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Publishing overview

Publishing is the process of getting content out of the Content Manager and on the Presentation Server. Publishing involves a number of processes, each of which performs a specific task.

The following diagram shows the various parts of the publishing process:

Publishing from the Content Manager environment

In the Content Manager environment, publishing comprises the following subprocesses:

Publish command
A user publishes content to a Target Type, which represents a logical target in Topology Manager. The Publisher Engine then generates Publish Transactions for the items to publish, and puts them in the Publisher Queue where the Transactions await being picked up by the Publisher Service.
Publisher service
The Publisher Service interacts with Topology Manager to retrieve information about where and how to send the content, and offers the content and publishing information to the Transport Service.
Transport Service
The Transport Service's Sender assembles the item(s), together with any other items on which it depends, into a Transport Package which it transports to the Content Deployer on the Content Delivery environment. A Sender sends the package to one or more physical destinations.

Publishing to the Content Delivery environment

In the Content Delivery environment, publishes comprises the following subprocesses:

Content Deployer
On the Content Delivery system, a Content Deployer receives the Transport Package. The Content Deployer uses one of its Processors to process the contents of the Transport Package. Each Processor contains a number of Modules which specify the steps in the deployment or undeployment process. The package is processed by the Content Deployer and the items in the package are sent on to the Storage Layer.
You can add your own custom processing (Processor and Module elements) to the Content Deployer.
Storage Layer
The Storage Layer handles the storing and retrieving of data to and from the Content Data Store. The Storage Layer is configurable so that you can store individual types of incoming items to different databases.
You configure where to store content in the cd_storage_conf.xml configuration file.
Caching
You can implement object caching to store the most commonly used objects in the cache in order to speed up your Web site.
Content Delivery APIs
The Content Delivery APIs allow you to access published content (Pages, Component Presentations, and published metadata) from your Web pages using the ASP.NET APIs or the JSP APIs depending on the Web technology you use.
Presentation Server
The Presentation Server is the machine on which the Web Application Server is installed (which can be the same machine as the Content Delivery system).