Developer Integration Issues
There are interdependency issues between the Commerce Server Core Systems systems, and integration issues that arise when a change in one system causes issues with another system.
This topic provides guidance for some of these interdependencies and integration issues:
When adding a new virtual catalog, or products to an existing virtual catalog, you need to consider that existing discounts may not apply to the products within that virtual catalog unless you have configured the discounts to apply to all products.
You can display all discounts that apply to the product that the user is currently browsing by using Runtime Discount Filtering.
If you need to search profiles, you can use the [ProfileManagement] class of the management API. Searching profiles via the runtime API requires the creation of SQL-like queries through an Active Directory Object (ADO) connection. To do this, there are two approaches: use the [Profilecontext.CommerceOleDbprovider] ADO connection (managed by the Commerce Server Core Systems) or create an [OleDbConnection] by using the s_CommerceProviderConnectionString configured on the profile resource properties.
Adding a custom profile or extending the [TargetingContext] profile lets you more efficiently target ads and discounts. For example, summarizing information about the current contents of a user’s cart and storing this information in the Profiles System would let you target ads and discounts based on the contents of the cart.
Specifying the priority of discounts, via Marketing Manager, has an impact on which discounts Commerce Server Core Systems will apply to a particular product.
You should exercise caution when allowing the interaction of more than one discount against a product at the same time; this can result in a deep discount that may not be intended.
Creating personalized e-mail messages lets you target a group of users based on selected criteria. This helps to increase the response rate from the recipients. You can create personalized e-mail from a Web page and you can include attachments such as discount coupons, pictures, special URLs, and so on.
You can use the Commerce Server Adapters for BizTalk Server to send and receive information from Commerce Server, which helps to ease integration with ERP, CRM and other third-party products.
If you remove an attribute from the Profile or Catalog schema that Commerce Server Core Systems uses in a discount expression, an error will occur.
Removing a shipping method will make all the order discounts based on that shipping method obsolete.
Removing the e-mail or password attributes from a Profile schema will break the [upmMermbershipProvider], which anticipates those items being in position.
The QueryCatalogInfo pipeline component in the Basket.pcf file uses the Catalog System to retrieve product information. If you are using a third-party Catalog System, you must replace this pipeline.
The Marketing Manager does not handle the restricted coupon process entirely. As a developer, you need to import a file that has a coupon and user information. Although the Marketing Manager can create a batch of coupons to use, it cannot associate a user to each generated coupon at the same time.