Understanding Publishing in Project Server

There are four primary table groups in the Project Server database. The first table group consists of project data. Project Professional saves project information to a collection of tables labeled with the prefix “msp_.” These are the Project data tables. A near duplication of these, with the prefix “msp_web_,” are the tables used to articulate data through Project Web Access. Project data is saved to the ms p_ tables, but Project data is published to the msp_web tables. One of the remaining two table groups contains the cube data prefixed with “msp_cube.” The last group contains the view tables used by Project Server when processing the business and presentation logic in the application. Finally, a nominal fifth group is identified as containing the application settings for Project Server and its connections to its member services.

The important concept to understand is that Project data remains local to the Project tables until a specific publish action is taken to move the data to the public view (into the msp_web tables), which is expressed as publishing the data. This is true for data seen in the various views area of Project Web Access, the timesheet, and the personal Gantt views. In other words, a resource can be assigned to a task in the project but not be aware of the fact through the Project Web Access interface because the project manager hasn’t yet published the assignment. Understand that saving a project isn’t tantamount to publishing it; however, there are options within the Project Professional interface to trigger project publishing automatically when save actions are taken. I cover these options in the examination of the Project Professional client and look more closely at the database in other chapters.