What are Sitecore pipelines primarily used for?

Sitecore pipelines are primarily used to process requests with a separation of concerns. This means that pipelines allow different components within Sitecore to handle specific tasks in a well-defined order, promoting modularity and facilitating the management of complex operations.

In this architecture, each step in the pipeline can focus on a single responsibility, making it easier to implement, debug, and maintain the functionality. This approach not only enhances the code’s readability but also allows developers to easily insert or replace components within the pipeline without affecting the overall process flow.

While managing user profiles, integrating with external applications, and editing website templates are important functionalities within Sitecore, they do not encapsulate the core concept and purpose of pipelines. Those tasks may utilize pipelines as part of their underlying processes, but the primary role of pipelines themselves is to manage the flow of requests while ensuring that concerns and tasks are separated into distinct handling steps.