WSS vs MOSS
WSS and MOSS stand for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 respectively.To communicate and share information, businesses use WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007. These are collaboration tools made by Microsoft on .net platform. These software help businesses to arrive at decisions based upon the latest information. However, the question that confronts many as they start to make use of one or the other tool is what the basic difference between WSS and MOSS is and which one is better of the two. Both have been designed to help for better sharing and management with WSS being a starting point and MOSS being a much more advanced platform. The difference between the two is that of a normal person and a bodybuilder actually. This difference is also reflected in monetary terms as WSS comes for free while one needs to make an investment to purchase minimum of software if he wishes to make use of MOSS.
Though WSS is free to use, it is not automatically installed and you must install Internet Information Server (IIS), ASP.NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0. You can get these programs through windows update. What you need to realize that WSS is a part of the package that you got when you installed Windows on your computer.
MOSS, on the other hand is separate from the package and is an entirely independent program. To install MOSS, you nee either MOSS standard or MOSS enterprise license. As described earlier, MOSS is an advanced version of WSS and it sits atop WSS while providing many additional features such as business data connector, excel services, my sites and an enhanced search.
There are many common features of WSS and MOSS which are as follows
• Site provisioning
• Basic workflow
• Custom lists
• Discussions
• Document management
However, there are many features found only in MOSS and these act on top of what you get with WSS.
• Additional workflow
• Web content management
• Records management
• Auditing
• Additional search
• My sites
• Excel services and BDC
However, for storing content and for configuration purposes, both WSS and MOSS make use of SQL server. For beginners, it is better to get used to all the features of WSS before advancing to MOSS as it has more features and may require some time to use it efficiently.
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Summary • Both WSS and MOSS are superb tools for collaboration and sharing of information • Both are developed by Microsoft • While WSS is free, you need to buy license for using MOSS. • MOSS has more features and sits atop WSS. • WSS is suitable for small and medium businesses, while MOSS is suitable for large organizations.
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I woud like to highlight that even though WSS is available for free, it’s not something that you can download and install on just about any operating system out there in the market.
You will need to purchase at least a Windows Server 2003 or higher version OS license before you can install WSS and begin using it for office collaboration purposes.
Since a server license is still required, to have WSS up and running can still incur some significant investment for some.