Difference between "Session-enabled Content Service" and "Session Preview Web service"

Question

In the Web 8 CD installation instructions when installing the micro services for an XPM enabled preview site it suggests you to install a "Session-enabled Content Service" registered as "ContentServiceCapability", and a "Session Preview Web service" registered as "PreviewWebServiceCapability". However they use the same "preview\service\" pre-configured role source files for both services, with slight differences between configuration.

In the Quick install guide only the "Session-enabled Content Service" is created and configured for both the "ContentServiceCapability" and "PreviewWebServiceCapability".

What is the difference between the two? In what scenario would I choose the first and second configurations?

Answer 1

To add to Likhan's description, the quick start guide shares a single service instance with both the PreviewWebServiceCapability and ContentSeviceCapability. This is acceptable for one box setups such as a Dev or Test environment, or where no separation is needed between the internal and external application layers.

However, when deploying to production systems, the customer will typically wish to have these two capabilities handled by different instances of the service. The PreviewWebServiceCapability instance would be configured as an internal, back-office facing service, whereas the ContentServiceCapability instance would be an external, web-application facing. These instances would typically have different firewall configurations.

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

The normal content service does not have the ability to merge session preview db content and broker db content. So for example environment where the cd environment does not need session preview capability you can install the normal content service capability. However, if your content service needs to serve session content then you should use the preview svc with the documented config. The diff between the two capability is that the preview capability svc is a writable svc which the content manager uses to publish session preview content and should not be used by or for anything else. The content svc capability is for query and using on the website.