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An analogy to help you understand topology management

Because topology management involves a lot of concepts that may be hard to grasp initially, it helps to compare Content Delivery with the delivery of actual physical materials in the real world.

Imagine that you work for a large company that makes widgets. Widgets are being manufactured at the widget manufacturing plant, and need to be shipped out of the manufacturing plant all the time. In our analogy, the plant is the Content Manager, where all the Publications (widgets) are produced.

A plant employee who needs a widget to be shipped out of the plant needs to decide two things:
  • which delivery service to use, that is, the courier service or internal mail service that should take of delivering the widget
  • where the widget needs to be sent, that is, the delivery address

The employee first decides what kind of shipment this is. Is it an internal shipment? Then the widget goes in a blue box. Is it meant for the outside world? Then the widget goes in a green box. Years ago, the plant manager found out which kinds of destinations widgets would need to be sent to (internal and external) and ordered boxes in two colors to make the whole widget delivery business easier. The employee puts the widget in a blue box, for internal mail. In our analogy, the colors of the boxes are the Purposes, and the fact that there are two colors is the Topology Type.

The employee now attaches a delivery service provider label to the box. This label designates who should deliver the box. If this had been a blue box, the employee could have chosen between DHM, UPT or SpedEx. But because this is a blue box, the employee can choose only one delivery service, WIM (Widget Internal Mail), and so puts a WIM label on the box. In our analogy, the labels correspond to Target Types: they make concrete specifically which delivery service provider should take care of the shipment.

Next, the employee needs to decide where the widget needs to be delivered. The employee specifies not only the city and address of the other office, but also the building, floor, and room number. In our analogy, this is the Publication mapping, which points not just to a base domain and context Web application URL, but also to a specific subpath within that URL.

The employee now puts the box in the OUT tray and waits for the maiboy to come pick it up. The mailboy makes his rounds and collects the box. In our analogy, this is publishing.

The mailboy takes the box to the internal mailroom, which has four desks: DHM, UPT, SpedEx and WIM. In our analogy, these are the Content Delivery Discovery Endpoints.

The mailboy drops off the box at the WIM desk. The person at the desk checks which office is on the delivery address label and puts it next to the other boxes headed for that office. Soon enough, a truck pulls up to collect all boxes destined for that office and drives them to the the office. In our analogy, this is the deployment of the content, the truck driver is the Content Deployer, and the office is the Presentation Server Web site.