Service Applications in Sharepoint 2013

Service applications & Services in SharePoint 2013

In SharePoint 2013, individual services can be configured independently and third-party companies can add services. The services infrastructure gives you control over which services are deployed and how services are shared.

Services that are deployed are named service applications. A service application provides a resource that can be shared across sites throughout a farm, and can be accessed by users through a hosting web application. Service applications are associated to web applications by service application connections. Some services can be shared across farms.

Service Application	Description	Contains Own DB(Y/N)
Access Service 2013	Access apps for SharePoint are new in SharePoint Server 2013 and you will build them using the Access 2013 desktop client.  You can create, edit, and update linked Access 2013 databases and then view them directly from the app.	N
Access Service 2010	Access services 2010 service application allows user to modify and publish access web database in SharePoint 2013 that was previously created in SharePoint2010. While creating new access services 2010 service application it does not prompt for database, since we must have SP2010 access db.	Y
App Management Service(new)	The App Management Service is responsible for storing and providing information concerning SP App licenses and permissions All licenses for apps downloaded from Marketplace will be stored in Apps service application	Y
Business Data Connectivity Service	Business Connectivity Services is a centralized infrastructure in SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 that supports integrated data solutions. With Business Connectivity Services, you can use SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 clients as interfaces into data that doesn’t live in SharePoint 2013 itself.	Y
Excel Services Application	Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2013 is a shared service that you can use to publish Excel 2013 workbooks on SharePoint Server. The published workbooks can be managed and secured according to your organizational needs and shared among SharePoint Server 2013 users, who can render the workbooks in a browser	N
Machine Translation Service(new)	Machine Translation Service is a new service application in SharePoint 2013 Preview that provides automatic machine translation of files and sites. When the Machine Translation Service application processes a translation request, it forwards the request to a cloud-hosted machine translation service, where the actual translation work is performed.	Y
PerformancePoint Service	PerformancePoint Services is a performance management service that you can use to monitor and analyze your business. By providing flexible, easy-to-use tools for building dashboards, scorecards, and key performance indicators (KPIs), PerformancePoint Services can help individuals across an organization make informed business decisions that align with companywide objectives and strategy.	N
PowerPoint Automation Service(new)	Microsoft PowerPoint Automation Services is a new feature of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 that can help enterprises to manage their presentations.  It is a shared service that provides unattended, server-side conversion of presentations into other formats.  It was designed from the outset to work on servers and can process many presentation files in a reliable and predictable manner.	N
Managed Metadata Service	The managed metadata service application makes it possible to use managed metadata and share content types across site collections and web applications.   A managed metadata service publishes a term store and, optionally, content types; a managed metadata connection consumes these.	Y
Search Service	Crawls content, produces index   partitions, and serves search queries.	Y
Secure Store Service	Secure Store Service is a shared service that provides storage and mapping of credentials such as account names and passwords.  It enables you to securely store data that provides credentials required for connecting to external systems and associating those credentials to a specific identity or group of identities.   It is very common for solutions to try to authenticate to an external system in which the current user is known differently or has a different account for authentication.	Y
State Service	It stores temporary data across related HTTP requests in a SQL Server database.  Publishing will not work I.e. publish workflow, publish page State Service must be properly configured for the Search Administration Crawl and Query Health Reports to function properly. Visio service component  chart web part	Y
Usage and Health Data Collection Service	Collects farm wide usage and   health data, and provides the ability to view various usage and health reports.	Y
User Profile Service	The User Profile service application stores information about users in a central location. Social computing features use this information to enable productive interactions so that users can collaborate efficiently.  In order to provision My Sites, enable social computing features such as social tagging and newsfeeds, and create and distribute profiles across multiple sites and farms, you must enable the User Profile service application.	Y
Visio Graphics Service	Visio Services lets users share and view Visio diagrams.  It also enables data-connected Visio diagrams to be refreshed and updated from various data sources.	N
Word Automation Services	It gives developers a way to perform server-side conversion of documents that are supported by Microsoft Word.  This service was available in SharePoint 2010, however the newer version now allows on demand file conversions and converting streams to files. (Streams with Word Automation Service can only be used with on demand conversions, not Timer job-based requests.	Y
Work Management Service	This service is colloquially well-known as “Task aggregation service”, and, for the end users, it is manifested through the Tasks menu in their personal sites.  Users can find all their SharePoint, Project and Exchange tasks (if opted in), aggregated and sorted, under unified “My Tasks” experience.  They can sort their tasks, “pin” them (mark them as important), and mark tasks as completed – directly in the aggregated task view.  Special views of “Active tasks”, “Important and upcoming tasks” and “Completed tasks” are accessible within a click.  All tasks updates are synced back to their originating systems – the task providers.	N
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service	Provides multi-tenant functionality for service applications. Tracks subscription IDs and settings for services that are deployed in partitioned mode. Deployed through Windows PowerShell only.	N

 Manage Service Applications in SharePoint 2013

SharePoint 2013 includes a set of service applications that you can use to share services across web applications. In some scenarios, you can also share service applications across farms. You can manage service applications by using Central Administration or by using Windows PowerShell 3.0.