WSS versus SPS

[outofcontrol]

Just trying to get some feedback on which people install more often. I have heard pros and cons for both WSS and SPS software. Which is more often installed???

Thanks
Joe

 

[skimmingtonr]

Hi Joe
well its not really a case of install volumes, its more a case of what are you trying to achieve. For group collaboration i.e a team working on a project WSS is fine. If you have more than one group working on different projects or wanting to share data then again WSS. But if both groups want to search and share info between the projects then lean towards SPS. It offers advanced searching, navigation, news items, audiences and the ability to search/index Exchange, notes and file servers. It builds upon WSS but adds more features. SPS is more a company/enterprise product BUT WSS is free SPS costs you. Just one caveat with WSS don't bother with MSDE it has some severe limitations ie no search capability so stick with SQL!

 

[coremt]

One other point about WSS/SPS is that if you will be creating custom webparts, WSS doesn't allow impersonation when accessing information on other servers using Integrated Authentication where SPS will. There are workarounds such as hard coding the password into the webpart but it just made the solution a little less clean.

We plan to upgrade to SPS next year to take advantage of the audience & search features mentioned above.

 

[outofcontrol]

This is great information. I am going to start out with WSS and upgrade later to teh SPS if the needs arise. Since we are a small company with 100 people, I think WSS may fit for us. I will use SQL 2000 instead based on reading past articles and skimmingtonr's recommendation

Thank you
Joe

 

[chooseFile]

Do i understand?

" WSS doesn't allow impersonation when accessing information on other servers using Integrated Authentication where SPS will."

This means that WSS can't use your domaine account to take informations/data from another application running on this domaine.

For exemple, i can't show Exchange's data (as my calendar) in a page of WSS.

 

[philhege]

No, actually you can. What impersonation means is that the Web Part will retrieve information from an app that you are not normally authenticated to, or lives too many hops from the Web server to authenticate you, or is better managed through group membership. If I put an Outlook calendar object in a Web part, I can see my calendar, and Joe can see his. This should work in WSS, or a lot of people'd be wasting their time using the product for collaboration.

Somebody weigh in if I'm wrong; we're using SPS but I figure the WSS sites would behave the same for most of the MS objects.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

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