Commerce Foundation Core Systems
The primary development task in Commerce Server 2009 is the creation of a web site that takes advantage of the various Commerce Server features to facilitate the display and acquisition of a set of products by customers. This is done by accessing the core systems of Commerce Server through the new Commerce Foundation. Seen in this way, the Catalog System and the Orders System are perhaps most central to Commerce Server, with the other systems backing up these primary systems. The Catalog System and allows you to provide your customers with more information about the availability of particular products. The Marketing System helps you make your Commerce Server Web site more successful through the use of advertising and content targeting. The Profiles System allows you to keep track of your customers and to help provide them with a personalized experience within your Commerce Server Web site.
Catalog System
The Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation Catalog System is a collection of operations that you can perform on the Commerce Server Core Catalog System data types which import, export, create, and manage online catalogs. Commerce Server stores catalog and product data in the Catalog database. Developers use the Commerce Foundation Catalog System APIs to define products, categories, base catalogs, and virtual catalogs.
The Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation Catalog System supports the following features:
Retrieval of Site, Catalog, Category, Product, Variant and Inventory data
Full text search of Site, Catalog, Category, Product and Variant data
Integration with SharePoint to support site content search
Marketing System
The Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation Marketing System is a collection of operations that you can perform on Commerce Server Core Marketing System data types to perform targeted personalized e-marketing through the Web. It assists e-commerce enterprises in effectively communicating relevant messages to shoppers in order to improve sales either directly or indirectly.
The Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation Marketing System supports the following features:
Retrieval of targeted advertising content
Retrieval of discounts applied to a customer's shopping basket or purchase order
Retrieval of simple discounts that are applicable to a specific product or category of products
Recording key advertising events (such as request, click or download)
Integration with Microsoft Virtual Earth to support store location searches.
Orders System
The Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation Orders System is a collection of operations that you can perform on Commerce Server Orders System data types to place orders. These functions are represented as create, delete, update, or query operations. In general, the configured Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation Operation Sequence components are responsible for performing the appropriate calls to the Commerce Server layer and then using Translators to convert the data back to CommerceEntity objects. There are a few differences between the Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation Order System and the Commerce Server Core Order System, for example:
There is only one basket object instead of a packet and a purchaseOrder
Multiple order forms are not supported out-of-the-box.
The payment object has been split into related Payment, PaymentAccount and PaymentMethod entities.
Profiles System
The Microsoft Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation Profiles System is a collection of operations that you can perform on Commerce Server Core Profiles System data types to create, collect, track, store, and use business data objects. The Profiles System stores two main business data object types: profiles and site terms. User profiles characterize users, addresses, credit cards, and other objects to support business objectives. You use site terms to provide a limited set of choices for users when they enter personal preferences or other information in your Web site.
See Also
Other Resources
Developing with the Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation
Developing with the Commerce Foundation Catalog System
Developing with the Commerce Foundation Marketing System