Microsoft .NET Server Solutions for the Enterprise

Microsoft Commerce Server 2002 is used to host a business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) Web site with the following features:

• Product Catalog System. Create, update, import, export, search, and report on product catalogs.
• Profiling System. Manage millions of users, and build user and organizational profiles for use in content selection and targeting.
• Business Analytics System. Analyze site effectiveness by collecting data from the site, identify specific groups of users, trends, and offer cross-sell recommendations.
• Targeting System. Personalize Web sites with targeted merchandising that provides specific users with content, discounts, advertisements, and direct mail.
• Business Process Pipelines. Customize order, targeting, and merchandising processes, and define and link together the stages of a business process.

The following illustration shows how these features are related. In addition, the following definitions will help in understanding the diagram.

• (Commerce Server 2002) Business Desk. A Web-based site management tool used for managing and analyzing commerce sites.
• Commerce Server 2002 Manager. A Microsoft Management Console-based system administration tool used for managing and configuring Commerce Server resources, sites, applications, and Web servers.
• Commerce Server 2002 Data Warehouse. A set of processes used by a system administrator for importing and maintaining site-usage data into databases for later analysis and reporting.
• Catalog. A way to organize products for sale. Commerce Server 2002 Business Desk helps create and organize catalogs by maintaining descriptions of catalog items.
• Campaign. A marketing program with a goal of producing a specific result. Commerce Server 2002 provides delivery mechanisms for online campaigns.
• Order. An online purchase request submitted to a Web site by a user.
• Profile. A set of characteristics that define any business-related item, such as a user, a company, or a business process.

The following figure shows an overview of Commerce Server's architecture.

Commerce Server 2002