Posting - Posting - Channel Relationship

Everyone knows that there can be relationship between posting - posting (connected postings) and posting - channel (patent of the posting). But how they are really connected? To understand that, we must have a look at MCMS database schema.

All the objects in MCMS are referred as Nodes in database level. If we take a node of a posting, it will have NodeGuid(Guid of the posting), ParentGuid and FollowGuid. Each node has a type. Type 16 can be a page object or a Posting object. If the IsShortcut value is 1 then the item is a Posting. If it is 0 then it is a Page object. Placeholders are bound to the Page objects. The FollowGuid of the Posting Object points to it's underlying Page object. (Thanks for the clear explanation Stefan!)

• Posting-Posting
  
  So all the connected postings will have the same FollowGuid. Because placeholders are bound to the Page objects (IsShortcut=0), connected postings will have reference to the same placeholders.
  
  
• Posting-Channel
  
  All the posting will have a ParentGuid which are the Guids of the channels. So relationship between posting and channels are maintained via this. So until ParentGuid gets changed, the relationship will be always there.

As a conclusion, Change to any - other than these Guids and IsShortcut, won’t change the relationship. Which means renaming channels, postings wont change relationship.

N.B: This blog is only to make a clear understanding on how postings and channels are related. Handling MCMS database directly or using any undocumented API to handle the database will break the Microsoft support boundary - don't do that.