Arbortext Publishing Engine is implemented as a Java servlet. The servlet is referred to as the Arbortext PE Request Manager. Like all servlets, the Arbortext PE Request Manager is written in Java; it implements the Java interface javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet, and behaves as required by the Java Servlet Standard.

Internally, the Arbortext PE Request Manager contains a series of components, described in the following sections, which work together to generate responses to the HTTP requests delivered by the servlet container in which the Arbortext PE Request Manager is running.