The Managed Metadata Service (MMS)
is critical to an efficient and functioning SharePoint 2010 site. It
provides the means to define and share metadata within a farm, as well
as across farms, from a central location. This also allows an
organization to share content types across site collections and web
applications.
The power of this becomes immediately
apparent in organizations that take the time to structure their data. It
is clear to see how an enterprise organization could benefit from this
service. An example could be creating an FDA-approved drug in a large
pharmaceutical company. This process is complex due to diverse
geography, potential language barriers, federal regulations, stringent
testing methods, and detailed accounting of every step of the process.
Upon identifying all of these elements,
characteristics such as naming conventions, type of data, testing
terminology, and internal terminology can be identified and made
consistent. The Managed Metadata Service is the language of your
business. This brings consistency and enforceability, resulting in
palpable cost savings.
Take the example of Zach's Trucking Company. This
national company has two server farms — one for project-related sites
and the other dedicated to government business. A component such as
Average Weight per Shipment is appropriate to both farms, but it would
be inefficient and redundant to create this term in both farms. Also,
the same individual may not create it in both farms, so there is the
possibility that this term is referred to as AWS in one system and Avg Wgt in the other.
Enter the Managed Metadata service. Both farms would consume this service, which contains this one term in the term store.
One of the farms must be the source, the publisher of
the MMS. This is where the management of the MMS takes place. The other
farm is the consumer, a subscriber to the service.
In this recipe, we will be creating a Managed Metadata Service Application.
Getting ready
You must have Farm Administrator privileges to Central Administration.
How to do it...
Open Central Administration and click Application Management.
The third section is Service Applications. Under it, click Manage Service Applications.
On the ribbon, select New | Manage Metadata Service.
The following screen appears. Fill in the required information.
Name: The name of the Managed Metadata Service.
Database Server: The SQL Server where the MMS database is located.
Database authentication: In most cases, use Windows authentication.
Failover Database Server: This is the database server that has already been set up as a failover server. This does not set it up, it only references it.
Application Pool: This is the account that contains the identity to reference the Managed Metadata Service web services.
Enter the URL for the Content Type hub.
Check the Report syndication import errors... option. This will report errors in the log of the site collections, that is, the exporting as well as the importing site.
Check the Add this to the farm's default list option. Refer to the Managing Service Applications Associations recipe if you wish to change this.
Once you fill in the required information, click OK.
The Managed Metadata Service is now added to the Service Applications list and needs to be configured through the Manage option on the ribbon.
How it works...
The Managed Metadata Service process creates a
database whose name is given by the user in Step 4. A connection is
created to the MMS web services through the default service application
proxy.
There's more...
Creating the Managed Metadata Services Application
can be done with scripts through the use of PowerShell. Here are the
associated PowerShell commands.
PowerShell: Managed Metadata Cmdlets
New-SPMetadataServiceApplication -ApplicationPool
"<ApplicationPoolName>" -Name "<ServiceName>" -DatabaseName
"<DatabaseName>" -DatabaseServer "<DatabaseServerName>"
-HubUri "<HubURI>"
