I recently had a question on my SharePoint Architecture posting asking about more details on the use of managed paths. In the email I was asked about a specific scenario regarding 180 departments, managed paths, and scripting out the creation of these site collections. I wanted to share my response for anyone else who might have the same question. Below is my response....
Managed Paths are elements that can be setup for a web application under Central Administration. There are 2 types of managed paths (Explicit and Wildcard). Explicit managed paths allow you to create a single site collection at that specific path only. Wildcard managed paths all you to create multiple site collections using that managed path. Here are some examples...
Explicit Managed Path: Accounting
Wildcard Managed Path: Departments
As you can see the "departments" wildcard path acts as a place holder to create site collections related to "departments". The reason why i say it represents a phyiscal hierarchy is becase if this were a normal
asp.net web site there would be a physical folder structure on the hard drive somewhere and departments would be that folder. What managed paths allow you to do is represent that physical structure in the URL for the end users and allow for organization on the administrators part. Plus everything in sharepoint is stored in a database, so there are no physical heirarchies. Managed paths allow you to create that feel.
As far as scripting is concerned, you can create a BAT file using STSADM -o createsite operation to script out all the site collections. I usually create a list in excel and use a formula to write out the STSADM command then copy it down the list. After I copy out all the stsadm commands into a BAT file and you good to go. Keep in mind site qoutas and database sizing and maintenance. You can have all 180 site collections in a single database if you want, but make sure the forcasted size of that database is manageable in your sql environment (backups, and performance).
hope this helps.