Microsoft Office Project Server - Changes in Office Project Server 2007

Changes in Office Project Server 2007

The architecture of Project Server 2007 contains significant changes.

The 2003 Microsoft Project version employed ODBC to connect to the server, which is problematic over low bandwidth and high latency connections. This problem is often skirted by remotely using a PC with the same network (LAN) as the server.

The 2007 version uses SOAP to access the server. Although this facilitates clients over low bandwidth / high latency connections, it adds a level of complexity (in the form of a Queue) that must be managed by an administrator. Specifically, a job in the queue could get stuck and block other jobs from completion. The advantage of the queue is that MS Project uses a local cache, enabling the user to continue to work on his project plan even when he is not connected to the server.

The 2007 version has 14 OLAP cubes which can be used to do Data Analysis with. It is an improvement over the 2003 version which only had 1 OLAP cube. With the new cube Calculated measures can be added to the cubes, which enables reporting on custom created fields.

Project Server 2007 features a local cache which effectively allows the user to have 2 copies of a Project Schedule. Changes made after the first save will just be synchronised rather than replacing the server copy which speeds up response times. But currently there are known cache issues.