Professional Commerce Server 2000 [Paperback]

Tim Huckaby (Author), Scott Case (Author), Andreas Eide (Author), Chris Featherstone (Author), Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati (Author), Tim McCarthy (Author), Rodney Guzman (Author), Scott Hanselman (Author), Mark Harrison (Author), Jarrod Marshall (Author)

Book Description

Series: Programmer to Programmer | Publication Date: May 2001

Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 provides a COM-based framework and suite of tools that can help you build and manage effective web sites - in particular e-commerce solutions - on the Windows 2000 platform. It supports catalog management, user profiling, content targeting, and business analytics, as well as providing a component-based 'pipeline' framework to simplify the implementation of linear business logic.

This book explores the most important areas of the Commerce Server 2000 product, taking you through from product installation, and configuring and customizing the ready-made e-commerce solution sites, to low-level application of the component framework, integration with third party components and external systems, and site migration from Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Commerce Server 2000 is Microsoft's solution for building powerful e-commerce applications on the Web. This product is the successor to the pioneering Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition product, and it enhances its architecture in several key areas, including user profile management and site analysis. Professional Commerce Server 2000 Programming from Wrox Press is an excellent guide to this powerhouse new product.

One of Commerce Server's strengths is its balance between "out of the box" Web store solutions that build easily with wizards and its extensible architecture that allows programmers to extend and customize sites any way they like. This guide steps the reader through the creation of the basic retail store but quickly gets down to the business of customization. Halfway through the book, the reader will have a good feel for setting up user profile and authentication; customizing the store catalog; configuring promotions, tax tables, and shipping rates; and setting up the order processing pipelines to meet an organization's needs. Plenty of sample code--all of which is downloadable from the publisher's Web site--is included to illustrate customization techniques.

Advanced topics such as content targeting and BizDesk integration are covered in great depth, making this guide a veritable Commerce Server bible you'll turn to time and time again. The book's authors address the sticky issue of migrating Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition stores to Commerce Server--a Herculean task that programmers will have to think about long and hard before attempting--with two separate chapters that focus on moving the Membership Directory and stores respectively.

Commerce Server 2000 is one of the most powerful e-commerce solution tools available. This well-organized guide is perhaps the most powerful documentation you will find for the product. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• User profiling and authentication
• Catalog customization
• Business analytics
• Pipeline implementation
• Campaigns and content selection
• Content and promotion targeting
• Sitelets
• Third-party tax and shipping components
• BizDesk integration
• Internationalization
• Migrating Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition membership directories and stores
• Installation
• COM and schema reference

From the Publisher

This book has been selected by the editors of Wrox Press to be part of the Wroxbase website.

This book is for experienced developers familiar with implementing web solutions on the Windows 2000 platform who wish to utilize the rich, flexible, and robust environment afforded by Commerce Server 2000. You will find this book invaluable, whether you are new to the Microsoft Enterprise Servers or a seasoned Site Server 3.0 CE developer looking to upgrade to Commerce Server 2000.

Technical Requirements:

A full discussion of both the hardware and software required to run all of the example code in this book is provided in Chapter 1, but as a rough guide you should have a minimum of:

- At least a Pentium II, 450 MHz computer with 128 MB of RAM (256 preferred) and 3 GB of hard disk space

- Windows 2000

- Internet Explorer 5.5

- IIS

- SQL Server 2000

- Commerce Server 2000

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861004648
• ISBN-13: 978-1861004642
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,542,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I don't know what the 5 star folks (Review) were smoking but, July 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Professional Commerce Server 2000 (Paperback)

Hello all,

Here is my two cents.

I purchased this book because I have always valued Wrox books. They publish pretty decent books, except Commerce Server 2000. I found inconsistency all over the book and most of the code that that the author tried to explain were in poor quality and did not work (even the download code). I made the code work only by looking deep into the Online Help files.

This book has all the signs that it was rushed out the door the author lightly touches the different parts of Commerce Server 2000. Even if you are an advanced programmer you will find this book hard to follow and will find your self looking more into the Online Help files rather than the this book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Expected More, June 13, 2001

By 

JCD "dmcguirt" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Commerce Server 2000 (Paperback)

Waited in anticipation for over 4 month for this book to come out. Cannot say that I was greatly disappointed but I expected more on such a great product. Commerce Server 2000 has great features and capabilities but these were only touched on lightly in this book. The Campaign Management, Analysis System, Profiler, etc could use a entire book on each subject. This book just skims the surface. The best reference material on Commerce Server 2000 can be found in the documentation that comes with the product.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but not the best, June 10, 2001

By 

A. Reid (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional Commerce Server 2000 (Paperback)

This is undoubtedly the best CS2K reference currently available. Developers will love it because it has numerous code examples and fully explores the CS2K objects. However, most of the examples are culled straight from the retail site and sitelets that ship with CS2K so from that aspect it is disappointing; these sites have received almost widespread criticism on the Commerce Server newsgroups for being hard to customise and for a chronic mix of HTML and ASP code (as a test, try giving them to your HTML designer to customize!). A more advanced and flexible example site, the flagship MS B2C Reference Architecture based on XML and XSLT isn't even mentioned which is a big disappointment.