Configuring Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010: Service Applications and the Managed Metadata Service

9/21/2011

Contents

Chapter 5. Service Applications and the Managed Metadata Service
Before You Begin
Lesson 1: Administer Service Applications
Lesson 2: Configure the Managed Metadata Service Application
Chapter Review
Chapter Summary
Key Terms
Case Scenario: Configure Service Applications and the Managed Metadata Service
Suggested Practices
Take a Practice Test

The most high-profile, functional services in SharePoint are implemented using the Service Application Framework (SAF) introduced in SharePoint 2010. In this chapter from MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-667): Configuring Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010, you will learn about the SAF and its components and explore, in depth, the Managed Metadata Service.

Certain functionality is required across web applications in a SharePoint farm, including authentication, search, taxonomy, connectivity to back-end data sources, and user profiles. Users don’t connect directly with these services. Instead, a user-facing web application accesses the functionality it requires from a middle tier of shared services, in which each service provides a specific type of functionality to one or more web applications in the farm or, possibly, to web applications in remote farms.

So, for example, when a user performs a search by using a query web part in a web application, the query web part connects to search services to return results to the user. Searches performed in other web applications can connect to the same search service, to other search services in the farm, to search services in a remote farm, or to federated search services such as Bing.

SharePoint has several architectural models for services: Different services are implemented different ways. However, the most high-profile, functional services such as those already mentioned are implemented using the Service Application Framework (SAF) introduced in SharePoint 2010.

In Lesson 1, you will learn about the SAF and its components. You will learn to deploy services—service instances and service applications—so that the functionality of a service can be consumed by web applications in the farm or in remote farms. You will also learn to manage administration and configuration of service applications.

In Lesson 2, you will explore, in depth, the Managed Metadata Service, which is an important service application that supports information architecture by providing a centrally managed term store and shared content types.

Exam objectives in this chapter: