Building Pipeline Components

The Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 pipeline is a software infrastructure that executes a sequence of components. Each component is a custom-tailored Component Object Model (COM) object designed to perform operations on some part of an OrderForm or Dictionary. The pipeline coordinates the interaction of pipeline components by passing the OrderForm or Dictionary object from one component to another.

You can use pipelines to model many linear processes. The two main processes modeled in Commerce Server are order processing, which is handled by the Order Processing pipelines (OPP), and content selection, which is handled by the Content Selection Framework (CSF) pipelines. The OPP automates order processing in a business-to-consumer scenario. The CSF pipelines automate the selection of advertisements and discounts.

Commerce Server includes a set of components that can be combined into a pipeline to support either architecture. In addition, you can create your own components to extend the capabilities of the pipeline architecture, as described in this section.

This section contains:

Ee797518.note(en-US,CS.10).gif Notes

  • Commerce Server includes wizards for creating pipeline components using Microsoft Visual Basic and Microsoft Visual C++. For the most current sample code for the components, see the ATL Pipeline Component Wizard, the Visual Basic Pipeline Component Wizard, and the complete sample code in theĀ Programmer's Reference.

  • You must have Visual C++ version 6.0 or Visual Basic version 6.0 or higher installed on your computer in order to use the ATL Pipeline Component Wizard.

See Also

Programmer's Reference

Working with Pipelines

Order Processing Pipelines

OrderForm Object

Dictionary Object


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