Four easy steps to get started with the Commerce Server Feature Pack

1. Install and read the feature pack documentation: The Feature Pack is available as a free download from here and can be installed on a Commerce Server Service Pack 2 or higher installation. Go through the Readme to learn about the known issues, limitations and requirements. The Install Guide talks about the hardware and software requirements, the install and unistall process, troubleshooting points and how to add the new web services to existing sites(see the Unpack the FP1 Pup Package section) . Once you have installed the feature pack read the Main Chm file for detailed information about the various features in the feature pack. This chm file also contains screenshots for the new Winforms Applications for Catalog System and Marketing system, migrating your catalog and marketing systems and adding users to the new security model. If you are a developer interested in the new programming model see this post for information on the new web services model and how to program them.
2. Migrate your existing sites.The Feature Pack provides two migration tools to migrate your product catalog system and marketing systems. The product catalog system can be migrated using the CatalogMigrationTool.exe and the Marketing system can be migrated using the DiscountMigrationTool.Exe. Both these tools (installed in the <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft Commerce Server 2002\FP1 directory) are command line tools and the options have been well documented in the Main Chm file. Now follow the instructions in the “Unpack the Fp1 Pup package” section in the Install Guide  to install the catalog and marketing web services.
3.  Secure your Product Catalog and Marketing systems: As I had mentioned in earlier posts, the new security model is based on the Windows Authorization Manager which provides Role based access model. The next step you need to do is to add your catalog and marketing system users to the the appropriate roles using the Windows Authorization Manager MMC. The catalog system provides a finely grained security model which ranges from roles which allows users to control the catalog system, to controlling editing of categories/products in individual catalogs. It is also possible to control view/edit permissions on individual catalogs, as well as control price and custom property editing on products and categories. Both these systems have appropriate built in roles respected by the Winforms applications. Based on the rights the current user has in the catalog and marketing systems the Winforms application will enable/disable the appropriate options. While this covers the logical security model based on rights and roles in your organization you should also ensure that your Commerce Server installation and the appropriate databases are secured by following the instructions in the Secure Deployment Guide.
4. Install the client applications: The Feature Pack provides two separate MSI packages to install the CatalogManager (CatalogManager.msi) and the Marketing (DiscountManager.msi) applications on individual client machines. Once you install these applications you are good to go.

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 09, 2004
  
  actually i'm internal to MSFT but i have a question
  
  Can you compare and contrast the Commerce server with the services offered by Amazon's web services, Ebay's Web Services and Pay Pal's web services e.g. what does using Commerce server get me that i don't get with less work through those companies.
  
  Just a thought
• Anonymous
  June 10, 2004
  Adam,
  Amazon,Ebay etc are organizations which have written individual systems for their businees needs as well as web services which expose the underlying functionality of these systems. Building these systems inhouse involves investing in developement and testing costs.Commerce Server offers a rich and powerful platform for such organizations to build their e-commerce systems without having to invest heavily in development costs and instead focus on their core business priorities.Providing these underlying commerce server services as web services allows organizations to add value to their businesses and effectvely deal with partners, vendors, customers etc and provide a vast array of services (as you noted). For eg these web services can allow an organization to request catalogs from vendors, for customers to get pricing information about products etc.
• Anonymous
  July 27, 2004
  hi,
  
  I am asked to start with Commerce Server. Where do I start?
  
  please give me the samples. I need samples to work with