[ CommerceServer ] Microsoft Commerce Server Architecture

My last posts was about MS Commerce Server 2009, after think a little i decided to do some posts about commerce to beginners.
In the 1st post i will show the Microsoft Commerce Server Architecture.

Microsoft Commerce Server is Microsoft (are u sure??) product that really helps to create a e-commerce site. A lot of webstores is done in this platform, some exemples are Pão de Açúcar , Officer, Nacional and GameStop (two of this have my code). One point about CS is the agility, if you know what are you doing, you can have in one or two days a simple e-commerce with basket and catalog.

The commerce Architecture can be splited in some big parts, Catalog, Order (Basket), Profile and Campaign and [Cache]. (In the next weeks i'll demonstrate all of this parts).
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The most important thing to know is the True lie behind Commerce Server. If you check the instalation of commerce server will you see, the instalation created two SQL databases (MSCS_Admin) and MSCS_CatalogScratch. First looks like a tempdb, it has some empty tables used to hold intermediate results when running complex queries on the product catalog system. The reasona  behind creating a separate database as against using the tempdb was that the tempdb gets created everytime sql server is restarted and this means the permissions to create the tables have to be re-applied. The second is used to Configure Commerce Server inside of this db can you see some commerce constants. Now you should ask me, where is the lie, the lie is that Commerce Server is not a server it is in the best case a framework, that can be used to acess this databases (and some webservices). Now you should ask me "Where is the webservices??", than i have to say that the webservices are created when you create some Commerce Web Site.

A Commerce Web Site, is a normal web site with some differences in web.config and references, if are you using CS09 can you use the Visual Studio 2008 to create this project, the template will apear in the list when Commerce is installed. With the Commerce WebSite, will be created a set of webservices (as i told you almost now) and SQL Databases. The WebServices names are <ProjectName>CatalogWebService,  <ProjectName>OrderWebService, <ProjectName>ProfileWebService and <ProjectName>MarketingWebService. Inside of each on can you find some functions that commerce use to access the site databases. And the SQL dbs name are <ProjectName>_Marketing, <ProjectName>_Marketing_list, <ProjectName>_ProductCatalog, <ProjectName>_Profiles, <ProjectName>_Transactions and <ProjectName>_TransactionConfig. Each database have some tables used to do his function.

Other good thing about Commerce is the "CRUD administration modules" provided, their official names are Business Applications, the names are Catalog and Inventory Schema Manager, Custumers and Orders Manager, Catalog Manager and Marketing Manager. In the Business Applications you can manage all the products, profiles, discounts, Categories or any other commerce default entity. It work connecting in the site WebServices, and in this way can be accessed in any place with internet access.

In the next Commerce post i will show you how to create your first commerce site, for this we will need one default commerce server instalation. Mine is 2009 but i couldn´t find big differences between 2007 and 2009 (2009 instalation need standard or enterprise 2007 [included in CS2009 CD]).

VIDEO (ScreenCast) pt-BR: http://www.rafaelalmeida.net/content/ScreenCast/CommerceServer_ScreenCast_1.mp4