Figuring out how to correctly utilize the various Commerce Server systems is mostly a matter (in most cases) of proper schema design coupled with understanding the breaking points of the various components so as not to exceed them. And this, of course, is based upon a solid understanding of the end state business requirements –... Continue Reading →

With a solid understanding of exactly what Commerce Server is – and more importantly is not – one can then come up with a somewhat logical methodology to build production grade application architectures based upon the product. This section will attempt to outline the most expeditious thought process possible to get from here to there.... Continue Reading →

Commerce Server provides a number of application tools on top of the Development Platform to aid in the deployment. These tools can be principally broken into two categories:•    IT Professional Tools – aimed at allowing technical users to manage the operational aspects of the Commerce Server deployment. •    Business User Tools – aimed at allowing... Continue Reading →

Commerce Server 2007 with Service Pack 2 installed is now officially supported running on SQL Server 2008. Unless you are using Data Warehouse and Analytics, there are no special steps or requirements. If you are using Data Warehouse and Analytics, there are a couple of things you have to do to get this to work.... Continue Reading →

In this post, I wanted to describe the major subsystems of Commerce Server... The Catalog SystemThe product Catalog system provides a managed taxonomy for storing and querying the hierarchical data that is utilized to represent goods or services for sale made available for offer to customers utilizing the system. The system is comprised of: •   ... Continue Reading →

As noted in previous posts, Commerce Server 2007 extends the .NET Framework 2.0 and above to provide core e-commerce entities. These entities are: •    Catalog•    Inventory•    Orders•    Profile•    Marketing o    Advertisementso    Discountso    Direct Mail Campaigns •    Analytics In addition, there is an administration framework to provision all of these entities that is shared horizontally across... Continue Reading →

Most of the meat of Commerce Server is to be found within its programming model and underlying data storage mechanisms. Commerce Server started out with the 2000 release by providing extensions to Active Server Pages. Today, with the 2007 release Commerce Server provides a platform that extends the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and above –... Continue Reading →

I received a question this week on how to best upgrade from Commerce Server 2002 to Commerce Server 2007, and then integrate it with a 3rd party Content Management system. Tackling the upgrade scenario first, the question was raised - is it better to upgrade or re-architect? If you are using Commerce Server 2002 on... Continue Reading →

September is here. And with it, a great opportunity to resume professionally blogging. Before getting on to new stuff, I have had a bunch of older material standing around waiting for polishing and publishing - so here goes with the Architecture Series... Software architecture is both an art form and a science – especially when... Continue Reading →

A question came in today about how many variants are supported per product in CS2007. The answer is somewhat gray: There is no practical or enforced limit - so in theory of causing a functional breakage, one can go quite high Performance testing was conducted with 250-500 mix on average, with upper limits of 1,000... Continue Reading →