Chapter 22: Migrating from Content Management Server 2002 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Overview

Microsoft Content Management Server is a solution that can resolve many of the pain points associated with hosting a content-centric Web site. It facilitates the content authoring, template development, site management, and content deployment between two or more environments. Content Management Server stores all the content objects-such as pages, user roles and permissions, images and other media, and metadata-in the Content Repository. The Content Repository is persisted as a Microsoft SQL Server database. Microsoft does not recommend or support developers accessing or making changes to the content objects directly in the database. Instead, developers use the Publishing Application Programming Interface (PAPI), a Microsoft .NET library that Microsoft provides with Content Management Server.

Chapter 11, "Web Content Management and Publishing Features," describes how Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 introduces to SharePoint capabilities that are similar to what Content Management Server provides for hosting and managing content-centric sites. Microsoft has decided to not continue developing Content Management Server as a separate product; instead, it has incorporated the rich content authoring experience, site branding, and publishing controls into an Office SharePoint Server 2007 feature known as Web Content Management (WCM).

Although SharePoint Server 2007, which is built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, stores data in a SQL Server database like Content Management Server, the two databases are not compatible. Furthermore, the API included with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is very different than, and incompatible with, the Content Management Server Publishing API. As a result of this significant technology shift and Microsoft's decision to not continue developing Content Management Server as a separate product, site administrators need to decide whether they will continue to maintain their existing Content Management Server sites or migrate their sites to SharePoint Server 2007.