Example Orders Scenario
For the latest version of Commerce Server 2007 Help, see the Microsoft Web site.
One of the ways in which you may want to use the Commerce Server Orders adapter is to integrate a warehouse line-of-business (LOB) application with the Commerce Server Orders System. The following figure illustrates this type of integration, and the circled numbers in the figure correspond to more detailed explanation that follows.
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Using the retail Web site that you have created using Commerce Server, a shopper places an order for one or more of your products. When the shopper checks out, the items in the basket are processed and end up as a purchase order within the Commerce Server Orders System.
You have configured an Orders receive adapter endpoint within your BizTalk Server to receive a CommerceServerOrdersExport message, via the configured Orders Web service, every five minutes. This XML message contains all orders that have been created or modified during the previous five minutes, including the new order placed by the shopper in step 1.
BizTalk Server processes and routes the message containing the new and updated orders to a BizTalk adapter that is used to deliver the message to the warehouse LOB application. The amount of processing done by BizTalk Server might be very little or might be substantial, depending upon factors such as the message format expected by the warehouse LOB application. BizTalk orchestrations and data transformation according to schema mapping can be utilized where necessary to perform the requisite processing.
The BizTalk adapter used to deliver the new and updated orders message to the warehouse LOB application is distinct from the Commerce Server adapters, and may be a standard BizTalk send adapter or a custom adapter for the warehouse LOB application, much like the Commerce Server adapters are custom adapters for Commerce Server.
After the order placed by the shopper in step 1 is within the warehouse LOB application, fulfillment of the order can commence. After a time, the order ships and the order status within the warehouse LOB application is changed to reflect the new status.
Another BizTalk adapter is configured to receive order updates from the warehouse LOB application once every hour. As with the BizTalk adapter in step 4, the details of this adapter are specific to the warehouse LOB application. The important point here is that changed order status information is beginning to flow back to the Commerce Server retail Web site upon which the order was originally placed.
BizTalk Server processes and routes the XML message containing the updated status information. The amount of processing will depend on the message format used by the warehouse LOB application and the degree to which that format differs from the message format used by CommerceServerOrdersUpdateOrderProperties messages. In any event, this step must produce an XML message using the latter format for the next step.
You have configured an Orders send adapter endpoint within your BizTalk Server to accept CommerceServerOrdersUpdateOrderProperties messages. When a message of this type, containing the updated shipping status of the order placed in step 1, is routed to this Orders send adapter, it will use the Orders Web service with which it has been configured to update the specified properties of the specified orders within the Commerce Server Orders System. The adapter will also generate a CommerceServerOrdersUpdateOrderPropertiesResponse message containing the results of the update operation and submit it back into BizTalk Server. You must configure BizTalk Server to properly consume this response message, which might mean routing it back to the warehouse LOB application. For more information about how to work with the BizTalk Server solicit-response messaging model, see Conversing with Other Systems.
The shopper who originally placed the order, upon revisiting your Commerce Server retail Web site, sees that her order has been shipped, and decides that this is a Web site with which she will do business again in the future.