Multiple Sites and One Data Warehouse

A single Commerce Server Data Warehouse can store data from up to ten sites. You can use the Commerce Server DTS tasks to perform actions for a particular site or for all sites in the Data Warehouse.

Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) supports multiple virtual servers (that is, Default Web Site) on a single physical server. Each of these virtual servers produces one log file. You associate the log files with a Data Warehouse site when you configure the Web server log import DTS task. For more information, see Configuring the Web Server Log Import DTS Task.

The Data Warehouse supports the following multiple site scenarios:

  • Import Web server log files for multiple sites using different log files.

  • Import Web server log files for multiple sites with each site having the same server name, but using a different port.

  • Import Web server log files for multiple sites with each site having a different host header.

  • Share resources and databases across sites. For a list of Commerce Server resources that can be shared across multiple sites, see Sharing Resources Across Sites.

    For example, if you have two sites, "My Clothes" and "Baby Clothes," they might share the Profiles resource.

  • Share one Data Warehouse for multiple sites that are in different time zones and have their own online resources.

Issues

Note the following issues when using one Data Warehouse for multiple sites:

  • When running the Transaction data import DTS task on a Data Warehouse that contains data for multiple Web Sites, ensure that classes extended by more than one Web site have uniquely named members if their data types are not the same. If a new member is added to a class in multiple Web sites and the datatype of the new members is not the same, a failure may occur or data may be incorrectly converted when the Transaction data import DTS task is run.

  • If one Data Warehouse is supporting multiple sites, the names of the catalogs you are importing data for must be unique.

    If there are two sites that have the same catalog name and the same products, but the catalog properties and product definitions are different, then the data in the catalog that is imported first will be overwritten when data for the second catalog is imported.

  • If the Profiles resource is shared by multiple sites in the Data Warehouse, on certain reports individual users will appear to belong to each site sharing the Profile resource. As a result, the grand totals in the reports will be inflated since users will be counted once for each site sharing the Profiles resource in which they are registered.

    The following reports are affected:

    • Registered Users by Date Registered (dynamic SQL)
    • User Days to Register (dynamic SQL)
    • User Registration Rate (dynamic SQL)

    If the Profiles resource is shared across sites, then disable or ignore the grand totals in these reports.

See Also

Securing the Data Warehouse

Securing Reports

Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.