Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

120 Part II: SharePoint Products and Technologies Architecture
portal page is the same for everyone because it has personalization features. My Site
is personalized based on a user’s profile information, and it includes links to document
libraries and lists that the user has created on her personal site.
The major architectural difference is that the My Site page is owned and controlled
by the site owner, while a personal site is owned and controlled by the user.
This means that a user can customize the contents and views of her personal site;
however, when a user tries to personalize the My Site page, the choices are limited.
User Profiles and Audiences
SharePoint Portal Server includes a way to integrate user profile information into site
pages and to target content to a group of users. User profiles and audiences are contained
in the portalname_prof database (where portalname is the name of the
portal).
Populating the User Profile Database
The profile database is a list of user account property information. This information
is obtained by importing information from a directory that contains user accounts or
it is obtained manually by typing in account information. By default, SharePoint Portal
Server can import a list of domain users from Active Directory, but code can be
written against the SharePoint Portal Server object model that can be used to import
information from other directory services or applications. User profile information is
stored in a single table in the portalname_prof database. Updates to the database
can be scheduled on a regular basis and can be incremental or full.
Creating Audiences
Audiences are also contained in the user profile database, but they are contained in
a separate table from the one that contains user profiles. Creating an audience
involves creating rules and then compiling the audience. Rules define what user
accounts should be included or excluded from the audience. Rules created for any
audience are stored in a separate table in the portalname_prof database.
When an audience is compiled, the rules are used as a filter against the complete
list of user profiles. Because not all account information is imported into the
user profile database, Active Directory is also queried during an audience compilation.
Accounts that fit the rule are copied and placed in a separate table that holds the
members of the audience. This table contains the members of all audiences for a portal
and is separate from the table that stores the rules. The table that contains audience
members is not updated, and remains static until the audience is recompiled.