Types of Pipelines
Commerce Server includes the following types of pipelines:
Content Selection Pipeline. Selects content to be displayed to users. For example, it determines which advertisements a user should see or which discounts a user should receive, based on the targeting expressions you created by using Commerce Server Business Desk, how many advertisements are to be delivered, and other factors.
Event Processing Pipeline. Records events related to the displayed content (for example, a user clicking on an ad) and stores them in the Commerce Server databases. This information is then used for reporting purposes, for example, how many users have clicked on an ad.
Direct Mailer Pipeline. Constructs and delivers messages for direct mail campaigns. It can construct personalized e-mail messages or messages with static content.
Order Processing Pipeline. Processes either business-to-consumer (retail) orders or business-to-business (supplier) orders. These pipelines ensure that an order goes through all the necessary stages to be processed appropriately. For example, they retrieve the product description from the catalog, retrieve the shipping address for the user, compute the amount of tax, and compute the total price.
Commerce Server includes the following types of Order Processing Pipelines:
- Product Pipeline. Computes price and discount information for a product.
- Plan Pipeline. Verifies the integrity of the order. For example, if the order does not contain any items, then an error is generated.
- Purchase Pipeline. Accepts the final purchase of an order form, writes an order to database storage and, optionally, finalizes a receipt and writes the contents of the order to the receipt database.
See Also
Extending the Content Selection Framework
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