Lists:
- SharePoint lists are web based editable tables.It gives us the ability to work with structured data.
- List is going to store the same sorts of data that you would normally place into a spreadsheet
- A list contains items that are collections of fields/properties/columns.optionally can have one or more attachment
- When the user searches for a keyword in a document , if the document is in a list then search returns the list item as the result
- Can have attachments
- List attachments are not indexed. This has a lot of implications. When searching, you cannot use the refiners to narrow down the doc type
- Have major versions only
- Do not have Check-in/Check-out features
- No Open with explorer (which is obvious)
Libraries:
- Library is used to store documents
- A library is a list ,but have one and exactly one file associated with each item .A library item also has fields/properties/columns
- When the user searches for a keyword in a document , if the document is in a library then they find the document listed in the search results
- Cannot have attachments (files are directly in the library)
- Have both minor (draft) and major (published) versioning
- Have Check-in/Check-Out
- Publishing Libraries can use Page Layouts
- Have Unique Document Ids out of the box
- Examples of Document Libraries are pdfs, word, powerpoint files physical files