MS Commerce Server 101
Microsoft Commerce Server, or MSCS for short, is not actually a server but a foundation which permits you authoring online e-commerce shops easily. Those shops may serve to b2b or b2c needs, but i have seen customers who used it for an online food ordering site, like www.just-eat.co.uk . It is not a big problem to adopt MSCS to various needs such as food ordering, since MSCS provides very extendible foundation. If you know the underlying infrastructure well, and follow the best practices you can extend every system that is provided.
Product Name | Database | Technology | Comments |
Commerce Server 2000 | SQL 2000 | ASP based on VB6 components | First commerce server release. |
Commerce Server 2002 | SQL 2000 | ASP.NET 1.0 / 1.1 | MS CMS 2002 can be used for content management purposes. In order to combine CMS 2002 and MSCS 2002, the library MSIB must be used. |
Commerce Server 2007 | SQL 2005 | ASP.NET 2.0 | Increased security, performance, and business apllications which eases administration of the foundation. Only ASP.NET webparts can be used, no OOB CMS integration available but there is a way to do it: http://meiyinglim.blogspot.com/2006/10/integrating-microsoft-commerce-server.html |
Commerce Server 2009 | SQL 2008 | ASP.NET 3.5 | MOSS Integration can be utilized for quick page creation, and content management purposes. By utilizing the OOB provided webparts your commerce site’s pages can be created easily. |
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/commserver Commerce Server MSDN Forums
MSCS is cooperating with MOSS!
FMI
As we have mentioned MOSS can be used for Commerce Server implementations as content management system. Although MSCS has operation sequences and pipelines for processing certain events, MOSS’s workflow capabilities can be utilized for cms related events.
You bought something, can it be without an invoice? Of course not, here we can use the MS Dynamics AX as an ERP solution.
FMI http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/en/us/products/ax-overview.aspx
E-Commerce world did not start with Microsoft, it has many competitors from commercial and free software platforms. As you saw in this article there are so much elements which you must consider in a e-commerce site, it does not need to be a huge audience serving site, but even in small implementations you encounter the needs of above elemants.