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SDL Web general overview

In its simplest form, SDL Web can be said to consist of a management side and a delivery side. On both sides are multiple servers, databases, and clients and APIs.

Content Manager is the environment for creating, managing and assembling the various Building Blocks used to build Web sites or content intended for other channels. Users create content using various Content Manager clients; content is stored in the Content Manager database.

Topology Manager maps the content in Content Manager to the Content Delivery environments. Topology Manager makes logical targets for publishing available to Content Manager to publish, and maps those logical targets to physical targets in the Content Delivery environments.

Content Delivery handles and processes content published from Content Manager, transforms the content into dynamic Web site content, and stores the published content in the Content Data Store (a file system, a relational database, custom storage media, or a combination of these), and puts the content on the Presentation Server, the machine that serves content to Web site visitors.

Content Delivery also exposes its functionality through a number of Capabilities, which Topology Manager can discover by interacting with the service endpoint of the Discovery Service.

Additional product features can introduce additional server-side software components, clients, databases and so on.