Running the Profiles Resource
You use the Commerce Server Profiles resource to manage the collection of data on your Web site. For example, you can create profile definitions that control the data that is collected from users on your Web site. You can define the data that is collected with a profile definition, and designate whether a particular piece of data is exported to the Commerce Server Data Warehouse. You can create data sources that control where the data is stored when it is collected. You can create site terms to provide users with options to choose from when they answer data collection questions on your site, such as a list of colors from which to choose their favorite color.
This section contains:
Workflow for Profiles. Illustrates the workflow for managing profiles.
About the Profiles Resource. Describes the features and functionality of the Profiles resource.
Configuring the Profiles Resource. Explains how to change the connection string for the Profiles resource.
Adding a New Data Source. Explains how to add and partition a new data source that you use to map the information you collect on your Web site to the databases (or LDAP sources) you use to store the collected data.
Adding a New Data Object. Explains how to add a new data object to expose a database table or an LDAP class to a profile definition.
Adding a New Data Member. Explains how to add a new data member that you use to map a profile property to a specified column of a database table or to a specified attribute of an LDAP class.
Adding a New Profile Definition. Explains how to add profile definitions and map them to data objects.
Adding Properties to Profile Definitions. Explains how to add profile properties and profile property custom attributes.
Validating Profile Definitions. Explains how to validate a single profile definition or all of your profile definitions to verify that the profile properties are correctly mapped to the data store.
Adding a Profile Definition to a Profile Definition. Explains how to reference a property of a profile definition to another profile definition so that two profiles can be linked. For example, you can link a user profile to the address profile for the user.
Adding Site Terms. Explains how to create site terms.
Adding a Site Term to a Profile Definition. Explains how to add a site term to a profile property so that a user selects a value from the site term as the value for the property.
Example: Creating a Profile Definition with Two Data Sources. Explains how to create a user profile definition that stores data in both a Microsoft SQL Server database and a Microsoft Active Directory database.
Managing Data Sources. Explains how to modify and delete data sources, data objects, and data members.
Managing Profile Definitions. Explains how to modify and delete profile definitions.
Managing Profile Properties. Explains how to modify and delete profile properties and property custom attributes.
Managing Site Terms. Explains how to modify and delete site terms and site term values.