Customer Reviews

Professional Commerce Server 2000

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

normally, the book should be rated with maximum stars, because it is the the one and only book which steps in detail into the commerce server 2000 dungeons. BUT, the codes and files downloadable from wrox site are full of errors and missing files. so, it is difficult to follow the authors in their expearince. also, you see from chapter to chapter there are different writes, having CS2K setups/retail installation. so, steping over the chapters, you have to take a look on your up to this retail solution done previously. also, some errors in the code samples inside the book (which are not part of the download) have some mistakes. but, at least. i think it is a good entry point for CS2K developer...

This is a good point to start developing applications based on Commerce Server. Don't think it's an absolutely complete solution to CS2K issues, but it covers all the topics and it's useful. Better than Help files and CS2K Resource Kit.

For 16 authors (programmers??) to make so many typos, mistakes, ommissions, is unacceptable. I even sent email to the authors who cared to provide addresses and none responded.

The authors must have been confused or took so much for granted. The problems I found with the book are too many. For example: Code snippets fail, poor steps (making the book a very tidious read.). The steps are embedded in lengthy theories, making them impossible to follow. Focus is lost and references are poor. For example, on page 88, they write "you can find this function [global_service_lib.asp] in the include directory". Wrong because, the global_service_lib.asp resides in the siteroot/service/include directory. These are minute errors that can frustrate many readers in the middle of the night.

Some diligence should be put into books that involve program codes. I generally do not tolerate such errors from programmers. We should be people akin to details!!

After going through the steps in this book, you quickly find that this book is just an overview of topics available to the Commerce Server 2000 administrator. There's not enough detail about any one of the subjects to learn how to customize your e-commerce solution.

This book hasn nothing to rate is as Professional. The book does not give you any thing that is not there in the MS docuentation. It can only be used by person who wants to use the GUI tools provides with Comerce Server. There is no effort made by authors to actually explore the full capacity of Comerce Server objects to leverage the functioanilty. Overall, i don't think it is worth spending $(...) on this book.

I am only on Chapter 2 and have found at least 5 typographical errors in the text AND the code listings. It is real frustrating to spend so much time trying to understand a topic only to realize that what really was preventing you from understanding was the bugs in the code. You would think that maybe the book is also trying to teach debugging. If Wrox keeps coming out with books that are so poorly edited I will have to look elsewhere for my needs.

This book is definitely a well structured technology book. It provides a detailed analysis of all the aspect of Commerce Server, but if you are not too familiar with some of the aspects you might end up buying other WROX books. For instance the business analysis part is missing some critical pieces and the explanation of how to create custom reports is too brief. In my opinion Commerce Server 2000 is a product meant for tailoring and plumbing; this book deals mostly with the plumbing. So, programmers will like it, business analysts might be shopping for something else. Looking at the variety in quality and inconsistency of the examples you notice that they have worked on the book with several authors. This book could have done a much better job if the reader were walked through the actual building of a solution site. The Business-to-Business is too brief for the far reaching potential of the Commerce Server 2000 product.