Customer Reviews

Building Solutions with Microsoft Commerce Server 2002 (Pro-Developer)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is one of the best books I've read on any of the Microsoft servers. Unlike a lot of books, it focuses on how to develop a site using CS2002, instead of focusing on the features of the platform. The examples in the book apply to both B2C and B2B, so I'd recommend it for any development effort with CS. I found the C# and ASP.NET code samples very useful and have already used a lot of the code in sites I am working on. And it's a relief to find a Commerce Server book that doesn't spend all its time on the solution sites - this one has a little intro to them, but then gets right into developing a custom site, including creating administrative interfaces from scratch or by customizing the BizDesk. One caution - the book doesn't have a lot on installing or administering Commerce Server, but I think the help file works fine for that. Buy this book when you're ready to go beyond the simple install of the Retail site and start writing code.

The book is solid, reads well, and is decently edited as most MS Press books are. It's a good book (worthy of 4 stars) that would be great (5 stars) if it had a large and well-detailed appendix on the Commerce Server object model. Well, that would be the case if the source code worked or if MS Press had a decent book support website, but it doesn't and they don't, which is why I rated the book 3 stars.

The code is buggy which cause parts of it not to work. Even if you fix those bugs, there are still broken links on the site and incorrect object model references, the site is not complete (where is the real payment info? where is the cross/up-selling?), and the site design was an obvious afterthought (for example, the buyer has to specify who to send each item to as she adds it to her shopping cart!). Part of the site doesn't function properly until you register and sign-in! I realize it was intended to be an incomplete sample site, but a serious text needs a solid *working* example site that had some thought put into it.

Strangely, there must be a good copy of the source on one of the author's hard drives, because some of the features that produce error pages (like viewing the shopping cart) actually are displayed properly inside the book. Hmmm.

I got the source code from the MS Press site, so I can only believe that it's the latest code. There is no errata for this book on the MS Press site (odd for a book that was published over a year ago), and there is no apparent way to contact the authors for the updated source or errata (nor could I google-up any updates).

These problems greatly detract from an otherwise excellent book. If you want to read about commerce server and how it works, buy it. If you're looking for a working sample site to learn from, you won't find one here. Too bad since I am unaware of any Commerce Server 2002 book with a working sample site.

I would think that MS Press put out this book in hopes of selling Commerce Server 2002 to developers. If that's really their intent, then they need (1) to fix the sample in this book, (2) make a better support website for MS Press, (3) come up with a better CS pricing structure for small businesses, and (4) make it easier to deploy in a shared hosting environment.

After going through all the labs prepared by Microsoft on MCS 2002 and MCMS 2002, I dove into this book. Here are my findings:

DO NOT buy this book if you are looking for a "how to", or if you are a newbie to MCS and MCMS.
This book explains items found in MCS and painfully briefly on MCMS (one chapter), it glosses over the 'how to' and expects that you already know that.

DO buy this book if you already know a good portion of how to manage and configure CS and MCMS, then this book would do a good job of providing more details above and beyond what is provided in Microsofts documentation.

The book is exactly this - "which comes first, the chicken or the egg", because it expects you to know how to manage and configure, yet by the time I get to that level of expertise, there ain't no way I would buy this book because it wouldn't help me.

This is one of the most helpful books I have on my shelf. I am new to the e-commerce field and I have been recently working with Microsoft Commerce Server. I needed some specialized help on all the topics, rather than an overview I got with Special Edition using Commerce Server book. This book gave me all the weapons I needed to fill my Armour.

While developing whenever I get stuck on any topic I just refer to this book for that topic. For example I wanted to know how to develop a Coupon system for an e-commerce site. I referred to several books, all of them just gave an overview of the Campaigns module, which was useless for me as I already know what a Campaign module is. This book went into a lot of detail of how to implement a Coupon or how to create ads.
Other great thing I like about this book, is that it covers everything about Commerce Server, from Catalogs, to BizDesk, DataWarehousing, even Migration. Every topic in this book covers a great detail on what is important to know from a programmer's standpoint, rather than from a marketing/sales person's standpoint.

To summarize, if you want a power point presentation of Commerce Server, buy any other book. If you want to know the design and details of programming using Commerce Server, this is the book you should buy.

Don't waste your time with this book, The sample site doesn't build the examples they do give in the book aren't even used in their code. If you plan on building a commerce server web site and don't know commerce server already this book won't help you. In fact, even if you do know commerce server this book won't help you. With out a doubt the most worthless, development book I have ever had the miss fortune to read. I have found one use for it...as a monitor stand.

I was a little let down by this book because I wanted to get both an overview of Commerce Server and a bit more detail in the API. There simply aren't enough examples to articulate the writers' points. I'm learning that Commerce Server is much like chess -- it takes a few minutes to learn, and a lifetime to master. This book is supposed to guide its reader from design to coding and implementation as well as testing. Instead, it only handles design and very basic uncommon development scenarios.

I feel this book would be better geared to a project manager or architect trying to learn how Commerce Server can be beneficial to an eCommerce project; however, I don't feel a developer can properly learn to use Commerce Server from this book.

sample store does not work.
i don't have time to debug my own code let alone sample code from a book :)
the book does give a good overview of commerce 2002 (unfortunally there's nothging to compate it to)
where are you wrox !

This book is a great "one-stop shop" for how to use Commerce Server 2002.

I don't usually like MS Press books, but this one really stood out. The book contains recipes for building e-commerce applications of various sizes and considerations, especially when coupled with the Commerce Server help file (a must have). I was able to use this book on the job.

It also explains what the Commerce Server is good for as well as some of its shortcomings (e.g., the book suggests building standalone Customer Service pages for bigger web sites as opposed to using the BizDesk). The book covers areas that many books neglect even to mention: gathering business and technical requirements, software and hardware caching, data migration from
the legacy systems, integration with BizDesk, Content Management Server, and other 3rd party systems and deployment.

If you are planning to just skim through the book, the "Note" sections contain useful advice and gotcha's.

I highly recommended this book!!

This book has the advantage of being one of the few on CS2000+ to cover the .NET API and use .NET (C#) code examples, although it was mostly a conceptual, somewhat disjointed coverage of commerce topics and not the programming reference I'd hoped. It would have been more helpful to have seen a programming case study rather than little code "vignettes" that were shown in isolation, e.g., gift processing. One thing that surprised me was the lack of coverage of the .NET API for getting order information after it is saved in the system (see the BCL entry for "PurchaseOrder" in MS Help Docs). That said, this book was the primary reference for my porting a classic ASP 3.0 Commerce Site to CS2002...

I was extremely surprised to see this book. as a developer I couldn't make a single thing. it was more like reading a brochure for a product. By finishing the book I knew so many features that are in the product but I had no idea how to use them.

My advice: if you are a developer then don't even think about buying this book.