Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 5: SharePoint Portal Server Architecture 123
Shared services is an all-or-nothing configuration at the server-farm level. This
means that if one portal site in a server farm is using shared services, all portal sites
in that farm are using shared services. Once a portal site in a farm is designated as
the parent, all other portal sites in the farm automatically become child portal sites.
It is also a one-way decision, meaning that once you decide to turn on shared services,
you can’t turn it off later.
Database Access in Shared Services
Summary
When shared services is implemented, child portal sites look to the parent’s configuration
database for shared services data. Although some data is still needed from
the original databases used by the child sites after shared services is configured,
most information is retrieved from the parent site’s databases. By default, each portal
site has two user accounts that are used to access databases. These accounts are
called the configuration database administration account and the application pool
account for the portal site.
The configuration database administration account is the account used by the
CentralAdminAppPool application pool to access the configuration database and
all other databases for a portal site. It is recommended that all servers in a server
farm use the same account for the configuration database administration account.
Once shared services is implemented, this recommendation becomes a requirement.
The MSSharePointPortalAppPool is used by the portal site to access the Share-
Point Portal Server databases. Although child portal sites must have access to the
parent configuration and content databases for added security, that access can be
limited to read-only.
Because SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is built on Windows SharePoint Services,
much of the underlying architecture is the same. Both handle page requests and
.aspx pages in the same manner. The main architectural differences lie in the way
the additional services provided by SharePoint Portal Server are handled. As the
server product in Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, SharePoint Portal
Server 2003 has additional services that support a larger and more diverse set of
users. To accommodate this, additional database types and additional front-end
roles are included in SharePoint Portal Server that are not included in Windows
SharePoint Services.