2.1.1.2.2 Service Applications

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A service application exposes functionality that has been configured for providing extended capabilities across site collections and web applications or potentially across multiple farms running SharePoint Products and Technologies. A service application can be implemented as a Web service. Service applications that are implemented as Web services are configured and hosted by the service application web application, as described in the overview of Web topology (section 2.1.1.2.1).

For example, a full-text search can be used to aggregate content that exists both across many site collections and outside of SharePoint Products and Technologies. To enable such a search, the search service application defines the search capability, which each run-time web application then accesses individually.

Every farm running SharePoint Products and Technologies includes zero or more service applications. The service applications that are provided with SharePoint Products and Technologies include:

  • Excel Services: Storing, calculating, and displaying spreadsheets, as described in section 2.1.3.1.

  • Microsoft Access Services: Storing, creating, and managing database applications, as described in section 2.1.3.2.

  • User profiles: Creating user profiles and audiences, as described in section 2.1.3.4.

  • Search services: Full-text querying, as described in section 2.1.3.5.

  • Indexing: Building content indexes for full-text querying, as described in section 2.1.3.5.

  • Business Connectivity Services (BCS): Querying data from external systems, as described in section 2.1.3.6.

Service applications use claims-based identity when communicating with each other, and they can use it when communicating with external systems. For more information about claims-based identity, and how claims-based identity is used with user authentication, see section 2.1.2.4.1. For more information about service applications see [MSDN-SharePointSDK].