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In addition to a description of the global topology, the configuration database also stores a site map, which is a mapping of all site collections to the individual content databases that contain the end-user content for the site collections. The following diagram shows how those URLs can be mapped to individual content databases.
Figure 3: Determining the Site Collection URL
This mapping can use a section of the URL (in this case "sites/mysite") to map to an individual back-end database server and content database. This information is stored as a server-relative URL, so this mapping is effective across multiple, different names for the server. The server addresses http://machine, http://localhost, or http://157.55.234.184 are all equivalent.
The Site Collection Lookup (section 2.1.2.6.1.1) describes the process of looking up a site collection from the site map, and determining the connection string to the content database that holds the site collection's end-user generated content.