Richard Seroter - SoCal BizTalk Musings : Commerce Server

Back In Town, And Commerce Server Best Practices Analyzer

rseroter — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:54:00 GMT

Just returned from a pleasant 10-day vacation to London and Edinburgh and am ready to get back to work. A few musings ...

If you live in the LA area, I recommend NOT using LA Limo Service for transportation. I got a call an hour before my pickup saying they had to cancel because the driver was in traffic. Traffic in Southern California ... shocking. Good planning, Magellan.
Why are there so many freakin' Italian restaurants in London? I think they outnumbered the English pubs. Best food I had was actually Indian. Just great stuff at Moti Mahal in Kensington.
For a city that has virtually no pubic trash receptacles, the streets are surprisingly clean. Where does all the trash go (not counting the Tube tracks)?
If you get chance, that train ride from London to Scotland is something else. You don't get scenery like that in SoCal.
I've developed a man-crush on St. Louis Cardinals baseball coach Tony La Russa after reading Three Nights in August on the plane flight. Of the couple dozen books I've read this year, this might be my favorite.
If your female companion wants to wear 3-inch heeled boots to tour a hilly, cobblestone saturated castle, take my advice, tell them not to. It's terrifying to watch.

In order to not make this a completely useless post from a technical perspective, don't forget to check out the brand new Commerce Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer. As with the BizTalk BPA, it doesn't change any configuration settings, but, does make you aware of less than optimal settings.

Technorati Tags: Commerce Server

Commerce Server 2007 Site Updated

rseroter — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:53:00 GMT

We've just refreshed the Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 page on the main site. You've got data sheets, link to the full documentation and more. Adjust your day accordingly.

Remember that while CS2k7 has been released to manufacturing, the general availability date is still 8/1.

Technorati Tags: Commerce Server

Commerce Server 2007 Updated Docs Released

rseroter — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 03:15:00 GMT

Commerce Server 2007 RC docs are online in MSDN now, and looking pretty good. Pretty comprehensive and showing some nice depth and improvement over the last release.

I promise I'm not bored, but this is my 3rd post of the day. Lots of interesting stuff today I guess.

Technorati Tags: Commerce Server

Commerce Server 2006 Starter Site Beta Now Available

rseroter — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 05:43:00 GMT

It's here, the long wait is over. We've just made a drop of the Commerce Server 2006 Starter Site (beta) at the Microsoft Connect site. We've got most of the core functionality in there, including ASP.NET master pages and web controls for functions such as drag-and-drop product detail and shopping cart. Profiles and authorization are hooked up as well. Great stuff. Please remember that we haven't applying much UI formatting at this point, so it'll be up to you to skin it how you like. Of course, the UI shouldn't matter because this beta version of the Starter Site can NOT be put in production. It should be used as a programming reference.

Not signed up for the Commerce Server 2006 beta? For shame! Check out the Commerce Server 2006 Beta registration page.

More Commerce Server 2006 Features

rseroter — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 00:48:00 GMT

Attended a great session a couple days ago on Commerce Server 2006 by Ryan Donovan at our Microsoft-internal TechReady conference. Some interesting notes include ...

Great new function of search in the Orders subsystem is the ability to find records by querying any property of the XSD schema
User controls for ASP.NET 2.0 and Commerce Server 2006 for standard functions like shopping cart and catalogs. Will be part of Starter Site. Awesome.
The business toolset for Commerce Server 2006 can be run over the internet if they point to a valid http or https web service URL.
Powerful integration with SQL Reporting Services allows for a particular report of interest to be scheduled and delivered to your desktop on regular intervals.
We'll be providing some nice resources to help you implement best practices
Nice Commerce Server integration story with SharePoint "12" and Content Management "12" via ASP.NET 2.0 and Commerce Server web controls
Integrated SharePoint search by indexing the catalog web service, which exposes all product
Fantastic performance numbers including the new ability to host 100 active sites on a single server.

We've done a great job of turning direct customer feedback into tangible product improvements. Like what you hear? Sign up for the Commerce Server 2006 beta!

New Commerce Server Case Studies Posted

rseroter — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 09:41:00 GMT

So just saw that we published three major new case studies for Commerce Server 2002. Check out the great references for Costco.com, CompUSA, and Tommy Hilfiger. These are some great showcases for bringing up high performing commerce sites quickly.

In Seattle For Conference, Commerce Server 2006 Training

rseroter — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 01:21:00 GMT

I'll be hanging out in Seattle for the next week and a half, first attending our Microsoft-internal TechReady conference, and then, staying around for Commerce Server TAP training. TechReady gives us field folks a great chance to network with peers and the product teams, dig deep into technical aspects of our products, see roadmaps, and gain perspective on the market players and industry trends. I plan on blogging any useful tips and (public) information I learn about BizTalk or Commerce Server. Also, I'll share any great tidbits from the Commerce Server 2006 training. Anything I should harass the product team about while I'm up there?

Commerce Server 2006 Tidbits

rseroter — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 18:26:00 GMT

I got Commerce Server 2006 installed a couple days ago, and must say, it has clearly the best documentation I've ever seen for a beta product. Now it's by no means complete, but we've got some substantial topics covered, and low-level APIs explained.

Some of the good things I've messed around with on Commerce Server 2006 so far are ...

Using the new ASP.NET 2.0 authentication controls but actually using the robust Commerce Server 2006 Profile Subsystem as the membership provider
Brand new Inventory Subsystem
Great BizTalk adapters for integrating with subsystems

Obviously tons more good stuff. The "todo" list is focused on deeper understanding of the API, but also on infrastructure and the new staging functionality. I'm fortunate enough to be attending some internal Commerce Server training in two weeks, so I'll definitely post on the cool things we build out!

Did you see the new video by Scoble on Channel 9 about Commerce Server 2006? Check out his chat with our Commerce Server poo-bah Ryan Donovan.

Commerce Server 2006 Beta Out, BizTalk Deployment Post Followup

rseroter — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:56:00 GMT

So, indeed we got the Commerce Server Beta1 out the door before Christmas. I'm pulling it down right now, and will hopefully get it installed tomorrow or early next week. I'll share my experience for those of you less brave.

Also, as a follow up to my post the other day on packaging and deploying BizTalk applications, I hope to post something tomorrow on additional deployment scenarios. For instance, what happens if I "import" on top of a running application? Or, only want to incrementally update some components? Stay tuned.

PDC05 - Day 1 Booth Musings

rseroter — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 00:45:00 GMT

500 Commerce Server t-shirts at the PDC05 booth. 1 hour of time. 0 shirts remaining. You people are ANIMALS! Man, next year I'm tempted to pay for shirts that say "Commerce Server Ate My Parents" just to see if people even notice when they grab shirts. Great stuff. We've handed out a bunch of Tech Previews and Training CDs so far, and we've fielded some great questions on the platform. Keep it coming!

Commerce Server 2006 Updates

rseroter — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 17:39:00 GMT

Just in case you haven't checked out the Microsoft Commerce Server site in a while, we recently posted a data sheet for the Commerce Server 2006 product which highlights major new areas and throws some screenshots at you.

We also have a separate page up that goes over the primary improvements. Check it out.

Also, this year at PDC I'll be hanging out at the Commerce Server booth for a couple hours a day, so stop by and say hi! We're handing out all sorts of good stuff, included CDs containing the latest Tech Preview of Commerce Server 2006. I just loaded it on my machine, and am pretty pleased so far. Screenshots to follow.

Today's Commerce Server Chat, PDC Musings

rseroter — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:41:00 GMT

Don't forget that today we have a hosted Commerce Server chat where experts and product team folks are there to answer your questions and do your bidding. Pop on by and see if Commerce Server could be a solution for a project you're thinking of, or grill them on features of Commerce Server 2006. We have plenty of customers who only use one or two subsystems of the product (e.g. profiles, targeting, catalogs, ordering) and that's fine! It's about reducing development time and increasing manageability.

I also got the word yesterday that I'm in for PDC this year. I'm going to help out at the Commerce Server station for about half my time, which is well worth the opportunity to go. This is the place to be in September, and the Early Bird Discount has been extended until the end of the month, so now's the time for you to cash in on those humiliating pictures of your boss from the Christmas party. Come on, what are you saving them for??

Favorite New Things In Commerce Server 2006

rseroter — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 04:16:00 GMT

We're starting to release more information on the upcoming Commerce Server 2006 release, and three of my favorite new things are:

BizTalk Adapters. We're providing out-of-the-box adapters to the Order, Catalog, Inventory and Profile subsystems. You'll now be able to send and receive data between Commerce Server and BizTalk. This is great for exchanging catalogs with other sites, or synchronizing new orders with other key business applications in your org. Should make it very easy to allow for collaboration between any back-end system or workflow and your commerce site.
SQL Reporting Services. All of the business reports are now part of SQL Reporting Services enabling some robust reporting and presentation capabilities.
New Business Tools. That means no more Business Desk. We've replaced that trouble-maker with some very functional UIs for managing catalogs, campaigns and customers.

There are also some key improvements for developers within VS.NET 2005, and within individual subsystems (e.g. multiple baskets, support for rankings, updated catalog import/export, and bulk data updates).

I'll be posting some demos of the major changes as we lead up to the 2006 release.

Commerce Server Chats

rseroter — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 19:29:00 GMT

Just in case you're a closet Commerce Server fan, don't forget to check out the monthly chats that get fired up on MSDN. The June transcript is a bit sparse, but both May and April have some pretty good questions and comments.

A couple notes on Commerce Server. Although there is a "2002" after the name, this product has had some active development after a bit of a quiet period. We've released a service pack, a very solid feature pack, and fairly recently, a great fully functional starter site which I've actually used to build a couple demos. If you have Commerce Server installation in production without the feature pack, you're missing quite a few nice management feature upgrades. Finally, the roadmap for this product moving forward is quite solid with an upcoming 2006 release coming up shortly, as well as initial planning for the version after that.

Watch this space for a technical look at 2006 features as we get closer to beta and release.

RSS for BPI Products

rseroter — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 00:27:00 GMT

Just in case you don't have these in your RSS aggregator of choice, here are the links to the MS Knowledge Base feeds for both BizTalk and Commerce Server ...

BizTalk KB feed - http://search.support.microsoft.com/common/rss.aspx?rssid=1444&ln=en-us
Commerce Server KB feed - http://search.support.microsoft.com/common/rss.aspx?rssid=1552&ln=en-us

Killer way to get instant info on how-tos and fixes.