|
When planning for a Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 deployment, some of the first considerations should include site topology, also known as taxonomy or site hierarchy. How your organization will best traverse your site and locate its content contributes greatly to a sense of location and in turn increases the perception of usability. A well‐planned topology based on corporate work chains can prevent issues later where organic growth erodes usability. Considerations when planning should include corporate structure, stream of work within the organization, security, and user affiliations.
Tip: Site collections, sites, lists, and items are native security boundaries. Similar to the Windows file system, each child inherits from the security of its parent, unless assigned differently. The most effective containers for managing security remain sites and lists that take advantage of security inheritance. While discreet security may now be assigned to document or item‐level data, this should be considered carefully as it requires an additional level of vigilance to ensure the appropriate assignments. These basic security concepts typically play a significant role in shaping site topology where site hierarchy based on existing Active Directory groups can leverage existing security implementations.
Taking this into account, an enterprise typically organizes site hierarchy by departmental structure and then departmental functionality. For example, a hierarchy may appear as Corporate Portal Site >> Human Resources >> Benefits. This approach works for most organizations small and large and is shown in the following diagram. A standardized hierarchy such as this provides not only a logical approach for users when browsing the portal site for content, but most likely mirrors existing security groups within the organization. As these clear organizational units, such as departments, are delegated control of their own site structures, they assume the management burden from IT resources. This ownership and freedom to customize their own environment can serve as a major catalyst in departmental and user acceptance.
An Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web application is the topmost Office Server 2007 object within the hierarchy and the native container of the topmost site collection. Each Web application designates the primary content database for the child site collection. The default Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web application is representative of a specific Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site, and because of this defines a specific IIS application scope. This entitles each Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web application to its own Web.Config file and host header definitions. A Web application has no visual presentation within the user interface and it is in no way visually apparent to the end user.
In the case of Fabrikam Industries , which must support Office SharePoint Server 2007 users located on different continents as well as users who speak different languages, additional complexities apply. For more information about multilingual deployments, download the white paper Plan for building multilingual solutions by using SharePoint Products and Technologies (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=79322). When the distance between a hosted Office SharePoint Server 2007 site and the end user allows for adequate bandwidth and latency, a single corporate instance of Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be more than adequate. As a rule of thumb, if a user can gain reasonable access to retrieve and save acceptable document sizes, then location need not be a concern as with most offices located within the continental United States. Apart from basic accessibility, geopolitical concerns such as localized working groups or governmental boundaries may insert themselves as requirements. If a company has headquarters in Washington, D.C., but also maintains offices within the borders of New York, then it may make sense to break off that working unit into its own sub‐hierarchy, as shown in the following diagram. This allows for more freedom within that working group, where different rules and team members may apply.
Tip: Any Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web application can be extended into multiple zones. Extending a Web application to additional zones allows users to access the same Web site through separate and independent URLs, each with its own Web.Config file and IIS application scope. Each zone is configured with its own load‐balanced URL (protocol, host header, and port). This allows, for instance, one Web application to make use of many configurations including multiple authentication stores, caching scenarios, content databases, or custom HTTP modules.
|
