Someone asked me for resources on how to harden a Commerce Server deployment. The best starting point is: Deployment - see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd464584.aspx Securing a Deployment - can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd442366.aspx Hope this helps!

I was sent several questions about Virtual Catalogs over this last month. So here are the answers... Q: My understanding is that items and categories are including in a Virtual Catalog by creating INCLUSION RULES.  Is there a limit to the number of INCLUSION RULES that I can create? A: No. Though, practically speaking, there... Continue Reading →

I am super-excited to announce that today we have shipped: Commerce Server 2009 Template Pack: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147778 Commerce Server 2009 Inline Product Property Editor: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147779 A new white paper "Localizing Your Commerce Server 2009 Site using Site Variations": http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147752 The Template Pack provides a styled HTML skin over and above the "white label" default site shipped... Continue Reading →

As of this week, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer is now available for free. You can download it from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/default.aspx. This will be a great tool for use in editing the pages in the Default Site in Commerce Server 2009 - or any other supporting file (e.g. - Resource File) or page created in SharePoint Commerce... Continue Reading →

The question keeps coming up about whether or not there is a Commerce Server certification. As of right now, there is not - nor are there any definitive plans to offer this through the typical Microsoft Training and Certification channels now or in the future. Given the size of the customer base of Commerce Server... Continue Reading →

When we shipped Commerce Server 2007, we began supporting ASP.NET Authentication for SQL Authentication and ADFS for Windows Authentication. In fact, this became the preferred and directed method to handle site authentication for Commerce Server. The legacy ISAPI authentication filter was maintained for backward compatibility, but was marked as deprecated. This story did not change... Continue Reading →

While Commerce Server 2009 was being launched last week at Mix '09, those of us involved in product development are already hard at work on the next version. And we need your feedback!  One of the key themes of the next version is providing a single, unified setup experience. In order to best do that,... Continue Reading →

I am pleased to announce that Commerce Server 2009 is complete and has released to manufacturing. It will be available in April through Microsoft's worldwide volume licensing and is available for download NOW by MSDN subscribers. In the meantime, to get started - there are several really useful resources: CS2009 is available to MSDN Subscribers... Continue Reading →

I was just asked how to install Commerce Server 2002 on top of SQL Server 2008 - and fix the things that broke. Unfortunately, you just can't do that. Or support .NET Framework newer than 1.1. Or run on an operating system newer than Windows Server 2003. Or run in 64-bitWhy? A lot changed between... Continue Reading →

A reader sent me a question the other day asking about the status of support for Commerce Server 2002. It entered Extended Support as of July 8, 2008 - see http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x=13&y=14&p1=1552 for details. What does this mean? It means that non-security hot fixes, no-charge incident support, and design changes/feature requests are no longer available. Hot... Continue Reading →