Planning for the Profiling System

In Commerce Server 2000, you use profiles to collect and store information about the users who visit your Web site. The data that forms a profile comes from multiple data sources, such as Web log files and Commerce Server databases. You import the profile data into the Data Warehouse for analysis, and then you can use the results to target content to groups of users.

The following table lists some of the questions that you need to answer in planning for the Profiling System.

Planning question Recommendation
What are the business decisions you will make with the information you collect in the Profiling System? Begin planning for the Profiling System by answering this question. Your answer will determine the rest of your planning decisions for this system.
What kinds of business entities (for example, customers, companies, products, purchase orders, and accounts) do you currently store information for? Of these, which entities will you need to store information about in the Profiling System? The Profiling System is flexible enough to capture and store information about a wide variety of business entities. The system can aggregate this information from disparate data sources. You set up the system by defining the entities and data sources. You should coordinate this planning effort with your database administrator to make sure that the data entities defined are consistent with entities that exist in your database management system.
What profile information will you export to the Data Warehouse? You need to export the information you use to create the reports that you identified in response to the question listed inĀ Planning for the Business Analytics System.
What information will you collect about users? You can either collect information from users directly or you can use the Predictor resource to fill in the information you need (implicit targeting).
Which data store will you use for storing profiles? If you need to authenticate users with their Microsoft Windows 2000 security context, you will need to store some profile information in Microsoft Active Directory. If you do not have this requirement, use Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to store profile data.
Are there existing user accounts that you need to transfer into the Profiling system? Will you need to transfer all of the attributes from the current system? If you are transferring user accounts from Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Membership Directory, use the Directory Migration Toolbox to transfer this information. Do not plan on maintaining the Membership Directory after you have migrated.

See Also

About the Profiles Resource

Running the Profiles Resource

Running the Predictor Resource

Migrating the Membership Directory


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