A colleague asked me the other day – if I have a CS2007 site and don’t feel like changing it (much) at the moment, what’s in it for me to upgrade to Commerce Server 2009? A very good question indeed – I thought…

First, Commerce Server 2009 does not break any compatibility with Commerce Server 2007. So, code that runs on CS2007 will run on CS2009 – unmodified.

Second, Commerce Server 2009 includes a number of fixes over and above SP2 from Commerce Server 2007. So to get the most stable version of the CS2007 bits, one should be running CS2009.

Third is support lifecycle; Microsoft’s standard support policy is 5 Years of Standard Support and 5 Years of Extended Support. Standard support began in 2006 for Commerce Server 2007, versus 2009 for the 2009 version. So you automatically get 3 more years of support.

Fourth and finally is platform support – CS2009 is tested with the latest and greatest – and will be evolved throughout its support lifecycle.

With respect to some other questions:

• Performance of the Core System (old) APIs will be about the same on ’09 versus ’07 – ’09 does have more fixes as reported by customers rolled in than ’07 SP2 though
• The new Commerce Foundation APIs when used in an ASP.NET site will perform marginally better than the old Core System APIs if used correctly; less so if used incorrectly

So – that’s it in a nutshell. Hope this helps!