Product Overview
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On This Page
 | Introduction |
| Features and Functionality |
| Content Creation, Publishing, and Storage |
| Web Site Development and Deployment |
| Web Site Deployment |
| Scalability and Reliability |
| Next Steps |
Introduction
Powered by Microsoft .NET–connected technology, Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 enables companies to quickly and efficiently build, deploy, and maintain mission critical content-rich Web sites. By streamlining the Web publishing process, Content Management Server can reduce the need for costly site maintenance, empowering business users to manage their own content.
Content Management Server 2002 enables organizations to reduce the cost of online communication while increasing productivity by providing:
| • | A comprehensive solution for managing Web content. Empower your business users to create, publish, and manage content. The easy-to-use tools in Content Management Server 2002 enable your employees to schedule content refreshes, manage workflow, track revisions, and index content by means of an Internet browser window or Microsoft Word. |
| • | Faster time to deploy and lower total cost of ownership. Build and deploy Web-based business solutions in less time by using this rapid application development (RAD) environment. By closely integrating with Microsoft Visual StudioŽ .NET and Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers such as Microsoft Commerce Server and Microsoft SharePoint™ Portal Server, Content Management Server 2002 enables your organization to quickly and cost-effectively develop a Web content management solution. |
| • | Mission-critical abilities. Benefit from the proven scalability, reliability, and extensibility of a Content Management Server 2002–based solution. Content Management Server 2002 supports industry-standard load balancing and failover technologies, serves content in XML, and enables XML Web services customization and standards-based interoperability to ensure mission-critical capabilities that are simple and straightforward to manage. |
Features and Functionality
Web content management is a critical component of any successful online business strategy. Content Management Server 2002 enables organizations to develop:
| • | An Internet presence. Extending your brand, market reach, and customer service capabilities are key to growing your business. By using Content Management Server 2002, you can build content-rich, personalized Web sites and ensure that the content on your sites is up-to-date, relevant, accurate, easy-to-find, and tailored to meet your needs. |
| • | E-commerce capabilities. Developing an e-commerce site can help your organization manage business-to-consumer (B2C) and B2B transactions through the Web site. By using Content Management Server 2002, your organization can provide rich content about your products and services, which enables your customers to make informed buying decisions quickly and complete their transactions on your Web site. |
| • | Enterprise information portals. Increasing employee productivity is critical to achieving the most streamlined business processes. By using Content Management Server 2002 to build enterprise information portals, your organization can provide employees with a central location to access up-to-date, accurate information and applications. |
| • | Enterprise content management. Integrating Web content management and digital asset management can help organizations centrally and cost-effectively manage brand and design elements on corporate Web sites. By using Content Management Server 2002, your organization can develop an integrated infrastructure for managing all types of enterprise content and publication processes. |
Built with flexibility in mind, Content Management Server 2002 can be used to deploy Internet sites, intranet sites, and extranet sites. Content Management Server 2002 provides IT departments with the tools necessary to quickly build and deploy the core infrastructure of a Web site, including site structure, presentation templates, site design, application integration, and security.
Once a site has been deployed, business managers and content creators can use Content Management Server 2002 tools to create, publish, and manage their own content. By reducing the need for ongoing IT site maintenance, Content Management Server 2002 can lower the overall costs of maintaining an Internet presence.
Content Creation, Publishing, and Storage
Content Management Server 2002 provides employees with easy-to-use tools that enable them to create and publish rich, personalized content directly to Web sites. The role-based distributed publishing model incorporates an approval workflow with multiple levels, automatic content scheduling and archiving, revision tracking, meta-tagging and content indexing. Developers can create centrally-managed page templates and publishing processes that ensure consistency across the site, making it easy to ensure adherence to corporate publishing standards and branding without diminishing the flexibility of the publishing environment.
The following diagram illustrates how you develop a site by using Content Managment Server 2002:
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Three tools in Content Management Server 2002 ensure that business managers of all technical abilities can manage Web content:
| • | Web Author Client. Create, edit, and publish content directly within an Internet browser by using the Web Author Client. When employees need to add or edit Web content, they can browse to the location on the site. Once they have been authenticated as a content author in the Content Management Server 2002 workflow tool, they can select "Switch to Edit Site" in the browser and begin editing content or they can select a pre-built page template to create new content. Web pages can be previewed before they are submitted for review. |
| • | Authoring Connector for Microsoft Office. Create and publish content directly within Microsoft Word by using the Authoring Connector for Microsoft Office. The Authoring Connector provides employees with the ability to define publishing tasks, schedule content refreshes, index content, select templates, preview Web pages, and define whether the content should be converted to HTML and published as a Web page or simply published as a Word document. |
| • | Connector for SharePoint Technologies. Integrate Content Management Server with both Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. As part of Microsoft Integrated Portal Technologies, the connector enables the sharing of key publishing and search technologies as well as enabling unified content management, publishing, and collaboration across the enterprise. |
Content Management Server 2002 stores all content in XML, HTML, and binary content objects for maximum flexibility. Objects are stored in a Microsoft SQL Server™ repository and managed separately from the Web site templates or design elements. Web pages can be built and served dynamically. This enables content to be personalized based on user profile or behavior, browsing device, or language preference. By managing the objects separately, content can easily be re-purposed across a variety of applications within the organization and with external partners.
Web Site Development and Deployment
By tightly integrating with Visual Studio .NET, Content Management Server 2002 provides developers with the richest possible Web development experience. The Content Management Server 2002 development environment includes:
| • | Projects. Developing a new Web site or creating a new SOAP–based XML Web service with Content Management Server 2002 can be accomplished by using the File menu in Visual Studio .NET to create a new Content Management Server project. |
| • | Templates. Through the Template Explorer, developers can create and manage their template galleries and template objects in Visual Studio .NET. |
| • | Server Controls. The Content Management Server 2002 controls menu in the Visual Studio .NET Toolbox provides developers with access to drag-and-drop controls that connect their Web Forms directly to the Content Management Server repository. Database controls can be configured to connect to a SQL Server database through GUI properties dialog boxes. Content Management Server controls can be configured to connect to content schemas through their properties dialog boxes. This removes the need to write low-level data-access plumbing code so that developers can focus their efforts on higher-level business logic and design elements.. |
| • | Managed APIs. Content Management Server 2002 functionality and content repositories are available to developers through managed COM+ application programming interfaces (APIs). This allows for maximum flexibility in building powerful Web sites and XML Web services. |
| • | Management of code and content. Most content management systems store source content in the content repository as if it were content. While this may simplify storage, it results in a poor experience for developers who have to manage source code on complex Web projects. Content Management Server 2002 provides users and developers the best possible integrated experience. Developers are free to use the source code management system of their choice to manage their code. Content Management Server 2002 integrates the code into the Web site dynamically through Template Objects. |
| • | Extensibility. Being able to extend your business system to evolve with your business needs and integrate with other systems is critical to any strategic infrastructure plan. Content Management Server 2002 offers extensible interfaces through workflow controls, Web Author Client, deployment, object properties, and more. |
Web Site Deployment
Content Management Server 2002 provides a flexible and extensible mechanism for deploying Web sites and content from one server to another. The Site Deployment Manager provides an easy-to-use mechanism for packaging content objects using XML, exporting them from one computer running Content Management Server 2002 and importing them into another computer running Content Management Server 2002. By providing tight integration with Microsoft Application Center, developers and network administrators have everything they need to perform manual, automated, incremental, and transactional site deployments.
The following diagram illustrates how Content Management Server 2002 capitalizes on the power of Visual Studio .NET, Commerce Server, SQL Server 2000, and industry standards such as SOAP and XML to make it easy to develop and deploy dynamic Web sites:
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Scalability and Reliability
Content Management Server 2002 has been tested to serve over 100 million dynamic pages per day. By adding processors to a computer, Content Management Server 2002 scales up to continue to provide superior performance with high Web site traffic demands. By adding additional computers running Content Management Server 2002 into a load balanced environment, Content Management Server 2002 scales out to meet the highest traffic demands and provide failover support, ensuring maximum uptime.
Next Steps
| • | Review the Features list. |
| • | Find out about the return on investment experienced by customers who switched to Content Management Server. |
| • | Read the Content Management Server 2002 Technical Overview white paper. |
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For More Information
Microsoft Corporation and the Content Management Server team are committed to having accessibility features in our product. To learn more about accessibility and Content Management Server, please read the Content Management Server VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template). The VPAT is an informational tool developed by industry and government experts to help facilitate the new market research responsibilities of federal IT professionals under Section 508.