Ryan R. Donovan's Microsoft WebLog

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 ASP.NET - then upgrade is probably the way to go. If not, a redesign- with data migration is probably the way to go. Between CS2002 and CS2007 - there is not much direct portability (other than the data) unless the .NET APIs were utilized.

In terms of content management integration, there are several interface points that can be utilized:

• Catalog Import/Export API
• BizTalk Adapters
• Web Services

Depending upon which interface points the content management system uses, any or all of those interface points can be utilized; it is really a matter of preference. There is no right or wrong answer.

What about integrating with SharePoint? I have blogged about this before in March 2006 and in March 2007.That story has not changed - yet. It will, very soon however, with the next release of Commerce Server - which just might be coming sooner than you think...more to come on that.

Hope this helps.

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 designing applications for use in mission critical environments such as the typical online storefront. In e-commerce, mission critical is certainly an accurate characterization. The cost of downtime for a large retailer can be enormous – often times averaging $250,000 per hour or more. During a peak holiday season shopping spree the cost of downtime can easily extend into the millions or tens of millions of dollars per hour. Then, there is the cost of reputation damage. Bad site outages often make front page news at some level – and can in the worst case end up driving customers away to the competition.

Then, there is the cost of development and deployment. Building a mission critical e-commerce application can be an extremely costly proposition from a time and resource perspective. Deployment timeframes can range from several months to potentially several years – usually requiring the dedicated attention of a team of people. Given this, the desire is usually there to get several years of usage and utilization out of the system once it has been deployed without the need for costly retrofits of some sort.

All of this brings together the need to get the application architecture of an e-commerce site right the first time. And that task requires a fair degree of consideration over and above the average Web application. To architect a Commerce Server site effectively, one must understand not only Commerce Server and its technical considerations – but those of all of the underlying platform components as well as the requirements of the end business customer. It makes on the surface a somewhat daunting proposition; this chapter will attempt to demystify the process and provide a concise guide of the considerations needed to successfully deploy a Commerce Server solution – regardless if one is running a small online storefront or a global retailer. In addition, some insight will be provided into the how and why the product is architected in the manner it is – in an attempt to answer the annoying questions along the lines of why did Microsoft do it this particular way?… 

To start with architecting a Commerce Server application, it is helpful to understand conceptually just what Commerce Server is and is not. First and foremost – it is not a server in the traditional sense. It is a combination of:

•    Developer Platform – An object and data model representing typical e-commerce entities such as catalogs, inventory, orders, etc.
•    Applications – Tools utilized by business users and IT professionals to deploy applications built by the user on top of the aforementioned Developer Platform. 

In future posts, I shall start going through the different pieces in detail and start explaining how to think about the various pieces to develop a complete software architecture on Commerce Server 2007.

Hope this helps! 

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 in the test suites; that can be characterized as the product's known sweet spot
• How good (or bad) variants will perform is also largely a function of how many variant attributes are present - obviously hundreds of attributes will perform less than tens, etc.

At the end of the day, the best advice I can give - model it and do a simple proof-of-concept exercise. If it works, run with it - as there is no right or wrong answer - just as there is no uniform one-size-fits-all catalog schema.

Hope this helps!

This week, a question came in asking why doesn't ranking/sequencing work in Specification Search in the catalog. The answer was not as obvious as it seemed. As it turns out, these attributes are unique to specific categories. The Specification Search feature returns results from multiple categories - so the data values can potentially be overlapping - and hence it cannot be referenced. Hope this helps!

I received an interesting inquiry today. Someone wrote to me asking how to best handle the scenario where every store has its own price on a per item basis. And the number of stores is 400 and growing.

The first way I could think of to do this that would not be obnoxously unmaintainable is as follows:

• Setup a new table that is independently created (and maintained) - consider making it a profile definition if you want to maintain the data using the Customer and Order Manager
• Store the unique identifier of the product, the store, and the per store price in that table
• Query it using the SetJoin() API when querying the catalog
• Some custom pipeline lookup logic will need to be written as well

The second approach would be to use Virtual Catalogs, where each store has its own virtual catalog. This is easily done provided that the number of base catalogs is small. When issues are encountered is when you are looking to have too many base catalogs in a virtual catalog. Of course, materialization will always help performance as well.

Hope this helps!

I have recently received a few questions about this, so I figured I'd resume my posting silence (more to come on that later) and address this easy question.

The short answer is that Commerce Server 2007 works on Windows Server 2008 - either 32-bit or 64-bit. You need to configure IIS7 to support IIS6 backward compatibility for everything to work perfectly.

This will be officially supported/documented in Service Pack 2 of Commerce Server 2007, which is coming up in the not too distant future.

http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Commerce-Server-2007-Wegner/dp/0470179872/ref=sr_1_1/105-9466919-1198809?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1 

This is going to be THE definitive work on Commerce Server 2007. I've had a chance to review the content going in and I can say this book will definitely be a must-have for any CS2007 user's library.

At this time last year, Commerce Server 2007 (CS2007) hit worldwide general availability. We couldn’t let the occasion pass without some kind of appropriate encore, so we figured the long-term product roadmap announcement might just suffice.

It has been a long time coming – perhaps too long – but we truly wanted to rethink this properly around the unique needs of the Commerce Server customer-base and get it right the first time. Hopefully you think it has been worth the wait! And now, for the details:

• Commerce Server “7” – This will be the next-major version of Commerce Server (and 7^th major iteration of e-commerce technology from Microsoft since Merchant Server’s debut in 1996) and successor to CS2007, targeted for delivery in mid-2010. This release will feature the following themes:
• Migration from CS2007 – given the size of our 5K+ global customer-base this has to be there and has to be right. Plain and simple.
• Commerce Foundation 3.0 – This will be the third major evolution of core e-commerce capabilities, with the first two being Merchant Server/Site Server and Commerce Server 2000-2007. Some of the key enhancements to look forward to include an all-managed foundation (sans a few pieces for backward compatibility), scrubbed and consistent programming model aligned to the latest .NET developer platform, and full support for 2-tier and 3-tier/Web Service support pervasively for both runtime and data management scenarios.
• Commerce-at-Your-Fingertips – CS2007, with its Web Service support, started reaching beyond traditional Web site scenarios for the first time. “7” will treat all commerce scenarios as first-class citizens, not just the online Web store. Think about things like Web Service-based punch-outs from other systems or marketplaces, kiosks, mobility, emerging mediums (like gaming or interactive/IP TV), and in-store integration – it will all be there in addition to continuing to evolve the Web store offering and making it better than ever.
• Lifestyle Commerce – Personalization technology has a come a long way. Social networking has emerged as the latest and hottest trend on the Web. Driving convergence of the two together into a seamless experience for both shoppers and business users represents one of the largest areas of investment for CS “7”. First, think about investments in orders and profiles for customer care scenarios to facilitate 1:1 interactions between the business user and shopper – this is an area that could use more investment in CS2007 and we intend to get it right in “7”. Second, think about extending the entire shopping experience (and ability to do personalized targeted marketing as a business owner) to social networks – with things like content syndication, blogs, forums, and other means of collaboration - this will also be a major “7” investment. Third and finally, think about targeted marketing across all channels with predictive analytics to measure the results and make adjustments (that can be off, on full automatic mode, or interactively utilized as “suggestions” by the business owner) – this will also be in “7” as well.
• Commerce Server 2007 Accelerators – Between now and “7” is a long time to wait, so we wanted to deliver more value to CS2007 customers by adding new capabilities a la carte that have minimal-to-no impact upon existing deployments to facilitate the most oft-requested technology integration or industry deployment scenarios for CS2007. This will be accomplished via accelerators – which will be shipped starting in the 2^nd half of 2008 (with preview releases available beforehand) – that can be added to any existing CS2007 deployment.
• Technology Integration
• SharePoint – Leverage CS2007 + Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS2007) together for end-to-end site search (SharePoint data + Commerce Server data), commerce-enabled portals (ability to consume CS2007 runtime services in MOSS2007portals), and content authoring/workflow (leverage MOSS content creation to manage your CS2007 catalogs + associated content in a unified experience).
• Dynamics – End-to-end e-business deployment with Dynamics CRM plus a choice of Dynamics AX, NAV, or GP for ERP.
• Live! Services – Search engine optimization and publishing for Live Search, store location with Live Local/Virtual Earth, and integration of AdCenter support into the Commerce Server marketing subsystem.
• Enhanced Business User Experience – Leverage of Silverlight 1.1+ technologies to replace Windows SmartClients for business user tools capabilities to facilitate zero desktop footprint and multi-platform support for business users.
• Industry Enablement
• End-to-end facilitation of vertical industry scenarios through a premium version of the Starter Site (with industry-specific functional customizations, controls, etc.), custom schema extensions, customized business management tools, Expression Studio support, and any other capabilities needed to enable a specific vertical scenario.
• Target industries include: General Merchandise Retail, Apparel Retail, Electronics Retail, Digital Downloads (Software + Media & Entertainment), and General Business/Hospitality Services.

The pricing, licensing, packing, and final naming are all TBD. Needless to say, we are committed to broadening the reach of Commerce Server as much as possible as well as delivering value on existing investments. Likewise, we don’t have more schedule specifics we can share at this time. Stay tuned to the team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/commerce/ for further details, as they will be shared as soon as information can be made available.

To provide better support to our customers, we are announcing the Commerce Server Information Desk. With a general response time of ~2-3 business days, this is a global, product group-managed program for ALL customers and partners to get tailored pre-sales support and connections with expert resources and best practices for post-sales engagements. The Commerce Server business is unique in that there are no two customers alike – as every organization runs its business differently. This program acknowledges this fact by providing the 1:1 interactions and specialized expertise needed to make customers and partners successful with evaluating and deploying Commerce Server worldwide through a consistently managed experience. (Note: This does not replace product support, which should still always be the first line of getting assistance with production issues.) To get started, simply mail csid@microsoft.com today!

Simultaneously, Microsoft is entering into a long-term arrangement with Cactus Commerce of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada as the new preferred joint development and go-to-market partner for Commerce Server. What this means to partners and customers is that Cactus’ considerable industry and technical expertise and experience around Commerce Server can now be leveraged worldwide through programs in conjunction with the product group. This will help accelerate new software development offerings, better encapsulate real world experiences into the product development cycle, and provide global reach of deep Commerce Server expertise to whomever needs it, whenever and wherever they need it.

In short, today is one of the biggest days in Commerce Server history. We have a great product with Commerce Server 2007 and Microsoft’s FY07 was a banner year for Commerce Server 2007. Now, we have more resources than ever working on e-commerce, new programs to help get engaged, and the strongest, most specific roadmap in the product’s history. I, for one, am truly looking forward to the future – and on behalf of everyone in the product group, we hope you share our excitement as well.

Next week I'll be making a day trip to Denver (and racking up yet more Star Alliance frequent flier miles) to speak at WPC on June 11th about Commerce Server - present and futures.

See details on the Commerce Team Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/commerce/archive/2007/07/06/commerce-server-worldwide-partner-conference-in-denver-next-week.aspx.

Hope to see you there!

Inscribed on Frank Sinatra's tombstone and the subject of his famous 1964 song of the same name, I think it is appropriate moniker of the next few months for Commerce Server. Or perhaps I just have Vegas on the brain from having just seen Ocean's 13.

I personally am nearing the end of a long project to lock down on the details of the long-term product roadmap - and some new support and go-to-market options for customers. Stay tuned to my blog and our team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/commerce/ over the next month for details as these roll-out.

AND, if you're going to be at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, CO the week of July 9th - I hope to see you there, as I will be presenting.

Stay tuned. Be seeing you...

Following on the one year anniversary of Commerce Server 2007's release, Service Pack 1 is now available. This release contains all fixes to-date, Vista client optimizations for the business UIs, and more.

Find out more at:

• Download Informatoin: http://blogs.msdn.com/commerce/archive/2007/06/22/commerce-server-2007-sp1-is-now-available.aspx 
• Documentation Information: http://blogs.msdn.com/commerce/archive/2007/06/27/commerce-server-2007-sp1-content-is-live.aspx 

Hope this helps!

It has been almost a year since we shipped Commerce Server 2007. We have seen phenomenal adoption in the 9 months since general availability and I look forward to showcasing some of the amazing customer deployments that are currently ongoing as these sites launch throughout the summer, fall, and winter timeframe. We are on the dawn of the release of CS2007 Service Pack 1 in June, which makes it a great time to start talking about what comes next.

Building a product roadmap is not an easy task – especially if you want to get it right to truly address customer needs, align with industry direction, and innovate in new and interesting ways all at the same time. This summer, we will start the unveiling process around all of the specifics – but in the mean time here is a sneak preview of some of our core roadmap tenets:

• Ongoing service packs and platform support updates will be provided for the standard support lifecycle of Commerce Server 2007, which ends 7/12/2011
• Microsoft remains fully committed to the e-commerce space and will be providing successors for the current Commerce Server SKUs
• Commerce Server is not going to be merged into other products; e-commerce is a unique enough scenario with extremely demanding requirements that will often times warrant a standalone deployment; that being said, we are going to continue to vigorously pursue deeper integration with other Microsoft products and technologies as it makes sense to provide the best integrated story possible
• We will look to align major product revisions with major platform evolution waves encompassing Windows Server, SQL Server, .NET Framework, BizTalk Server, and other such dependencies; this philosophy is to prevent constant big-bang upgrade churn on a too-frequent basis
• We will look to add new features and functionally incrementally on an interim a la carte basis outside of major product revisions to deliver new value and enhance capabilities in a non-invasive manner to existing CS2007 deployments  
• Features and functions? Too early to start delving into the details but needless to say we take customer feedback very seriously (look at the transformation from CS2002->CS2007) and have quite a few new cool and innovative ideas in the pipeline as well.

The future of Commerce Server and e-commerce at Microsoft has never been brighter. I am very much looking forward to revealing the specifics as details are crystallized, as it’s going to be a fun ride.

And in news of yet more releases, the Windows SharePoint Services Solution Kit for hosting providers is now available. This offering, downloadable on CodePlex, provides 40+ application templates geared to be utilized as offers by Web hosting providers.

Check it out today at http://www.codeplex.com/SharePointHosters.

For my official post on Web Hosting, I wanted to chronicle some of the efforts we have had ongoing around Longhorn Server Beta 3, which shipped yesterday (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/longhorn/default.mspx). E-Week presented a great article on this and some of our team's efforts with respect to this launch - available at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2122094,00.asp.

One of the key aspects was the IIS 7 Go-Live program, which has allowed hosting providers to provide offers based on IIS 7 and Longhorn Server Beta 3 today. Some of those participating in this program include:

• Affinity
• Applied Innovations (available now)
• CrystalTech
• DiscountASP.net (available now)
• HostMySite.com (available now)
• MaximumASP (available now)
• Mosso
• And many more coming soon!

This just goes to show how baked the technology is - as it is literally in production today in multiple places on Beta 3. So, I would highly enoucrage you to go check out getting your Web site hosted on the most major revision of IIS since 4.0 came out years ago.

 And if you are a hosting provider and would like to participate, visit http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=7&subtabid=79 today!