Post-Installation Tasks


The first thing to do after an installation or upgrade is to test SharePoint. Log on as an administrator, start Internet Explorer, enter the URL for the MOSS portal, then open the Central Administration tool and make sure that everything works as before.

You may recall from earlier in this chapter that there are several databases used by MOSS. Microsoft does not want you to modify them in any way other than running SharePoint's web sites and the Central Administration tool. However, there is some interesting information hidden in these databases, as described in the following sections.

The Configuration Database

The purpose of the configuration database is to store SharePoint's configuration settings, such as what front-end servers exist, their role, and what back-end server is used. There is only one single configuration database for all SharePoint servers in the farm. It coordinates how all the SharePoint servers know each other and their roles.

If you need to expand the SharePoint farm with a new front-end server, you install MOSS on it and during the configuration you tell it to connect to the existing SharePoint farm, which is the same as saying the server will use an existing configuration database. This concept is very similar to the way that a new Windows 2003 domain controller is added to an existing Windows domain. If you need to remove a SharePoint server, you simply disconnect it from the configuration database.

The default name of this SQL database is SharePoint_Config (possibly with a GUID string at the end of the name, which is typical for a Basic installation of MOSS). This database contains a lot of interesting information regarding your SharePoint environment. For example, you can look into the tables of the configuration database to see what portal site it belongs, as explained in the following Try It Out.

Important 

Never change the SQL tables unless specifically instructed to do so by Microsoft Support. If you make a mistake, it most likely will corrupt the database!

Try It Out Check the Configuration Database Tables

image from book
  1. After the MOSS is installed, log on as a SQL administrator.

  2. Open the SQL Server Manager Studio. Tip: If you don't have this management tool, then look at SQL Admin Studio from http://www.simego.com, which also works fine with SQL Express databases.

  3. Expand the folders in this tool until you see the SharePoint_Config database.

  4. Click on Tables to see all tables in this database.

  5. Right-click on the table SiteMap, and select Open Table.

  6. This will open the table. Look for the column named Path, which lists the default URL address to user and administrative web sites in this farm.

  7. There are several interesting tables to look at here, but do not change anything!

image from book

Important 

Remember, never change the SQL tables unless instructed to do so by Microsoft Support. If you make a mistake, it can corrupt the database!

The Content Database

All data stored in the SharePoint portal site or any of its WSS sites is contained in the content database. By default the name for this database is WSS_Content.

This database will grow as your SharePoint environment is used by users. It is possible to create more than one content database; the first one is by default limited to 15,000 site collections. You will not hit that limit immediately in most organizations. Note that it is the number of site collections that counts, that is, the top sites only, not their subsites, if any. In reality that could mean 10 or 100 times more sites in total, all stored in the same content database. All sites belonging to the same site collection must reside in the same content database; it is not possible to split a large site collection over several content databases!

If you have more than one MS SQL server, you can create new content databases on these other SQL servers. This works well when you have a distributed organization, and the network connections between the different locations are low bandwidth (for example, less than 1024 Kb/s). If you use a locally placed SharePoint server and a local SQL server with content databases, the performance is much better for the user who needs to work with documents and other information in the WSS sites. Previously, this was a complex task to complete, but in SharePoint 2007 it is easy, as long as you can accept that these remote users have their own site collection:

  1. Create a new web application. Now you can select what SQL server and database this web application will use. Make sure to use a SQL server near the user's location.

  2. Create a site collection in this web application for these remote users.

  3. Instruct the remote users to use that site collection when possible.

If you must have one single site collection for all users, then there is no way of distributing the SharePoint database using standard Microsoft tools. As third-party vendors explore the possibilities presented by SharePoint 2007, they will develop more solutions to meet this and other needs.

The User Profile Database

SharePoint Portal Server can run in a Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000/2003 domain environment. If you have been in the IT business for some time, you may remember that the information about user accounts in Windows NT 4 was sparse, to say the least. It just contained the user account name and a description, but no information about departments, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and so on. Since one of the primary objectives in SharePoint is to make it easier for users to find information, SharePoint needs to store a lot of properties about each user. Microsoft resolved this by creating a specific User Profile database. To see what user profiles are stored in this database, use a SQL database management tool (see the previous section about the configuration database), then expand the SharedService1_DB database, right-click on the table UserProfileFull, and select Open Table.

This database is exclusive to MOSS; you do not find it in a pure WSS environment. Unlike the previous SharePoint version, these user profiles are now stored in the database used by the Shared Service Provider, by default named SharedServices1_DB (possibly with a GUID suffix if MOSS was installed in Basic mode). A large organization may have several hundred megabytes in this database, but it still will be a very small database compared to the content database.

The information in this database may be entered manually by the SharePoint administrator and to some extent by the user, or it can be automatically imported if the users belong to an Active Directory domain. The latter option requires that the Active Directory be updated with all the user properties you want to import into the user profile.

In the next chapter, you will get all the details about how to configure this importing process and how to control what properties to import from the Active Directory. You will also learn how to define what properties the users are allowed to change.

The user profile also stores information about SharePoint's audiences. This term refers to groups of SharePoint users, like all Salespeople, or all Brain Surgeons, or New Employees. You can filter the information displayed on the portal site to only show information targeted to the audience group. In the next chapter, you will learn how to create and manage audiences.

More MOSS Databases

Besides the more common databases mentioned above, there are several more. Their purpose is to store information related to specific tasks or functions in SharePoint, such as searching or system tables. These databases are:

  • q SharedServices1_Search _DB: Stores the settings regarding MOSS indexing and searching.

  • q SharedServices_Content: Stores system tables, lists, and variables used by the Shared Service Provider.

  • q SharePoint_AdminContent: Stores content in the Central Administration tool.

  • q WSS_Search: Stores information used by the WSS Search feature, that is, the system searching the help system.

Important 

Once again: Do no change any of these databases, unless instructed to do so by Microsoft Support!



Beginning SharePoint 2007 Administration. Windows SharePoint Services 3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Software Testing Fundamentals: Methods and Metrics
ISBN: 047143020X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 119

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