Umbraco User's Guide

THE DATA MODEL

As mentioned in Chapter 2, Umbraco persists all of its data to whatever installed database you chose to use as part of the installation process. This also includes storing all the document type properties in a key-value format. As you can see in Figure 3-1, quite a few tables make the document type “wheel” spin.

FIGURE 3-1

So, for every document type you create, you can also create a virtually endless number of properties, also known as fields. The structure you create here is going to dictate what the editor is allowed to create in the content tree and, in effect, how the final website will be structured.

Using Figure 3-1, you can tell the relationship between the various tables that make up the document type as a whole. At the end of the day, you don't have to worry too much about these relationships, but at least you have an overview of how the database(s) is made up.

This chapter covers more about the importance of designing your content structure before you start to build out your site. In a way, creating your document types forces you to think about how to organize your content. At this stage, you'll want to carefully structure your document types to keep the content input short and concise for your editors.