Content Management

Current version: 10.0

The primary business focus of Experience Manager (XM) is the management and delivery of content. The Content Management role is the primary role involved in this process.

The Content Management role

The Content Management role is involved in many business processes. One of its primary purposes is to serve the Sitecore management interface to marketers, content authors, and administrators.

One of the Sitecore Content Management role's primary functions is to serve as user interface.

To handle situations with a high load on content management, or for failover reasons, you can scale out the Content Management role across multiple servers or services.

Note

Before scaling out the Content Management role, you must consider if there are any features that need special configuration in a load balanced Content Management setup.

The Core database

The Content Management role uses the Core database and Core index to store and retrieve the configuration and settings. The CM role also stores state information, such as user preferences and event queues, in the Core database and Core index.

When developers are extending or customizing the user interface, they may add functionality that changes the settings in the Core database via the Content Management role. We recommend that you do not carry out these kinds of changes in a production environment,

The Core database also hosts the standard Microsoft ASP.NET membership database for security users and roles in the default security domains.

The Core database stores settings for the Sitecore user interface and security settings and much more.

For scalability or security requirements, you can split these ASP.NET membership tables into their own security database on a per-domain basis.

You can change the ASP.NET membership providers to use other systems such as a local Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, or a custom-built provider. Sitecore also supports federated authentication to, for example, enable log in through social channels or Active Directory Federation Services.

The Master database

The Master database stores the master copy of all versions of all content items and media – unpublished or published – across all languages and publishing targets. The Master database also contains settings used to shape the experience for visitors, for example, marketing goals and outcomes, form definitions, and commerce settings.

You use the Master index to search across content in the Master database or to retrieve filtered or sorted lists of content, for example, latest updated content or recently uploaded media. When content is updated or added to the Master database, the Content Management role adds the updated content to the Master index. The Content Management role also maintains a number of other search indexes that the Federated Experience Manager, A/B testing and other features use.

The Sitecore Master database holds the master copy of all content or media - published or unpublished.

Privacy and security

Refer to Architecture and Roles documentation for privacy and security considerations for each role on the processing and aggregation data flow.

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