1.4. Definitions¶

Module: A Module is a conceptual grouping of assets which relates to a business requirement. The conventions, processes and tools described in this document relate to managing all these assets in a module-centric – and thereby business centric – way. For example, when the company asks that their Sitecore solution contains website search, all assets, business logic and configuration relating to search belongs to the Search module. These assets can also span across the different target services that make up a complete Sitecore installation. For example you could have a module which contains functionality that runs on both the Sitecore website and the Commerce Engine.
Solution: Technically often refers to Visual Studio solution, but conceptually, it can also refer to an implementation. For example, Michael is a developer at his company. Most of his time is spent working in the Visual Studio solution that contains the code that powers his company’s Sitecore solution.
Project: In technical terms, project often refers to Visual Studio project, but conceptually can also to the process of implementing the business requirements into an implementation. For example, Michael is a developer at his company. Most of his time is spent working in one of the five Visual Studio projects that contain the code that powers his company’s Sitecore solution. He is starting on a new implementation, which is a project that will result in new features being added to his company’s website.
Serialization: The process of writing data in the Sitecore databases to disk so that it can maintained in version control and packaged into deployments across environments.
Assets: Technically an Asset refers to a digital asset such as images, but can also mean the actual output from any process or task in your entire application lifecycle: code, files, visual design, data, content, configuration changes, deployment packages etc.
Dictionary: A collection of named text snippets which can be translated across languages and used in the UX, for example on websites, Sitecore tools, e-mails, etc.
Tenant: A product owner of one or more sites in a Sitecore implementation. Sitecore allows multiple tenants to share a single implementation, which allows certain resources to be shared (such as templates and digital assets), while allowing other resources (such as sites and other business entities) to be defined and managed independently (see Multi-site and multi-tenant).
Site: A collection of content and output with a common overall business objective, and sharing a common set of assets. A site can output content to any channel, not necessarily as a website to the web channel. In Sitecore, technically a site is a context under which content is output, i.e. which assets the business logic can access.
Website: A website is a site that can output content to the web channel. See Site.
Implementation: An implementation, or customer implementation, is the total number of modules, features and functionalities developed and deployed to solve the customer business problem. Also often referred to as the solution.
Commerce Engine: The Commerce Engine is the subsystem used to provide eCommerce functionality to the sites running in the customer’s implementation. If developing for Sitecore Experience Commerce, your Helix compliant solution will contain code that gets executed on both the website and the commerce engine.