Should We Put It In Sitecore?

A common consideration on any project is whether or not external data should be stored in Sitecore or remain in an external system. Here are some things to consider.

Who owns the data?

This is the big one. If the data is something that is maintained by internal content authors, then it is a strong candidate for Sitecore. If the data is maintained by an external system and you have no control over it, then you need to consider what that means for maintenance.

Maintenance considerations

• Are there any licensing issues with the data?
• Could the schema change outside of your control?
• Is there already an API available?
• Does the content need to appear in multiple systems?

Benefits of storing content in Sitecore

• Author publishing – Content authors can publish content
• Content security – You can secure content to specific users
• Content cloning – You can clone content across sections
• Development control – You have full control over the data model
• Version control – You can version content
• Workflow – You can implement workflow
• Search – You can search content
• Caching – You can cache content for bandwidth management
• Language versioning – You can version content by language

Practical constraints

Budget and timeline may favor using an existing API rather than migrating data to Sitecore. This is especially true for complex filtered or user-specific data requirements.

Data transfer approaches

If you do decide to store the data in Sitecore, here are some approaches:

• Manual uploads
• Scheduled imports (minutely, hourly, daily, weekly)
• Author-requested imports
• Event-triggered imports (user login, content save)

Conclusion

The decision is partly logical and partly political. Make sure you understand what the stakeholders need alongside the technical capabilities.