One of the most confusing subjects for me to grasp early on was understanding the SharePoint hierarchy. I couldn’t tell a web application from a site collection. It confused me to no end. Well, after much study it seems rather simple now! Here’s a diagram with a short explanation.
At the top of the hierarchy are server farms. This encompasses all the physical servers that comprise your SP installation. It may consist of one server or twenty. When you run the SP configuration wizard after installing MOSS/WSS you either create a new server farm or connect to an existing one. It’s done once.
Once you have your server farm you must set up a web application. This is what creates a corresponding website in IIS to host the site. This is where it gets its application pool and other IIS properties. You can create multiple web applications on a server farm.
Now you have a hollow web application but nothing else. Enter site collections. It is simply a collection of SharePoint sites inside the web application. Here you define a top-level site. You can have multiple site collections.
From your site collection you have a top-level site that will have multiple sites underneath it. This is the common SP interface seen by end users.
And finally we have the content inside the sites. This includes (but not limited to) lists, libraries, web parts, etc.
It’s worth mentioning that in the SharePoint 2007 world, Shared Service Providers (MySite, Excel Services, BDC) in MOSS are at the web application level and are for all site collections underneath it. You can, however, have different Shared Service Providers for individual web applications. In the 2010 world, there are Service Applications that can be used in a more reusable and granular fashion than in 2007.
Excellent Post. This is exactly what I needed at this point in my development. I am going to create a diagram for my own purposes to expand on what you have to reflect the Enums for feature scope plus the WSS object model types. Let me know if you want a copy when I finish. Thanks for putting this up.
@Bill: Thanks for the kind words. I would like to see something when you’re finished.
very helpful. Having understood what the diagram shows, I was still a bit iffy about the site collection ‘top level site’ thing and this post helped out. this clarified.
Also, can someone answer how to get sites/subsites tabbed(not breadcrumb/not quick launch) along the top level site (if u wanted to)?
@shoolive: Thanks for stopping by! You can manage the navigation at the top (if you have access) by going to Site Actions — Site Settings — Modify All Site Settings, and in the Look and Feel column choose Navigation.
Cheers.
very good post.
Excellent article. Exactly what i needed
Excellent post.. Very helpful information.. thanks
This simplifies everything. Great info.
great post.… you wont even find such clear explanations… in any of the books
[…] This is a repost from my blog and the original can be found here http://www.siolon.com/blog/understanding-the-sharepoint-hierarchy/ […]
Its very useful.
Thank you, a good post to help clarify the difference between Web Application and Site Collection.