Commerce Server 2002 - General Discussion (May 11, 2005)

Posted: May 25, 2005

Please note: Portions of this transcript have been edited for clarity

Introduction

Alex (Moderator):
Welcome to this month's Commerce Server 2002 MSDN Chat. We'll take a moment and let our experts introduce themselves. I am Alex Shogren and part of the Community and TAP Team.

CharlesT (Expert):
Hello. I am Charles Teague with the Commerce Server Support team.

MaxAKbar (Expert):
Hi I am Max Akbar I am a PM for Commerce Server.

Greg Good (Expert):
My name is Greg Good and I am the product support team manager for Commerce Server.

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Hi, I'm Ryan Donovan, Group Program Manager for Commerce Server.

davidme (Expert):
Hello, David here from the Commerce Server development team.

Introduction

Alex (Moderator):
Q: will this chat log be available online? if yes, when?
A: Yes, we do post the transcript of the chat and it is usually posted within 48 hours.

CharlesT (Expert):
Q: I have just begun to learn about Commerce Server. What are the resources available to a C# Developer on Commerce Server?
A: The documentation for Commerce Server 2002 covers lots of sample is C# which are included in the SDK and also you will want to take a look at the Commerce Server 2002 Starter Site as it is also based on C#. You can find the starter site at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee803538(v=cs.10).aspx

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: Hi - Are there any CS service packs scheduled to come out before CS 2006?
A: No, we are not planning any service packs of CS200x before CS2006 releases.

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: why the lack of books and information about commerce server 2002? there's only 2 or 3 books that are worth the money. Can you suggest a reading for a newbie?
A: The market has been pretty well served by the MS Press book by Derek Armentrout and Clayton Peddy.

MaxAKbar (Expert):
tbone can you be more specific to an area that you are having problems, also there are news groups where you can ask questions.

davidme (Expert):
Q: why the lack of books and information about commerce server 2002? there's only 2 or 3 books that are worth the money. Can you suggest a reading for a newbie?
A: Have you taken a look at: "Using Microsoft Commerce Server 2002" (Que) by Don Jones, Mark D. Scott? I had a copy but it's on loan (haven't read it yet - but it was at least partially tech reviewed by one of our former PM's)

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: what are the main differences between Feature Pack 1 and Service Pack 3? is FP1 better than SP3?
A: SP3 is bug fixes only. FP1 includes staging drivers for Application Center, new Catalog Manager UI, new Discount Manager UI, and coupon/promotion code support.

CharlesT (Expert):
Q: We will be deploying a distributed CS site (database on different server than web site) but when trying to set up this in a test environment we keep getting access denied when trying to read the from the database. Any good references on this topic?
A: I cannot give a specific answer to your question without more details but if the access denied is occuring when you are trying to install Commerce Server, you can try configuring the SQL connection properties to use SQL authentication and make sure you are using an account with dbo access. If you can post more details on where and when you get the access denied error I may be able to offer more input.

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: I exprted several catalogs from my test env. and imprted them into another test env. The catlgs consisted of 7 base catlgs and 1 virtl catlg. After i was done with imprting them all I noticed that the virt catlg was shown as a base catlg. Is this by desg
A: Yes, import/export converts virtual catalogs into base catalogs. This is by design.

MaxAKbar (Expert):
tbone are you using FP1 and Widows 2003 sp1?

davidme (Expert):
(Tbone): I posted a question about Win2003 SP1 and MSCS and no one has posted any feedback.

davidme (Expert):
A: We support Windows 2003 SP1 in FP1 and SP3 of CS2002

CharlesT (Expert):
There were several comments about the documentation for Commerce Server 2002 not being sufficient for a "newbie" to Commerce Server. I would like to know any specifics you could provide to us about what you would like to see in the documentation.

davidme (Expert):
Q: (tbone) - anything I should watch out for??? or has this been without problem.
A: Be sure to run EnableCS2002Settings.vbs after installing SP3, it fixes some COM+ settings.

CharlesT (Expert):
Q: thanks CharlesT - we've since reverted back to a non-distributed environment, but we did end up trying SQL Authentication with dbo access to all CS databases
A: Did using SQL authentication resolve the issue?

vtadas (Expert):
Q: I exprted several catalogs from my test env. and imprted them into another test env. The catlgs consisted of 7 base catlgs and 1 virtl catlg. After i was done with imprting them all I noticed that the virt catlg was shown as a base catlg. Is this by desg
A: Yes this is by design. A virtual catalog will always be exported as a base catalog

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: How is related Commerce Server 2002 to COM+ Services?
A: Commerce Server 2002 has several components - most notably the Order Processing Pipeline - that are based on top of COM+ technology.

henryw (Expert):
Q: Hello, what is your best suggestion for plugging in an alternate payment method? i.e. should I branch in asp.net code and run one of 2 different pipelines or should I branch the logic inside the checkout pipeline?
A: The pipelines work best when configured as a set of sequential steps. Branching is not a core capability inside the pipeline. In most typical deployments, multiple pipeline configuration files (PCFs) are created, each with a specific set of components, and the logic in the ASP.Net code determines what PCF to invoke.

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: Beacuase of discounts that may be in effect for a product. Is it normal to use a pipe line on the aspx page to run a pipeline to calc the product's price? If so, which pipeline should I use?
A: No, that is not typical because of performance concerns. Most people reflect discounts in basket or check out. But, you can create a custom pipeline to do this.

davidme (Expert):
Q: I have a question about Catalogs: Are the Catalog structures (attributes, categories, etc.) 'mapped' one-to-one into relational tables in SQL Server ?
A: I believe attributes in catalogs map to columns. Categories are not in a separate table from products. But let's back up - what is the reason that you ask? If you are using the catalog system APIs (as you should) then the physical table storage should be of no consequence.

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: Beacuase of discounts that may be in effect for a product. Is it normal to use a pipe line on the aspx page to run a pipeline to calc the product's price? If so, which pipeline should I use?
A: If you do go down this route, you probably want to implement caching on your pages to maximize performance.

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: With regard to the CS 2002 FP1 documentation (help file) If the examples in the docs show a VB6 or C++ way of doing something. Is there a .NET way of doing the same thing?
A: Everything you can do in VB6 or C++ can be done in .NET. Please refer to the Base Class Libraries documentation. There re also several examples of building pipeline components in .NET also posted in various locations.

vtadas (Expert):
Q: I have a question about Catalogs: Are the Catalog structures (attributes, categories, etc.) 'mapped' one-to-one into relational tables in SQL Server ?
A: These reside in separate tables. Do you have any specific questions regarding this?

davidme (Expert):
Q: One more question. I want to alter an order to reflect changes to it after it has been captured in the CS system, how do I re-total with discounts etc. ? i.e. b/c we can't ship all units...
A: You will need to re-run the basket and total pipelines on the order to recalc. The tricky issue with discounts is that the discounts that were active may have changed between the time the order was placed and the time of the recalc. The reason we dont provide this as an out of box feature is that the business rules around it tend to vary too much to generalize.

davidme (Expert):
Q: davidme: i'm asking cause I saw a project team write down stored procedures -directly- on the database to make queries and resultsets from the commerce tables. Is this any good? (Don't think so anyway)
A: No, we certainly suggest that you do not write queries or stored procedures that run directly against the catalog tables. In fact, this puts you in an unsupported position. Any future service pack or future release of Commerce Server could change the schema and break your code badly. What is the scenario that led you to need to do this?

davidme (Expert):
Q: Would I have to recreate the enviroment somehow ? load the profile of the customer? and then rerun the OPP?
A: Yes, you will need to set up the context for the pipeline to execute and then rerun the pipeline. You may want to create a separate "recalc" pipeline that doesn't have the scriptor component(s) that refer to the user profile.

henryw (Expert):
Q: Exactly. 600 customer each with their own pricing.
A: The system supports up to 10K virtual catalog/base catalogs. Honestly, I think a Virtual Catalog per customer, with that customer's pricing rules set (given that you indicate that most are just a % off) is the best approach to start with. While this is a lot of catalogs, this is the cleanest oob approach. Was there a specific reason why you were shying away from this approach?

davidme (Expert):
Q: davidme: a massive catalog import from xml files, but they're using in-house-written stored procedures
A: I see. If you have any further information about what capabilities you needed that the catalog system APIs did not provide, that may help us address your scenario better in the future. You could send such information to 'cswish@microsoft.com'

Alex (Moderator):
We have our last two questions for this month. Thank you all for attending.

Alex (Moderator):
We will be back in June for another focused MSDN Chat on Commerce Server 2002.

RDonovan_MS (Expert):
Q: If the same product is in different Virtual catalogs and a catalogset is formed from those catalogs, which price will the product refer?
A: The price will be calculated based on which virtual catalog is in the catalog set matching the user's profile. If you have multiple v-catalogs in the catalog set, it will be from whichever v-catalog the user chooses to add the product to his basket.

davidme (Expert):
Q: davidme: do you think that BizTalk Server is a better choice in this scenario or should we choose to use Catalog System APIs ?
A: Generally speaking BizTalk server and CS Catalogs address different scenarios. Certainly there are scenarios where the two can be used in a complementatary fashion - e.g. trading partner exchange of catalogs (look for this to be more integrated in the product in the future).

vtadas (Expert):
Q: If the same product is in different Virtual catalogs and a catalogset is formed from those catalogs, which price will the product refer?
A: The price will be picked up for the virtual catalog you are referencing. If the product is in VC1 and VC2 and has a price 10 and 20 and a catalog set references VC1 then 10 will be picked up as the price

henryw (Expert):
Q: The client is currently in anenvironment (which we are porting from - to CS 2002) which makes this relatively easy to do. I may be seen as a big turn off towards CS.
A: Unfortunately, the Virtual Catalog approach is the best oob option. You could look at maintaining base price information in the catalog and then writing a custom pipeline component to query an external system to apply the discounts, but then you would not see the discounted pricing until the basket. The other option (real time designin here, so take it with a grain of salt) would be to hook into the product display logic, and, when databinding the list retrieve the customer's discount percentage and display that.

Top of Page