R – sharepoint development concept issue — about site and application

sharepointsharepoint-2007

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

Best Answer

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...

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