Introduction to Service Application Part 1

One of the major investment in SharePoint Server 2010 is moving away from Shared Services Provider and get into the new concept of Service Application.

Before going into details of Service Application lets first talk why did we move away Shared Services Provider (SSP)??..One of the main reason for moving away from SSP was that we could not choose/select specific services that we wanted to use in that particular web application. For Example: Say I create a SSP and I have search, user profile,excel and BDC services enabled in this SSP then any web application that gets associated with that SSP will get all these services even if that Web application doesnot need/makes use of it.
Also another major problem was under the hosting environment.If a partner hosts MOSS 2007 and say he has 2 clients where one of the client has a requirement telling that it needs BDC and Excel , and the another client has a requirement telling that it needs Search, BDC and User Profile then we had to create 2 SSP and also we had to provide an entire web application for the 2 clients. So in total in SQL Server we would have 8 SSP databases and 2 web application databases. This was not a feasible solution and hence hosting on MOSS 2007 was not recommended.

So SharePoint Server 2010 we came up with the concept of Service Application where each service application is independent (without any relation to SSP)and we do not have a SSP site as these Service application are configured/controlled from Central Administration (CA) site. Below are the list of Service Application that are available (till Beta 2):

1. Access Services 
2. Business Data Connectivity service.
3. Excel Services
4. Managed Metadata Service 
5. People (User profile) 
6. Search Service Application  
7. Secure Store service (formely known as Single Sign On) 
8. State Service  
9. Usage and Health Data Collection
10. Visio Graphics Service 
11. Web Analytics Service
12. Word conversion service

As said above that these service application are independent,so any web application can consume and combination of service application(SA). For Example : Say a web application needs only BDC, secure store service and web analytics ,it can be achieved.

If you have installed SharePoint Server 2010 successfully then, you would get a wizard to install the service application as well.For the first time when the service application have been installed they would a part of the default proxy group. (I will talk about proxy and proxy group later in this blog). We can create different proxy groups and each group can have any combination of service application.While creating a web application we do get the option to choose the proxy group. By default, the default proxy group would be selected (the one that we created when we installed SharePoint and ran the wizard in SharePoint).

Now lets talk about the two important terms : Proxy and Proxy Group
Proxy : As soon as we create a SA a proxy would be created to it. Proxy is nothing but a virtual link using which the web application(WA) will talk with the SA.Proxies are basically WCF service.
Proxy Group :  proxy group is a group of SA's that can be associated with a web application. for example: default proxy group.A proxy group can have any combination of SA.

Important
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If we create a custom proxy group and associate that custom proxy group with a WA, then we CANNOT re-use the same custom proxy group with another WA.


Now going back to service application(SA), we can provide process isolation to the SA. We can choose if we want to use a new application pool or use an existing one.by default all the service application virtual directories would be under SharePoint Web Services in IIS. You would find a list of GUID's and if ou want to know which GUID is associated with which SA, the easiest way is to switch the view to content view in IIS and once you click on the GUID the name of the service application would be displayed in the right hand window.There is also another way of knowing which GUID to SA association, that is by using the powershell but I guess the content view is the simple and easiest way to find it out.

We can also create multiple instance of Service application. Each instance will have its own proxy. We CANNOT create multiple instance of proxies.

I would llike to give you some details of the databases for the Service Application.Some of the service application have there own databases and the list is as below:

Business Data Connectivity service.
Managed Metadata Service
People
Search Service Application
Secure Store service (formely known as Single Sign On)
State Service
Usage and Health Data Collection
Web Analytics Service
Word conversion service
Perfomancepoint.

Lastly I would like to throw some light on the sharing of the service application. I will be writing a seperate blog on the steps to follow to share/publish the service application. But for now I would like to note down the service application that can be shared across farms.Yes...you are right not all service application can be shared across farms. The ones that can be shared are as follows:

People
Managed Metadata Service.
BDC
Search Service.
Secure Store
Web Analytics.

As of now thats all on service application.....................