Update (5/31/09) – as Glen notes in the below comment, you can order the book through an English language site.  Please seen the instructions in on his blog (http://www.software-smith.com/csbook.html) or go directly here for the site (still a little German, but it’s easier to follow in English).

The first – and only – book on Commerce Server 2007 is now available! (Here’s the translated version, thanks to Microsoft Translator – http://bit.ly/Gfm7R; note that you cannot purchase the book when using translator.)

Unfortunately, the only location you can currently purchase the book is from Amazon.de – not sure why it’s not available at Amazon.com, but hopefully this gets resolved soon.  I can assure you that this is an English version, and not German.

That aside, I really hope you find this a useful book.  It’s been a longtime coming, but it’s here now!  Go buy it!  If you have any issues purchasing this book, please let me know ASAP.

In fact, not only is it alive, but it’s thriving!

Please take a look at an announcement recently made by Glen (Software) Smith announcing that the Commerce Server 2007 book is finished.  You may (or may not) recall that this book was originally going to be published by Wiley (aka Wrox), but that it was cancelled for a number of reasons.  Consequently, efforts on the book essentially stalled until Glen stepped up last fall and volunteered to see it through fruition.  I am extremely grateful for all his hard work.

Glen has done a fantastic job taking the existing content I created (along with input from Tom Schultz, Ryan Donovan, Kevin Kraus, Brad Bont, David Hargis – and even Max Akbar) and extend it with additional content.  Furthermore, I’m very excited that he’s currently refreshing the book so that it contains information on Commerce Server 2009 as well – very exciting!  Take a look at the TOC (note: this may change based on the refresh for Commerce Server 2009):

   i. Introduction
Part I: Commerce Server Primer   
   1 Getting Started
   2 The Commerce Server Architecture
Part II – Commerce Server Overview   
   3 The Catalog System
   4 The Inventory System
   5 The Orders System
   6 The Profiles System
   7 The Marketing System
   8 The Commerce Server Adapters for BizTalk Server
   9 Commerce Server Staging
   10 The Data Warehouse Analytics System
   11 The Business Processing Pipeline System
Part III: Developing with Commerce Server   
   12 Commerce Server Development
   13 Developing with the Catalog System
   14 Developing with the Inventory System
   15 Developing with the Orders System
   16 Developing with the Profile System
   17 Developing with the Marketing System
   18 The Business Management Applications
   19 Extending the Data Warehouse and SQL Reporting Services
   20 Commerce Server Integration
   21 Operational Management
Part IV: Commerce Server Production Architectures   
   22 Application Architectures for Production

I know you all have questions about the cost and availability of this book.  When I have more information, I will post it.  For now, if you have questions, please feel free to email me (through my blog here) or reach out to Glen at his blog (http://www.software-smith.com/).

Looking back at my first announcement regarding Commerce Serve 2007, I’m struck by the fact that it’s been almost two years – amazing.  What’s more amazing is that today there STILL isn’t a definitive book on building e-commerce applications with Commerce Server 2007 (or 2009, for that matter).  I think you all will be very happy with this book.

Hope this helps!

I have been meaning to post an update on the book, but with the new job and move to Illinois it’s been difficult to find the time.  Since Max mentioned on his blog that the Professional Commerce Server book to be published by Wiley (aka Wrox) has been canceled, I think it’s appropriate for me to take the time and add a few details.

Fundamentally, the book was canceled because it was not completed in the allotted timeframe (nor the extended timeframe).  Throughout the process we were extremely committed to producing a high quality programming reference.  Writing a professional-level book of this kind—especially for a product as vast and powerful as Commerce Server—takes a significant amount of time and sacrifice.  I personally spent most of my evenings and weekends over the last year holed up in my office, working on the book; I know that the other authors similarly sacrificed a lot of their time.  Nevertheless, the book continued to fall behind schedule until it was canceled.  Wiley was very understanding and supportive throughout the entire process, but in the end things ultimately did not work out.  (I would personally like it to be noted that I do not begrudge Wiley at all.  Everyone I worked with at Wiley was extremely committed to seeing this book published, and I know that they were all disappointed with its cancellation.)

A big apology to all of you that have been excited about the book and awaiting it’s release.  As I mentioned, a lot of time and effort has been put into this book, and that Wrox will not publish it is definitely a disappointment.

Having said all this, I have a question for you: what should I do with all the content written for this book?

As Max alluded to on his blog, I plan on making the content produced for this book available one way or another—right now I’m trying to figure out the best way to do this!  Currently I have around 800 pages and 24 chapters of content in various stages of completion.

Given that I know that there’s been considerable interest in the community to have this book (and that I don’t want to see all the hard work put into it wasted) I can think of a lot of things I can do with the content.  At the moment, though, I prefer the following two options:

1. Find a new publisher to publish the book.  This would give the community the traditional book, but it would also probably be at least another six or seven months before anything is available.  The scope of the book would obviously have to change, given that we’re sure to see a lot of updates regarding product roadmap.
2. Self-publish the book.  This would give me a lot of freedom with regards to the publishing of the book, and means I could probably start making content available very soon.

I’m leaning towards the latter of the two choices, although I know very little about self publishing books.  If you have any comments or thoughts on this, please feel free to let me know either through comments on the blog or via e-mail (blog@wadewegner.com).

Rest assured that somehow I will make this content available!  Stay tuned for further details, hopefully to come in the next week or so.  Thanks for your support!

There has been some excellent activity by some heavy-weights in the Commerce Server world.  Sadly, I haven’t been contributing very much on my blog, as I am desperately trying to complete my book.

It started with Søren Spelling Lund‘s two-part series (and maybe more?) on what it’s like developing with Commerce Server 2007.

• Developing with Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 Part 1: Secure By Default

In this post, Søren highlights the high-level of security that has gone into Commerce Server 2007, calling it “both a blessing and a curse.”  He attributes this to the flexibility and granularity of the security system, in addition to the complexity that comes with it.  Commerce Server 2007 makes use of the Windows Authorization Manager for security.  See the following links for more information: Developing Applications Using Windows Authorization Manager, and Managing Authorization Policies.

Søren also highlights the Distributed Transaction Manager and use of MSDTC and System.Transaction in the .NET Framework 2.0.

• Developing with Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 Part 2: Three-Way Data Access

Søren discusses three different data access systems for Commerce Server 2007, based on the subsystem with which you’re working (i.e. the Profile system, the Catalog system, and the Order system).  Take a look at his post for the specifics.  I would also suggest you take a look at MSDN for some additional information on developing with Commerce Server 2007.

Not to be out-done by Søren, Max Akbar took some time out of his busy schedule to post a great article on caching and Commerce Server 2007.

• A Few Things You Didn’t Know About Commerce Server’s Catalog Cache

Max highlights a number of important topics, including: the Catalog cache, Web.Config settings, refreshing the cache, the cache size, the cache location, how to use your own caching.

As always, Max’s post is a great blend of information and code snippets.

Last, but certainly not least, Tom Schultz contributed to the discussion of caching by highlighting a mixed-authentication solution for the SiteCacheRefresh HTTP handler.

• SiteCacheRefresh – Mixed Authentication Solution

Tom shows how the SiteCacheRefresh HTTP handler provides Commerce Server with caching capabilities.  He goes beyond this, however, when he points out that by default the ASP.NET site uses forms authentication.  Since the web site can support either forms or windows authentication, a mixed authentication model is required.  Tom shows you how to construct this by taking aspects of the Starter Site

All in all, great stuff!