The Essential .NET Server for Smart Online Business

Commerce Server 2002 Technical Overview

Updated March 2003

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Contents

Introduction

Editions of Commerce Server 2002

Evaluation Edition

Developer Edition

Standard Edition

Enterprise Edition

Upgrade Paths

Software Compatibility

Architectural Overview

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Scenarios for International Sites

Functionality and Features

Setup and Deployment

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Commerce Server .NET Application Framework

Commerce Server Application Runtime

Commerce Server Base Class Library

Common Language Runtime Interoperability Layer

Developer Portal

International Retail Site: A .NET-Based Sample Site

Product Catalog System

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Profiling System

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Targeting System

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Business Processing Pipelines System

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Business Analytics System

Business Data Warehouse

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Predictor

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Analysis Reporting

Business Desk

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Summary

Introduction

Microsoft® Commerce Server 2002 is the .NET Enterprise Servers platform for rapidly building next-generation online businesses.

Commerce Server 2002 is built on agile Microsoft .NET technology that enables you to extend your site functionality, drive profitability, and enhance the customer experience globally. Commerce Server provides powerful features for user profiling, personalization, catalog management, order processing, globalization (multiple languages and currencies), and advanced online business analytics.

Commerce Server 2002 is the successor to Commerce Server 2000. Commerce Server 2000 is designed for building middle to large commerce sites and for use by organizations with a single-language focus. Commerce Server 2002 builds on this functionality for the international marketplace, and provides multiple editions, including:

  • Enterprise Edition. Designed for large international corporations that may have multiple language and multiple currency scenarios, potentially challenging high availability requirements, or the requirement to build feature-rich Web sites using the latest Microsoft technologies.
  • Standard Edition. Priced and sized appropriately for the middle market. Standard Edition is intended for use in creating high-value, lower-volume business-to-business sites.

All editions of Commerce Server 2002 offer developers the choice of using traditional languages and tools, such as Active Server Pages (ASP), MicrosoftVisual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript), and the Component Object Model (COM), as well as the compelling newer MicrosoftVisual Studio® .NET development environmentthat includes MicrosoftVisual C#™, MicrosoftVisual Basic .NET, and more. By providing a Commerce Server application runtime as an extension of the Microsoft ASP.NET core runtime services, the developer experience for building applications from within the Visual Studio .NET environment is consistent and well-integrated.

This document contains:

  • An introduction to the editions of Commerce Server 2002
  • Software compatibility
  • Architectural overview
  • Key features in Commerce Server 2002
  • Scenarios for international sites
  • Functionality and features of Commerce Server 2002

Editions of Commerce Server 2002

In an effort to better match the product to the requirements of customers in the various roles and environments, Commerce Server 2002 is available in four editions: Evaluation Edition, Developer Edition, Standard Edition, and Enterprise Edition. All editions are available in English, French, German, and Japanese. All Commerce Server editions work with Developer, Standard, or Enterprise Editions of Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000.

All Commerce Server editions work with Developer, Standard, or Enterprise Editions of SQL Server™ 2000.

Evaluation Edition

The Evaluation Edition is available for evaluation purposes and is limited to a 120-day period. This edition should not be deployed in a production environment. A production deployment of the Evaluation Edition is not supported.

The evaluation edition has all the features of the Enterprise Edition of the released product. To obtain the Evaluation Edition, see

A direct, setup-enabled upgrade from Evaluation Edition to the Enterprise Edition allows planning and development work to be used in a production environment without extensive code changes. Upgrading from Evaluation Edition to the Standard Edition is a smooth and relatively easy procedure for code customizations you might have implemented, database schema changes, and other modifications.

Developer Edition

Developer Edition is designed for developers or consulting partners to write customized code and perform simple unit testing on a server. It is not intended for use with multiple servers designated for formal integration, performance testing, or staging environments.

Developer Edition is available to developers through Microsoft MSDN® Universal subscription or as a stand-alone product.

The Developer Edition license covers installation on two computers: one is used for development which contains development tools and source code, and the other is used as a development Web server. The Web server is separate so that Internet Information Services (IIS) remains unaffected by other tools used during development.

You cannot upgrade Developer Edition to Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition; however, you can easily migrate work from the development environment to the production environment using Commerce Server 2002 tools.

The following illustration shows the limitations of the Developer Edition of Commerce Server 2002.

Limitations of Commerce Server 2002 Developer Edition

Standard Edition

Standard Edition is designed for the mid-market organization using a per processor license. Web sites built with a limited purpose or scope can use the more sophisticated features within Commerce Server 2002, such as catalog management, campaign management, personalization, and limited business analytics advantageously without incurring additional costs.

Standard Edition licensing permits the implementation of two applications per site and two Web servers per application. The number of sites is not limited. The capacity of users depends upon your hardware and site configuration. Your network connection should have a high bandwidth in order to maximize the performance of Business Desk.

Standard Edition can be upgraded to Enterprise Edition.

The following illustration shows the limitations of the Standard Edition of Commerce Server 2002.

Limitations of Commerce Server 2002 Standard Edition

Enterprise Edition

Enterprise Edition is intended for those organizations that need to scale up or to scale out beyond the Standard Edition limits, or those that require the advanced features of business analytics available only to Enterprise Edition customers. Licensing of Enterprise Edition is based on the per-processor model.

The advanced features in business analytics of Enterprise Edition include reporting beyond the boundaries of product sales and Web usage, advanced data mining and prediction, cube partitioning and parallel processing, and extensibility of the reporting and cube features.

Enterprise Edition licensing permits the implementation of an unlimited number of applications and an unlimited number of sites. You can also use an unlimited number of CPUs depending on your operating system requirements.

The following illustration shows an overview of how the Enterprise Edition of Commerce Server 2002 can be configured.

Configuration of Commerce Server 2002 Enterprise Edition

Upgrade Paths

The following table lists the editions of Commerce Server and the supported upgrade paths.

Upgrade from / To
Commerce Server 2002 Evaluation Edition / Commerce Server 2002 Enterprise Edition
Commerce Server 2002 Standard Edition / Commerce Server2002 Enterprise Edition
Commerce Server 2000 / Any edition of Commerce Server 2002
Site Server 3.0 / Any edition of Commerce Server 2002

For upgrade instructions, see “Upgrading from a Previous Version of Commerce Server” at

Software Compatibility

Commerce Server 2002 is compatible with the following Microsoft technologies:

  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
  • Microsoft Active Directory
  • Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  • Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2000 or later
  • Microsoft Application Center 2000 or later
  • Microsoft Content Management Server 2001 or later
  • Microsoft Office XP
  • Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA)
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or later.

The Commerce Server Solution Sites, which provide a starting point for developing your own sites, are tested using Internet Explorer 5.5 or later. A verification pass has been run using Netscape 6.

NoteOnly the Administration Tools and Documentation can be installed on Windows XP.

NoteIndividual browser support is determined by the particular implementation of the Commerce Server application. Commerce Server 2002 has no control over the rendering of data in a browser-specific or independent environment because it is a middle-ware technology.

Architectural Overview

Commerce Server is comprised of five major systems:

  • Business Analytics System
  • Profiling System
  • Product Catalog System
  • Targeting System
  • Business Processing Pipelines System

System administrators use Commerce Server Manager, an MMC snap-in, to manage these systems. Business managers use Business Desk to manage their Web site.

The following figure provides an overview of the Commerce Server systems wrapped in the Solution Sites, together with Business Desk, Commerce Server Manager, and the Commerce Server databases.

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

Commerce Server 2002 provides the following key features.

  • The ability to scale up to support the largest Internet commerce sites
  • Improved operations and manageability out of the box
  • Feature and performance improvements for site availability
  • The ability to manage product data (for example, catalogs and shipping methods) centrally in multiple languages without having to create separate data sources per language
  • Create an advertising campaign in a single language, or target users with campaigns in multiple languages
  • The ability to manage user, product, and targeting data in a single data source that supports multiple sites
  • Create single site with multiple languages and currencies where transactions occur in only one currency or create multiple sites with a single language and transaction currency

NoteTo perform transactions in multiple currencies within a single site, you must develop pipeline components for each currency. These additional pipeline components are not provided in Commerce Server 2002.

Scenarios for International Sites

Commerce Server 2002 supports multilingual and multicurrency implementations.

International organizations run Web sites that display content in two or more languages, and they may price products in multiple currencies. Following are the key multilingual and multicurrency scenarios that Commerce Server 2002 features support:

  • The organization has products offered in two or more languages.
  • The organization has products offered in two or more languages, but not all products are available to all locales. For example, a product may be sold in Canada, France, and Japan, but not in the United States.
  • The organization has products offered in two or more languages and transacts business in two or more currencies.
  • The organization has products offered in two or more languages and creates advertising campaigns that are targeted to more than one locale.

Functionality and Features

This section introduces the functionality and features provided by Commerce Server 2002 in the following areas.

Setup and Deployment

Commerce Server .NET Application Framework

Product Catalog System

Profiling System

Targeting System

Business Processing Pipelines System

Business Analytics System

Business Desk

Setup and Deployment

Commerce Server includes features that enable you to run a highly available enterprise site. Commerce Server provides resiliency from errors of the underlying platform and single points of failure.

The assumed scenarios in a Commerce Server 2002 deployment include a stand-alone business Analytics installation, a new installation of Commerce Server 2002, and an upgrade from Commerce Server 2000 to Commerce Server 2002.

For the installation instructions, see the “Commerce Server 2002 Installation Guide” available at

Key Features in Commerce Server 2002

  • Microsoft Windows NT® Authentication for data store connections. This facilitates the use of native Windows security objects and audit logging.
  • Default locale. It is recommended, but not required, that you set the system locale to the default locale (or admin locale) of the main administration site.
  • Business Analytics only installation option. This option installs the Data Warehouse, Analysis, and Predictor resources, and it unpacks the Business Desk application.
  • Password Management. Commerce Server 2002 provides support for changing passwords simultaneously requires Windows accounts for services and COM+ application identities. SQL Server logins are required for resources.

The services and COM+ applications consist of the List Manager service, Direct Mailer, the Predictor resource, and Event Logging (a COM+ application). Site level resources with SQL Server credentials are Transactions, Transaction Configuration, Product Catalog, Campaigns, Global Resources for Direct Mailer, Data Warehouse, and Profiles. Commerce Server 2002 changes all passwords simultaneously. Since the site may be using global resources that have SQL Server credentials, the administrator can select a check box that specifies whether to make the same credential changes to the global resources used by the selected site.

  • Manage large number of sites. Manage a large number of sites by making each site resource more identifiable with site specific reference information.
  • Microsoft Management Console (MMC) task pads. Use MMC task pads to provide task-based screens to expose the functionality of Commerce Server Manager.
  • Support for Windows clustering and Network Load Balancing. These configurations have been tested extensively with Commerce Server 2002. All Commerce Server 2002 high availability requirements are driven by the Windows 2000 Advanced Server High Availability certification specifications.

Commerce Server 2002 supports:

  • Node support for installation on clustered servers. Direct Mailer and Predictor are Windows Clustering cluster-aware. Cluster awareness requires that Commerce Server 2002 be able to install on any node event if the disks where your application is stored are not physically located on that node.
  • Enhanced failover for runtime components of NT dependent services. Predictor and Direct Mailer can install on 2 nodes on Windows2000 Advanced Server, and on 2, 3, and 4 nodes on Windows2000 Datacenter Server.

Failover requires that applications or runtime components that maintain a long running connection to dependent Windows NT services, application server, or underlying data stores must gracefully handle both cluster node failures and application failures by attempting to retry the connection.

  • Windows NT Event Log error reporting. Windows NT Event Log reporting records application events that occur allowing for availability and management monitoring of the features and applications. Commerce Server 2002 continues to support and extend error reporting for application management.
  • An order queuing samplein the SDK. This sample shows how to process orders offline, a high-availability best practice.

Commerce Server .NET Application Framework

The Commerce Server 2002 .NET Application Framework brings the .NET developer experience to Commerce Server. It allows developers to create Commerce Server applications using ASP.NET and the .NET Framework. The main components of the framework are:

  • Application Runtime
  • Base Class Library
  • Common Language Runtime Interop Layer, which allows ASP.NET applications to benefit from core Commerce Server services and systems.
  • Developer Portal

In addition, Commerce Server includes the International Retail Site, a .NET-based sample site.

Each of these components are described below.

Commerce Server Application Runtime

The Commerce Server Application Runtime is an extension of the core runtime services provided by ASP.NET that enable .NET-based Commerce Server applications to be configured and run within ASP.NET. The Application Runtime enables developers to configure the basic Commerce Server services used by an application from a single place, without having to write any code.

The Application Runtime provides the core integration with ASP.NET, enabling developers to create .NET-based Commerce Server applications without writing any code to configure the application. Additionally, Commerce Server customers building .NET-based Commerce Server applications benefit from the reliability and scalability features built in to ASP.NET, including automatic memory leak detection, access violation detection, and Web gardens.