As I type this, I am waiting for my DC to reboot. I am going to start on a journey to integrate MOSS and Commerce Server 2007 while chronicling my learnings here. I am still in the beginning stages of my development.  I've set up my MOSS server, and I have my CS 2007 instance up and running. First step is to load the CS 2007 starter site with sample data.  Then, I need to set up a WCM site collection.and get the CS profiles and CS auth provider hooked up to MOSS according to Henry Winkler's WP.  I will only cover the rendering of content, not the management of products, workflow, etc. unless I have time. 

Next step it figure out how/where to integrate them. There are several strategies I have pondered recently:

The SOA method of just web parts using web services

Pros:

  • Fairly easy to write web parts that can call into CS and display data

Cons:

  • You loose the tracking ability in CS
  • You loose OOTB caching for profiles and catalogs on the FE web server
  • You can't truly separate yourself from the API unless you want to write your own XML parsing classes.  You have to include several references to CS classes to resolve the specific classes.
  • You must use the BDC to import the profiles from CS into MOSS since the membership provider will be MOSS.
  • You have to write your own wrappers for mapping users to custom catalogs, roles, etc

The integrated way of having both products installed on the box (ala MSIB)

Pros:

  • Easy to call CS API's natively as both runtimes are on the box
  • No need to write your own caching layer

 Cons:

  • Not perf tested. CS and MOSS have several HTTP modules that they load, To get this to work, you would have to hack the XML config file on the MOSS site

A separated site with MOSS/WCM running most of the site and CS running the checkout on a separate URL.

Pros:

  • Separate URL for CS checkout, could be a separate machine.

Cons:

  • Many moving pieces. Could be difficult to manage.

Some other ideas I had to was to set up a reporting dashboard.  Since I am pretty passionate about this subject, I think I'll try them all!  Here goes...