Description: The Administration object model is replaced.

Reason for change: The new object model is more complete.

Migration path: Developers must write new code.

Description: The object model, user interface, and architecture of areas and listings have changed. Areas now use Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web architecture, so the URLs of sites change. Bucket webs are removed during upgrade. In a clean installation, the user gets portal Webs that are named just like new Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Webs. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 listings do not exist in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. A new summary links feature displays links on a page.

To preserve data and functionality, upgrading moves listings to an Office SharePoint Server 2007 list and uses the content-by-query (CBQ) Web part to display the items on a page. It is recommended that users manually move upgraded data to summary links, because this is the new feature for displaying, sorting, and grouping links on a page.

Migration path: During upgrade, areas are automatically moved to Webs and bucket Web URLs are removed. Favorites and other externally saved links must be changed. Upgrading automatically moves listings to an Office SharePoint Server 2007 list and a CBQ Web Part. It is recommended that users manually move the data to the summary links feature to receive all of the benefits of easy in-page link editing. To do this, users must add a summary links Web part or control to the page, and then manually copy links from the upgraded list to the summary links Web part.

Description: The controls that were located on administrator pages are replaced with new controls.

Migration path: SharePoint Portal Server 2003 pages that users have customized continue to work, but might have new or deprecated controls. Users can remove deprecated controls from the page. New controls are provided automatically.

Description: Crawl schedules could previously be created and maintained in their own list. Crawl schedules are now completely associated with content sources. You cannot define a crawl schedule outside of a content source. Users no longer have a page on which to manage their crawl schedules. Instead, they must specify crawl schedules on the content source page.

Reason for change: This change reduces the confusion caused by creating content sources in one location and linking the sources to schedules in another location.

Description: The user interface and object model for the provisioning feature are changed. The area creation user interface is replaced by the WSS Web creation user interface.

Migration path: If users have customized SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provisioning, their code continues to work after upgrade. However, it is recommended that users rework the code to use the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 object model.

Description: The Query object model is replaced.

Reason for change: The new object model is more complete.

Migration path: Developers must write new code.

Description: The Area Alerts feature is removed.

Migration path: Users now subscribe to list alerts. To simulate the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 experience, users can subscribe to all lists within the area.

Description: In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, index propagation could be set up to execute as soon as a crawl was complete. Users are no longer able to set up index propagation in this way. The new continuous propagation feature is used in those scenarios in which users previously used automatic propagation. There is a change in the Administrator user interface for Search.

Reason for change: Continuous propagation improves functionality for the entire search system. The scenarios that were previously covered by automatic propagation are now covered by continuous propagation. Continuous propagation dramatically improves the real-time availability of indexed content in search results.

Migration path: The upgrade process migrates users who are currently using automatic propagation to continuous propagation.

Description: In earlier versions, there was a More Info link in search results. The link led to a page that showed name/value pairs for properties and enabled users to pivot on the author name. This link and page are no longer available.

Description: The Alerts Web part is removed from MySite. Manage Alerts now happens at the site level instead of rolling up to MySite.

Description: In earlier versions, there was a filter for TIFF formatted files. TIFF files were translated into text with optical character recognition (OCR) software when the files were crawled, and the text was indexed. This feature is removed.

Description: Search Web parts are deprecated. They continue to work in Office SharePoint Server 2007, but not in later versions.

Reason for change: The user interface is improved.

Migration path: Use new Web parts.

Description: In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, each portal that was created had its own set of resource-intensive, high-value services. This condition severely restricted scale, so a feature was introduced that allowed all portals located within a single farm to share the same set of services. A second introduced feature allowed all portals located within a remote SharePoint Portal Server 2003 farm to also consume services from a parent farm. In both cases, the change was a substantial and a one-way switch: if the shared services option was chosen, all portals in the affected farms had to participate in the shared services; and once service sharing was turned on, there was no way to turn it off again. In the 2007 Microsoft Office system, the ability to share services turns on by default. It is flexible so that more than one set of services is available within and between farms, and portals move easily between sets of shared services.

Reason for change: This change improves scale, performance, and farm usability. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 was restricted to 15 portals per farm. Users can now host many more sites on a single set of hardware. Service level administration can now be delegated to power users. Users can configure their systems to reflect the system's current state. For example, they can move Web programs between sets of shared services to reflect organizational and political changes.

Migration path: Auto migrated as part of the server upgrades collection.

Description: The Topology Management user interface is replaced by a new management feature.

Reason for change: The inclusion of four additional products in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 requires a new method to manage the services on servers for ease of use. With the new feature, users can uniformly manage all services and servers for the Office Server products.

Description: The previous security model objects (SPRole, SPList.PermissionsMask, and others) are marked obsolete to encourage use of the new, role-based security model. There is a new user interface for list-level permissions. Developers receive warnings if they try to use the obsolete objects in their code.

Reason for change: This change provides scalable security and a more consistent, role-based security model on all scopes: Web, list, folder, and item.

Migration path: Users must rewrite custom code. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 performs migration of existing security settings during upgrade. An attempt to compile outdated code generates an error message.

This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

• Technical reference for the 2007 Office release

  See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for the 2007 Office Resource Kit .