SharePoint Commerce Services Overview
Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 R2 is designed to let you create Web sites that support full e-commerce applications by leveraging the Commerce Server 2009 R2 engine with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 as a presentation front end. A SharePoint-based e-commerce site is a collection of Web Parts, each with a specific purpose, that can be combined on a SharePoint 2010 site to provide e-commerce-based functionality. You can create site pages for displaying customer profile information, showing catalog items, summarizing orders, and many other purposes, all composed of Web Parts interconnected together and communicating through the Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation to Commerce Server 2009 R2. By coupling Commerce Server 2009 R2 with these Web Parts, a single developer or knowledgeable user can create, deploy, and manage an e-commerce site quickly and easily.
.gif "Important note") Important Note: |
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When using Commerce Server 2009 R2 Web Parts, applying changes directly on the production site may have unexpected effects. The best practice is to build a staging version of the site and changes can be made on that site. Once approved, the changes can be pushed to your production site. |
The available Web Parts fall into six categories:
Catalog Web Parts display available products or services
Marketing Web Parts manage advertisements, special offers, and other marketing programs
Orders Web Parts handle ordering of products or services
Profile Administration System Web Parts contain information about customers
Management Web Parts add management capabilities
Search Web Parts handle the search feature
For each category there are separate Web Parts for specific functions. For example, the Orders category has Web Parts for creating a shopping cart, adding new items to the shopping cart, retrieving shipping information, processing credit card numbers, and so on. By interconnecting the Web Parts, you can create a logic workflow for many different scenarios. Because you are using Web Parts, site creation with Commerce Server 2009 R2 is faster and simpler than ever before.
Most Web Parts are based on XSLT and provide business users and site designers with the ability to quickly change the look and feel of the Web Part’s display. In most cases, this is through the ability to choose a template from a template library drop-down list. These libraries are implemented as SharePoint 2010 document lists. In select cases, direct editing of the XSLT is required. You can modify the XSLT directly within SharePoint 2010 or by using SharePoint Designer.
Note
Changes to the XSLT file are not applied until the XSLT is checked into SharePoint 2010.