Extensibility and Customization
Commerce Server 2009 contains a highly extensible Commerce Foundation. You can extend or override the default Commerce Server 2009 commerce entities and operation sequences. You can add new features to the operations without modifying and redeploying the assemblies. You can replace the default implementation of the operations with no changes to the Commerce Server 2009 Web service. As a developer, you can introduce new operations into the service.
You can customize the Commerce Server 2009 unified operation sequence by altering the execution of the operation sequence components. You can remove operation sequence components or create new ones, therefore providing the ability to configure the requirements of each business operation. Developers can extend the operation response or create new operations responses.
Developers can extend a commerce entity by adding new properties or relationships to existing commerce entities. This can be done without creating new classes. As an example, adding a property to a product definition will cause that property to automatically flow through Commerce Server 2009. You are not required to write code for this as you use the indexer for the commerce entity to access the property value rather than strongly typed properties.
Commerce Server 2009 leverages technologies made familiar by SharePoint, such as XSL-based transforms for dynamic page displays, providing customization without the need to use Microsoft Visual Studio. Commerce Server 2009 also provides interfaces that can be implemented by Web Parts to enable seamless connection to controlling Web Parts.
The Commerce Server 2009 Extensibility Kit contains the source code for all Web Parts included in SharePoint Commerce Services.