Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 runs on the Windows platform (Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003). It makes use of Internet Information Services (IIS) to deliver dynamic web pages and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as its content repository.
Authoring is performed using either the browser-based component (Web Author), or Microsoft Word (when installed with Authoring Connector).
Developers use Visual Studio .NET to develop ASP.NET template files, a special kind of web form that defines the layout and behavior of each dynamically generated web page. Templates in the content repository are managed using MCMS Template Explorer, an add-on within Visual Studio .NET. The MCMS Publishing Application Programming Interface (API) is used for retrieving and updating content in the repository.
Several administrative interfaces are provided for managing the site structure and global settings: Site Manager, Database Configuration Application, and the Server Configuration Application.
Content is transported from one server to another using the Site Deployment Manager, and custom scripts are built using the Site Deployment API. Site Stager can be used to generate a static image of an ASP-based MCMS website (but does not work with ASP.NET-based MCMS sites).
The following diagram shows the architecture and how the components connect with each other. The subsections that follow briefly describe what each module does.