As we've said, MCMS connects to a backend SQL Server 2000 database. All MCMS objects—such as content entered by authors—are stored in this database.
One of the greatest sources of confusion for developers is that web pages rendered by MCMS do not have a "physical" form. If you search your server's hard drive for the about+us.htm
file or the summary.htm
in the WoodgroveNet sample site that ships with the CD (or can be downloaded from the Microsoft website at www.microsoft.com/cmserver), you won't find any.
The reason is because the pages are not stored in the file system. Chunks of information are stored in the content repository (namely SQL Server database) instead. They are assembled on the fly when requested, based on the logic coded by developers using the template files discussed in the earlier section How MCMS Renders Content.
Template files are a special kind of a web form. They are stored in the file system and contain the logic that governs the look and feel of the pages and how they behave. As a developer, you will work with template files to write all code-behind scripts and HTML. We discuss template files in Chapter 6.