Overview

Site Deployment Manager (SDM) is an important component of CMS. It provides administrators and developers with a mechanism to move content and CMS-based assets from one implementation to another. Site Deployment Manager can be used either in an interactive mode, through Site Manager, or through programmatic methods, using VBScript.

In this chapter, we'll explore SDM, covering the basics of deployment through Site Manager and how to script automated updates between CMS servers. We'll start by discussing Site Deployment Manager in general. Then we'll show you how to use the interactive interface in Site Manager to import and export Site Deployment Object (SDO) files. Next, we'll demonstrate how to script an incremental deployment process. Finally, we'll provide a brief explanation of how to automate the deployment script execution through the Windows Task Scheduler.

It's important to understand that both the interactive interface for Site Deployment Manager and the COM-based interface are used to move CMS-based assets only. Deploying your site from one environment to another involves moving both the CMS-based assets and the file-based assets (template files, images, controls, and so on). Chapter 22 discusses several deployment scenarios. In this chapter, we're focusing on deploying CMS-based assets only.