) the license can be a significant financial investment. For details about difference licensing scenarios, you should contact your local Microsoft representative, because the licensing can vary if your server serves internet users or only intranet requests.

Bellow I will summarize some of the most important features of both distributions.

Features of WSS

WSS is a collaboration platform, primary used for sharing and managing information and documents via a web site. The following are the most essential features:

• Site provisioning – WSS acts as a site provisioning engine that simplifies the process of creating new web sites. These sites can be provisioned via site templates or site definitions. Figure 1 shows sample WSS site:Figure 1 Sample WSS site
• Document management – WSS provides support for document checkout before editing, the ability to view revisions to documents and restore to previous versions. Figure 1 shows sample document library.



Figure 2 Documents library

• Web Parts Infrastructure – web parts are special controls which can be added to certain areas of a web page (Web Part Zones). These controls enable end users to modify the content, appearance, and behavior of Web pages directly from a browser.
• Integration with Word, Excel, Access, Outlook -  users can directly open a document from the server, without the need to download it first.
• Wikis, Blogs – wikis are supported as a site template, which allows you to create new pages quickly and easily, provides automatic linking and WYSIWYG editor. Blogs are supported as a site template as well, which provides features for article posting, reader comments and RSS feeds.
• Email integration  – document libraries, discussion boards, calendars, and announcements can be configured to send emails upon new postings.
• Limited search support – WSS is is limited to showing results from the site and all of its subsites.
• Basic workflows support – you can create workflows, but you will need external tools like Visual Studio to do so. WSS is just a container that executes your workflow.
• Mobile devices support – the information is rendered using simplified text format.
• Server Farm – if you need high scalability, you can install WSS in a server farm mode which means that several machines will run the stateless presentation layer and all of them will be connected to the same SQL Server database.

Features of MOSS

MOSS installs on top of the WSS and extends the provided features. The major additions are :

• My Site personal site – each user has a site where the user can control the public and private content. It provides other users with the ability to learn about the user and the user’s areas of expertise, current projects, and colleague relationships. ‘My site’ acts as a central location  to view and manage all of a user’s documents, tasks, links, calendar, etc.
• Extended workflow support – some existing workflow templates come with MOSS. If you want, you can create your own with tools like SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio.
• Site Directory – MOSS automatically creates a site map and presents it in an easy-to-use format.
• Business intelligence – MOSS provides support for business intelligence dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), Business Data Catalog (BDC), etc. BDC integrates external data into MOSS.
• Search – MOSS overcomes the limitation of WSS to search only within the current site and its subsites. You may search over file shares, web sites, etc.
• Enterprise Content Management – approval workflow allows web content to be sent for approval prior to publishing. Content deployment to production sites can be scheduled by setting up jobs.
• Audience targeting – the content inside lists, libraries, web parts, etc can be targeted to appear only to users who are members of a particular group or audience. The audiences can be identified via SharePoint groups, Distribution lists and Security groups.
• Excel Services – allows you to publish excel files so the user can view them in web page without the need of Microsoft Office Excel installed on his machine. You can control what part of the excel file to be visible and which part can be editable.
• InfoPath Forms – allows you to design forms in Microsoft Office InfoPath and distribute them via MOSS. Users will fill the form in the web browser without downloading the form.

The MOSS is distributed in several editions: Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search, Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard and Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise. Logically not all of the features above are present in each version. More information about different MOSS versions can be found at Microsoft.

This article outlined some of the major differences between WSS and MOSS. If you are looking for detailed comparison, you should download and review the information distributed by Microsoft.

Submitted by Stephan Zahariev http://www.sharepointmonitor.com/2010/01/difference-between-wss-3-0-and-moss-2007/