Chapter Summary

• Many important services are provided using a model in which the service instance, running on one or more servers, is abstracted by a logical component called a service application. Service applications can be used by one or more web applications. When a web application requests a service from the service application, the request is fulfilled by one of the service instances.

• Each service application has an application connection, or proxy. The connection defines the communication between a web application and a service application.

• Application connections are collected in an application connection group, or proxy group, that allows a web application to connect to multiple services. A web application can connect to an application connection group or to individual service application connections.

• Some service applications can be shared across farms.

• The Managed Metadata Service is a service application that provides support for taxonomy, folksonomy, and content type syndication.