According to the SAPI specification, CMS contains a prehandler that analyzes the current URL and defines the environment variables (see Recommended CMS Environment Variables). CMS also contains a sufficient number of presentation templates (see Presentation Template), a SAPI document (see SAPI Document), a data repository and a parser that generates the document.

Figure 4. Structure of a SAPI-based CMS

MVC paradigm of XML Sapiens

3.6.2.1 CMS Data Repository

The CMS data repository stores the managed content of the site. Each document of the site has its own unique identifier. Each element of the site can have an unlimited number of query containers, which act as content fragments in the process of document presentation. The content provided in a certain query container for a certain document in the administrative area is placed in the data repository so that it could be restored by the same parameters when viewing the site at the presentation level.

RDBS is the most frequently used data repository.