Administration Database

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You use the Commerce Server Administration database to store configuration information for Commerce Server resources, including global resources shared by all sites, as well as site-specific resources.

You can make the Administration database redundant with Windows Clustering. You can use either of the following configuration types to provide redundancy:

  • Active-active configuration. All nodes are running and hosting a database.
  • Active-passive configuration. One node is running and hosting a database; all other nodes are idle (in backup mode), ready to run and host the database if the active node fails.

When the IIS application is loaded (the first time an ASP page is accessed within the application virtual directory), the Application_OnStart subroutine is called to load the Administration database into the cache. The Application_OnStart subroutine loads application variables using the SiteConfigReadOnly object, which requires a connection to the Administration database.

If the Application_OnStart subroutine fails (for example, if the computer running SQL Server is failing or simply is not available), you must do one of the following to reload the application variables:

  • Run an ASP page that runs all initialization performed by the Global.asa file. This is the least intrusive option. You should use access control lists (ACLs) to protect the ASP page so that only authorized personnel or processes can run it.
  • Unload the Commerce Server application from IIS Manager.
  • Run the IISReset command; this option is intrusive because it resets all ASP applications running on IIS server.
  • Reboot the Web server; this is the most intrusive option, because it impacts all applications and services running on the Web server.

You can script all of these options.

See Also

Managing the Administration Database

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