SharePoint Server 2007

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SharePoint in its current version, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), has evolved from its early days of a portal management system to a complete platform providing services ranging from document management, collaboration, social networking to a complete suite of business intelligence (BI) capabilities to build upon.

    SharePoint introduces the concept of Shared Services Provider (SSP) which are composed of a set of services and functionality that can be applied to multiple SharePoint sites at the same time. These services include Excel Services, Enterprise Search among others. During a complete install of MOSS 2007 on a server, "Office Server Web Services" Web site is created, which provides the functionality required by Shared Service Providers. For each SSP created in farm, a virtual directory with the same name as the SSP title is created under this web site. Each of the virtual directories created for a SSP in farm will have the following directories under it: ExcelCalculationServer, Search

 

Excel/Excel Services

Microsoft Office Excel 2007 provides a rich set of features allowing BI users to connect to data sources, prepare reports, perform real time analysis thereby simplifying the decision making process. In order to provide a seamless experience for Microsoft Office Excel users on the web, MOSS 2007 includes Excel services that enable some of the powerful Excel features to be available on the browser.

Reports built using Excel client can be published to document libraries in MOSS 2007 sites. Excel services can load and render these reports as a web page providing interactive capabilities on the browser. Excel services require the location of these reports to be configured as a Trusted Location which have to be configured as part of SSP administration.

Excel can connect to external data using data connections created and persisted as Office data connection (.ODC) files which include authentication settings for Excel Services. In a SharePoint farm running ECS, these data connection files are secured in central library called Data Connection libraries (DCL's) by site administrators. In a typical Excel Services configuration, these DCL locations will need to be configured as a Trusted Data Connection Library as part of SSP administration. Refer to this technet article for more details: Plan external data connections for Excel Services

The following are the core Excel Service components:

UI Tier

Excel Web Access (EWA)

This web part deployed on all WFEs creates the HTML from the results provided by ECS component. It also provides interactivity for the end users

Excel Web Services (EWS)

This web service provides programmatic access to spreadsheets

Application Tier

Excel Calculation Services (ECS)

The ECS is the key component responsible for loading spreadsheets, calculations, refreshing external data and manages session state for interactivity. ECS is exposed as a web service under the SSP virtual directory. e.g. https://<server>:56737/<SSPTitle>/ExcelCalculationServer/ExcelService.asmx