Well done Microsoft Switzerland!

Microsoft Switzerland put on a Commerce Server 2009 day for their partners. This was the program:

Commerce Server Day - Switzerland
Morning (0900-1200), Sales content
Module 1:
Trends, Sales Strategies, Solutions
• Key e-commerce market trends
• Roadmap and history
• New Commerce Server 2009 features
• How to sell Commerce Server 2009

Module 2
PreSales Consulting
• Understand the positioning
• Avoid the pain points
• Building a basis for a successful project.
• Cross sell, BizTalk, SharePoint
• Reference Cases, Marketing Materials

Afternoon (1300-1700), Technical content
Module 3
· Architecture
· Subsystems, Catalog, Inventory, Profiles, Orders, Marketing
· Data Warehousing
· Staging

Module 4
· SharePoint Commerce Services
· Commerce Server Foundation
· Integration to BizTalk
· Performance
· Resources

The partners were of high calibre, and had a number of customers evaluating Commerce Server 2009, and went deeply into performance issues and the aspx vs SharePoint issues. It would be great we could have a similar day in the neighbouring countries also.

Thanks Max!

Max reports on his site that he is winding up his Commerce Server business. http://www.maxakbar.com/blog.aspx?id=23. We had talked about this back in June but he asked me to keep it to myself for a while.

I would like to thank him for all his work for the Commerce Server community and wish him well for his new endeavours. I personally have learned a lot from him, particularly in the area of pipelines. Thanks Max!

This means that Commerce Server 2009 training is now pretty thin on the ground, so I have been expanding our presence in North America to make up the slack. We have a great new CS2009 training manual, running to about 1000 pages, and it seemed to work well in class. We were a little ahead of ourselves, our labs included BizTalk 2009, but fortunately this is now supported.

Commerce Server 2009 R2 (CS 2010)

Tried out R2 today. Since R2 is 64 bit only it had to wait until I had finally got myself a 64 bit laptop and installed Windows 2008 and HyperV. The installation went well, was the way it should be without the old complexity that a CS2009 installation must have CS2007 installed. (That said, I didn 't find any migration options.) Was a little puzzled that the IIS 7 still had to have IIS 6 compability installed, surely we can make a clean break here. Haven't tried the new Business toolbar yet, that is next on my list. The broker still can't do authentication so the dream of a true CS application server must wait a little longer.

Commerce Server User Group

We formed the Commerce Server User Group last week. Meetings will be held online. We have members from 4 countries so far: US, Denmark, France, Germany. Details here: http://www.software-smith.com/usergroup.htm

Using SSL in Windows 2008

Our old friend SelfSSl does not work in IIS 7.0. But it is easy enough to set up a certificate and use SSL. Here is the brief version:
Server Name > Server Certifications > Create Self-Signed Cert
Go to site > Right click > Edit Bindings > Add one for https with unused port
Select the cert you created.
Restart web site then click on the correct browser link for the port on the right
You will get a warning that the cert is unsafe, but you can continue to the site.

Here is a longer version if you get stuck:
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/144/how-to-setup-ssl-on-iis-70/

Recycling Application Pools in Windows 2008

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv>appcmd stop apppool sharepointapppool
C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv>appcmd start apppool sharepointapppool
Here is the a command file that does the above.

Commerce Server Book Released and Available!

I finally got my Commerce Server 2007 book back from the printers today. Here is the information how to order.