While scavenging the web for information related to both self-service and inventory catalogs, I came across the following post by Martin: Commerce Server 2007 - Backorderable Products.  I think it's a good post showing how to configure your inventory catalog to allow for backorderable items.

I hope to see more posts from Martin in the future!

Having problems getting yourself or your team up to speed on Commerce Server?  Want to leverage your existing skills in ASP.NET and SQL Server?

As many of you are probably aware, good technical training resources for Commerce Serve 2007 are hard to come by.  In no way is this meant to be a criticism of the Commerce Server product team, as they have made every effort to blog and webcast about technical topics and some of the newer features of Commerce Server.  Nevertheless, there's still a void with regards to technical training resources (a void I hope to fill with my book Professional Commerce Server 2007).

One thing I've noticed during my conversations with companies building Commerce Server solutions is that most companies have internal technical resources with solid skills in ASP.NET, SQL Server 2000/2005, and even BizTalk 2006.  Companies want to leverage their existing skills, and quickly acquire the specific Commerce Server skills required to implement and develop successful systems.

If this seems to accurately describe the situation you find youself in, please let me know at wade.wegner@gmail.com.  If I don't have a resolution, perhaps I can find someone that does!

There's a concept in Commerce Server (and many other products, for that matter) that's important to understand.  There are two ways to go about programming against the core systems (i.e. Catalog, Inventory, Profiles, Orders, and Marketing) in Commerce Server--InProc mode and Web Service mode.  Vinayak, a developer on the Commerce Server team, wrote an excellent blog about this concept (last October) as it relates to the catalog system.  There are also some great code examples.

When you are programming with the Inproc mode, the assembly is loaded into the callers AppDomain.  This is fine if you have the ability to run your code on the actual web server, but what if you can't?  This is where the Web Service mode becomes useful.  In this mode, the specific Commerce Server functionality is now available remotely via a set of system specific web services.

So what are the differences?  When would you use one over the other?  Here are things to consider:

• Inproc mode is obviously fast than Web Server mode; if speed and load are a factor, consider using Inproc mode
• If you performing an action from a remote machine (let's say you're using the business management system) then it makes sense to use the Web Service mode

With regards to actual coding, the only difference between these two modes is the way in which the context object is created.  Otherwise, the object model and methods available are identical.

Best of luck!

04/13/2008 - Please see this post for information regarding this book.

I'm excited to announce that Max Akbar, senior product manager for the Microsoft Commerce Server team, has agreed to work with me on the book Professional Commerce Server 2007 (for WROX) as the official technical reviewer.  This is great news, as Max has an incredible amount of knowledge and experience with the Commerce Server product, which will be invaluable as I write this book.  I couldn't be happier!

Check out Max's blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/maxakbar/.

Ever meet or work with one of those developers who had the whole package?  This person intuitively understood the needs of business users, had the ability to consistently deliver top quality code with little or no bugs, and was one of the hands down best technical resources and coders you ever met?

I've worked with someone like that -- Mike Meadows, a fellow IT professional out here in the greater Denver area.  I've had the opportunity to work with Mike on and off over the last year or so, and I'm constantly amazed by his technical knowledge and ability to deliver well-architected and technically sound solutions.

And it appears that Mike and rhythmiQ have done it again!

Mike is the founder of an IT consulting and solutions company called rhythmiQ.  In addition to software consulting, his company has also just released what I believe to be a revolutionary product called InfinityGL.

The inspiration for InfinityGL, as it has been related to me, came to Mike one day while he was consulting.  All of a sudden he said to himself, "I implement and build the exact same solutions every day, over and over" (not necessarily a direct quote).  Mike felt that there had to be a better way, a way for businesses to get out of the monotony of either having to use "canned" software that didn't do the job or pay for technical professionals that don't always understand the business needs to perform mundane and repetitive tasks over and over.

InfinityGL is a way for businesses to break out of the rut and monotony of IT failures, and empower their business users to actually create the solutions themselves.  As Mike states:

“The crisis mandates that we look at the software development life cycle from a fresh angle.  In the current methodology, business generates requirements and then technology creates solutions. Flip it upside down: business needs the ability to create solutions first and then effectively communicate requirements to technology.” (full article)

Yes, Mike means exactly what he says.  I've seen a demonstration of the application, and it's powerful!  Through the administrative website, a user can actually define both their logical data layer as well as their application front-end.  Building slick applications is as easy as dragging and dropping!  Check out his website -- he built it with his own product!

For developers and business users looking to bridge the gap between business and technology, I highly recommend you take a look at what Mike Meadows and rhyhmiQ are offering.

You can learn more about InfinityGL at http://www.rhythmiq.com/.

Thanks to a link from Joachim Lykke Andersen's DevTalk blog, I learned about a new blogging tool from Microsoft called "Windows Live Writer" (beta).  Check out the details from the Windows Live Writer team blog.

This seems to be a great tool, and one I believe I'll use religiously.  Check it out!

While I realize these have been around for awhile, I thought I would post some links to great webcasts discussing different aspects of Commerce Server 2007.

Commerce Server 2007 Architectural Deep-Dive by David Messner
Commerce Server 2007 Data Warehouse by Brian Blum and Alan Faulkner
Commerce Server 2007 BizTalk Adapters in Action by Brian Blum and Alan Faulkner
Developing with the Commerce Server 2007 Marketing System by Madhur Joshi and David Lott
Commerce Server 2007 Product Catalog Deep-dive by Austin Skyles
Commerce Server 2007 Overview by Mark Townsend
Multi-Channel, Connected Commerce (BTS/CS integration) by Caesar Samsi

These are all great webcasts, and I encourage anyone looking to learn more about CS 2007 to watch them.

Here are some other invaluable links:

MSDN - Commerce Server 2007
MSDN - Common Development Tasks with Commerce Server 2007
Commerce Server 2007 Forum
Core Systems Overview - Jeff Lynch

Best of luck!

I recently found myself in a situation where I had to change the computer name of a machine I had configured as a BizTalk 2006 server.  The machine was actually a virtual machine that was going to be used for development, and we made numerous copies for all the developers.  Consequently, each developer needed to have a computer with a unique name.

After researching the appropriate way to do this, all I could find were very manual steps.  For instance, here are some of the intial things I tried:

Note: I do NOT recommend using this approach.

• Rename the computer
• Add a host entry to the old computer name; add a SQL alias for the old computer name
• Execute the following in SQL: sp_dropserver [computerName]
• Drop and recreate all SQL logins
• Update the following registry keys
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Administration\MgmtDbServer
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BusinessRules\3.0
• Update the following database tables
  • BizTalkHWSDb.HWS_Core
  • BizTalkMgmtDb.adm_MessageBox
  • BizTalkMgmtDb.adm_OtherDatabases
  • BizTalkMgmtDb.adm_Group
  • BizTalkMgmtDb.adm_Server
  • BizTalkMgmtDb.TDDS_Sources
  • BizTalkMgmtDb.TDDS_Destinations
• Run the following command: ssoconfig -setdb computerName SSODB

While this worked, it was NOT an ideal solution.  I still noticed a few issues in the BizTalk configuration, etc. 

Once I had a night to think about this, I realized that there's a MUCH easier way to go about doing this.  Here's the process:

1. Unconfigure the current BizTalk configuration via BizTalk Server Configuration.  This essentially removes all the existing BizTalk databases.
2. Go to MSSQL, and delete all the BizTalk databases and SQL logins
3. Change the computer name, and restart.
4. Run the following two commands in MSSQL
   1. sp_addserver [newComputerName]
   2. sp_dropserver [oldComputerName]
5. Configure a new BizTalk configuration via BizTalk Server Configuration
6. Go into BizTalk Server Administration and remove the old BizTalk group, and add the new BizTalk group.

This solution has worked perfectly for our development environments.

Best of luck!

I have been studying for the MS exam 70-235: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server for the past couple months.  Finding resources for this exam has been difficult, but I've found a few that were helpful.  I was fortunate enough to take the following two Microsoft courses:

• Course 2933: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006
• Course 2934: Deploying and Managing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

Additionally, I purchased the book:

• Pro BizTalk 2006, by George Dunphy and Ahmed Metwally (Apress, 2006).  Of the few BizTalk 2006 books on the market, I found this to be the best.

Also, I made use of MSDN, various BizTalk blogs and forums, and all kinds of other online material.

In the end, I decided to compile a list of the various topics I thought would be useful.  A colleague of mine (Mathew Shuster, an incredible BizTalk resource) suggested that I make sure to focus on both BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) and correlations.

So, here's the list of topics I put together:

• Correlations
• BAM (Business Activity Monitoring)
• Business Rule Engine / Business Rule Composer
• Group Hub page
• HAT
• Hub and Spoke model
• EAI versus ESB
• Persistence points
• Atomic transactions
• Role Links
• BizTalk Tracking continuation
• BizTalk Groups
• Interchanges
• Tracking Profile Editor
• BizTalk Vocabularies
• BizTalk Policies
• Trading Partner Management

(Note: at some point, I'd like to write short articles on all the above topics.)

By no means do I mean to suggest that this list is exhaustive.  Be sure to go to the above Microsoft link to see all the various topics that the exam covers.

As this exam focuses on BizTalk 2006, it's safe to assume that the exam file highlight features new to 2006, as well as try to trip you up with questions that have answers that may have been correct in 2004 but not in 2006.  Be sure to watch out for these kind of questions.

Wish me luck!

----

[Edit: 03/16/2007]

I passed!  While the exam was difficult (took me almost two hours), I definitely found it to be passable.  My two weakest areas (according to my results) were in BAM and the Business Rule Engine.  However, a pass is a pass!! :)

I think everything I previously wrote above still applies.

I've been trying to explain to people how the high-pitched noise emitting from my Dell Latitude D820 (which is a great computer) has been driving me crazy!  Indeed, after complaining about this noise, most people actually think I have GONE crazy.  But, it turns out that it's actually a known issue.  Here's an article published by Dell:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&docid=0A7D5CD2E17F5125E0401E0A55176204&journalid=B141AFF2D12811DA8253D5412E975AB8&l=en&s=gen

Personally, I find it quite humorous that Dell blames the problem on Piezoelectricity, and even goes so far as to link to Wikipedia for more information.  But, this article led me on the correct path to solving the problem.

Having read the article, I noticed that my Bluetooth device shuts down shortly after my machine boots up.  Turns out, it's because a power saving checkbox was enabled.  As a result, the Bluetooth device turns off, and this evidently allows the processor to move into a C3 state, thus causing the high-pitched noise.

To resolve this, go to your Device Manager, right-click "Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth Module" (at least, that's what it's called on my machine), and select properties.  Select the "Power Management" tab, and uncheck the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" checkbox.

Once you've done this, the noise will stop!

Best of luck!

[Update]

Since writing this post, Dell has come out with an updated version of the Latitude 820 Bios (version A06).  You can get this update here.  I haven't tried it yet, but it's possible that this Bios update will help!

[Update 2]

I installed version A06 and STILL the high-pitched noise was emitted by the laptop.  Fortunately, the steps above still resolve the issue.

04/13/2008 - Please see this post for information regarding this book.

I have just closed a deal with Wrox (http://www.wrox.com/) to write a book on Commerce Server 2007!

This book will be part of the Professional series, and entitled Professional Commerce Server 2007.  Writing begins next week, and should be completed by the end of Q3, 2007.  It should hit store shelves some time in late 2007, early 2008.  A long process, yet hopefully very worthwhile!

This book will deal with advanced topics, such as:

• Best practices and development environments
• Commerce Server core systems architecture
• Building a Commerce Server site / using the Starter Site
• Using the Business Management Systems
• The Pipeline Framework
• Web Services and SOA
• SQL Reporting Services
• Core systems deep dive
  • Catalog System
  • Inventory System
  • Marketing Campaigns
  • Customer and Orders Manager System
• BizTalk 2006 adapters
• The Commerce Server 2007 MOM Pack
• Production architecture
• Deployment tools and methodology
• Commerce Server staging
• Deploying and securing the site
• Tuning and optimizing

Additionally, the last quarter of the book will be advanced "how-to" topics, with lots of examples.  These are based on the most common questions and scenarios requested by companies using Commerce Server, and will take the reader from start to finish.

I will try to periodically post information to this blog.  Stay tuned!

Having used the "Microsoft BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems" to connect to a DB2 back-end, I thought I was ready for any adapter challenge.  Turns out that using the "Microsoft BizTalk Adapters for Enterprise Applications" to connect to Oracle was a little trickier than I thought it would be.

To start, I couldn't figure out where to find the Oracle adapter!  If you read the BizTalk 2006 Pricing and Licensing page (http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/howtobuy/default.mspx) you'll see that "ODBC Adapter for Oracle Database" is included in the license!  To me that insinuates no additional installation or download is required, but that's not the case.  There are actually two prerequisites to using the Oracle adapter.

First, you need the Oracle client installed on your machine.  Yes, in retrospect, this seems perfectly obvious (but, in hindsight, what isn't?).  Second, you need to acquire a copy of "Microsoft BizTalk Adapters for Enterprise Applications" and install the "Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for Oracle(r) Database".

With regards to the Oracle client, there is a good article on MSDN (also found in the help documentation) that will walk you through the installation and configuration of the Oracle client (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa547634.aspx).  I recommend using this tutorial.  The installation for the "Microsoft BizTalk Adapters for Enterprise Applications" is straightforward, and shouldn't give you any problems.

Once the two of these applications are installed (and you've registered the appropriate TNS names for Oracle connectivity), you must create an ODBC connection.  To do this, do the following:

1. Administrative Tools -> Data Sources (ODBC)
2. Click the System DSN tab, followed by Add
3. Select "Oracle in OraHome92" (yours may be slightly different)
4. You'll now have to configure your ODBC connection.  Make sure to specify the Data Source Name, the TNS Service Name, and the User ID.  When you click "Test Connection" you will be prompted for the password.  Make sure the test passes.
5. Click "OK", and "OK" to exit.

Now that the ODBC connection is created, we have to setup the Oracle adapter in the BizTalk Administrative Console.  Under the BizTalk Group, expand "Platform Settings" and "Adapters".  Notice that there isn't an Oracle adapter.  You'll have to right-click on "Adapters" and choose "New" --> "Adapter...".  From here you can choose the "Oracle(r) Database" adapter, and specify a name.  I like "OracleDB".  The default Host will be added automatically for both Send and Receive.

Now that all the prerequisites are out of the way, we have to go about first creating a receive port/location or a send port.  Now, in my experience, this is somewhat backwards.  Typically I first choose "Add Generated Item", "Add Adapter Metadata", and then select the adapter I want to use.  With Oracle, you must first create your Receive Port/Location or Send Port, and then use it to define your schema.

Here's the process I use to create a Recieve Port/Location

1. Open the "BizTalk Administration Console" (I'm not a big fan of doing this in Visual Studio 2005)
2. Create a new Receive Port (let's do One-Way for simplicity), and call it "ReceiveDataFromOracleDB"
3. Create a new One-way Receive Location on the "ReceiveDataFromOracleDB" port.  Specify a decent name -- "ReceiveDataFromOracleDB-ORA" isn't the best, but will do
4. Select the "OracleDB" adapter you defined earlier, and click "Configure".  Specify the following values
   1. Password
   2. PATH -- with a default installation of Oracle, this would be "C:\Oracle\ora92\bin" (yours may be slightly different)
   3. Service name -- this is the ODBC connection you created
   4. User name
5. At this point I'd recommend not specifying anything else, and clicking okay.  This will save the settings, and allow you to continue forward.  Having clicked okay, go ahead and immediately click "Configure" again to return to the properties.
6. Click "Managing Events".  This will call the Oracle Adapter Wizard, and confirm that you have correctly configured everything.  If you are unable to browse the Oracle database, then you have made a mistake somewhere along the way.  Click OK or Cancel to exit.

At this point, just leave your Receive Location alone.  The next step will be to use the Receive Port/Location to generate a schema of an Oracle table or stored procedure.

Enter into Visual Studio 2005, and load your BizTalk project (I won't explain how to do this -- if you don't already have one, then create one).  A a new item, choose "Add Generated Items ...", then select "Add Adapter Metadata".  This will invoke the "Add Adapter Wizard".  Select "Oracle(r) Database" from the list of registered adapters, then choose your receive location in the "Port:" dropdown list.  Click Next.  You will now have the ability to browse the Oracle database, and choose either your stored procedure or table.  For simplicity sake, we'll choose a table.  The adapter will generate the schemas required to actually retrieve data from the Oracle table.  Build your project and deploy.

Once deployed, you can perform the final steps to this process.  Go back to your Receive Location, and click the Configure button.  Once again, click "Managing Events".  This time, choose the same table that you specified in the adapter wizard.  Click OK.  Now, create a Send Port that uses the File adapter, and subscribe to the Receive Port (this is, in my opinion, the easiest way to test).

If everything has been done correctly, you should see XML files dump into your folder.  If they don't, then look into the application log and try to figure out what the problem is.  Sadly, that's beyond the scope of this post.

I hope this has helped.  Please let me know if I've missed anything.

Best of luck!

Since I use virtual machines (VMs) for development, I often find myself having to turn off the beep service on my VMs, or risk the rather of my neighbors.  There are a couple of ways to do this:

1. Stop the beep on/off for the particular session.  Obviously, the problem with this is that once you restart your machine, the beep service will restart.  Nevertheless, you can type the the following at the command line:

net stop beep

and ...

net start beep

2. Turn off the beep service.  This will turn it off even after it is rebooted (make sure you get the spacing exact -- it actually matters!):

sc config beep start= disabled

Note: I think that if you turn off the beep service it won't take effect until after a reboot.  Consequently, I recommend doing using the net stop beep after you turn off the service.

I believe that you can also accomplish this by modifying the registry, but I've never had to do that (these methods always work), so you'll have to look elsewhere to find out more.

Best of luck!

I've been working on a project where we have two independent BizTalk 2006 clusters -- one at the headquarters, and one (actually, a few) at some a remote office.  In order to send messages back and forth, we are using HTTP as the transport protocol.

For example, we first query an AS400/DB2 database (via the HOST adapters for BizTalk 2006) through a receive port/location.  This is picked up by a subscribing send port, which posts it via HTTP to the remote office.  That remote office has an receive port/location configured to listen on HTTP, via the BTSHTTPReceive.dll ISAPI extension.  This is then picked up by a send port that then inserts the data into an MSSQL database.

Having set this up a few times now, I've found that I keep making the same mistakes.  Consequently, here's my short-list of items to watch for when setting up HTTP for both send/receive in BizTalk 2006:

• Make sure your application pool is configured to run under the context of your BizTalk use account
• Confirm that your virtual directory has Scripts and Executables execute permissions
• Copy the file "BTSHTTPReceive.dll" into your virtual directory from the folder "C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\HttpReceive"
• Make sure to configure a "Web Service Extension" in IIS for the "BTSHTTPReceive.dll" file
• Remove anonymous access to your virtual directory, and use either Integrated or Basic authentication (preferrably Integrated)
• Make sure your send port utilizes the same security context, so that it can post to the site
• Confirm that your BizTalkUser account belongs to the BizTalk Server Administrators group

For your send port, configure your destination with a querystring value, like this: http://localhost/transport/BTSHTTPReceive.dll?MessageType.  I like to append the message type, but that's up to you.  For your receive location, configure your virtual directory plus ISAPI extension to something like: /transport/BTSHTTPReceive.dll?MessageType.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Best of luck!

Many applications require (or should have) direct access to the Windows Console, rather than a session on the the Windows Server.  I encounter these kind of problems often, as I do all my development on virtual machines (running on Virtual Server 2005 R2) and use Remote Desktop to connect.

In order to accomplish this, call the Remote Desktop application with the following command:

mstsc /console

This will attach the Remote Desktop application directly to the system console, preventing any issues that can result from attaching to a session.

If you use a short-cut to connect to Remote Desktop, rather than the command line, just choose the short-cut's link, and add "/console" to the target.

Best of luck!

One of the most common questions people ask is, how can we integrate Commerce Server 2007 with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007?  Well, Henry Winkler, a consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services in Denver whom I've had the pleasure to work with in the recent past, has written the following white paper:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2AEB1A5E-43B8-483B-8CB2-86C0E82BF0AB&displaylang=en

This whitepaper includes code samples that make it easy to integrate these two products together.

Thank you Henry!

I came across a great blog entry today that provided the following script.  This script will setup IIS with the proper configuration to allow Virtual Server 2005 R2 to function.  Just run this in the command line (or create a batch file) before installing Virtual Server.

start /w pkgmgr /l:log.etw /iu:IIS-WebServerRole;IIS-WebServer;IIS-CommonHttpFeatures;IIS-StaticContent;IIS-DefaultDocument;IIS-DirectoryBrowsing;IIS-HttpErrors;IIS-HttpRedirect;IIS-ApplicationDevelopment;IIS-ASPNET;IIS-NetFxExtensibility;IIS-ASP;IIS-CGI;IIS-ISAPIExtensions;IIS-ISAPIFilter;IIS-ServerSideIncludes;IIS-HealthAndDiagnostics;IIS-HttpLogging;IIS-LoggingLibraries;IIS-RequestMonitor;IIS-HttpTracing;IIS-CustomLogging;IIS-ODBCLogging;IIS-Security;IIS-BasicAuthentication;IIS-WindowsAuthentication;IIS-DigestAuthentication;IIS-ClientCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-IISCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-URLAuthorization;IIS-RequestFiltering;IIS-IPSecurity;IIS-Performance;IIS-HttpCompressionStatic;IIS-HttpCompressionDynamic;IIS-WebServerManagementTools;IIS-ManagementConsole;IIS-ManagementScriptingTools;IIS-ManagementService;IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility;IIS-Metabase;IIS-WMICompatibility;IIS-LegacyScripts;IIS-LegacySnapIn;IIS-FTPPublishingService;IIS-FTPServer;IIS-FTPManagement;WAS-WindowsActivationService;WAS-ProcessModel;WAS-NetFxEnvironment;WAS-ConfigurationAPI

Note: this will pretty much install everything under IIS.  I recommend that you either go through and remove some of the above settings, or go in afterwards and do so.

Additionally, make sure that when you run the installer, select "Run as Administrator".

Thanks to Grant Holliday for the tip!

[Updated 06/21/07]

A good friend and former colleague of mine, Rich Finn, had a little trouble getting this to work based on my steps above (I'll have to review them again).  After he finally got the configuration correct, he sent me the following screen shot.  I hope this helps someone!