In any content management system -- web content management (WCM), document management (DM), or digital asset management (DAM) -- how content gets persisted is an important aspect of the overall content lifecycle. Every content management system needs to persist content, since it can't hold everything in memory. Some content management systems employ a relational database while others use a file system (although with some optimizations).

Most of the time, how your content management system persists content does not impact end users. However, it can have a great impact on IT and admin folks. It also impacts your architecture as well as overall costs. Hence we recommend that when you are evaluating your content management needs, you should also explore how the tool persists content for its ongoing day-to-day usage.

In our recent advisory, Key Considerations for Choosing the Right Storage Alternative, we look at different considerations that are relevant when deciding if you should select a content management system that uses a database or a one that uses a file system.

Here's the table of contents for the advisory paper:

• Key Takeaways
• Introduction
• Management versus Archival Services
• Some Vendor Examples
• Key Factors to Determine the Right Persistence Alternative
• Conclusion

The advisory paper is available to our DAM, Web CMS, and ECM research subscribers.