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Build an E-Commerce App
Use the Commerce Server Developer Portal to add catalog functionality and other customer-centric features to your ASP.NET applications.
by Marc Gusmano

February 2003 Issue

Technology Toolbox: VB.NET, ASP.NET, XML, Commerce Server 2002, Commerce Server Developer Portal

Acquiring the ability to generate revenue through
e-business transactions is an integral component of countless companies' business strategies. If you're ready to start building a Web commerce site with ASP.NET, you can take advantage of one of Microsoft Commerce Server 2002's new features—the Commerce Server Developer Portal, which Visual Studio .NET hosts completely. I'll explain how to create e-commerce functionality within the Commerce Server Developer Portal, and how that process bests the classic ASP model. I'll do this by showing you how to implement the basics of catalog navigation and other pieces of core functionality for a standard business-to-consumer shopping site.

Developing an ASP.NET Commerce Server 2002 (CS02) application is significantly simpler than building its counterpart for Commerce Server 2000 (CS00)—a COM-rich "classic ASP" application. Many of the new developer features CS02 offers are designed to enhance productivity. In contrast, developing and testing CS00 applications with Visual InterDev (the standard Microsoft development tool for a classic ASP application) is a cumbersome process. You typically open the Commerce Server Manager Microsoft Management Console and unpackage the standard Retail Solution site to create a CS00 application. Once that site exists, you're on your own as far as accessing it from within Visual InterDev is concerned. You usually must install the FrontPage Server Extensions for the site, start Visual InterDev and try to open the application (with luck, that works), then try to get Visual InterDev debugging working for the app (and pray that works).

Figure 1. VS.NET Plays Host.

You're back in control with CS02. Begin by creating a CS02 project as you would create any VS.NET project normally. If you have CS02 and VS.NET installed, you see an additional folder in VS.NET's New dialog—Commerce Projects (see Figure 1). Select this folder to view several options for creating a CS02 ASP.NET application using either VB.NET or C#. For example, select Commerce C# ASP.NET Web Application and click on OK. You're launched directly into the Commerce Server Project Wizard from within VS.NET. After you complete a few dialogs, you're left with a fully workable VS.NET application—complete with ASP.NET code behind forms, integrated debugging, and so on, with the added benefit of the plumbing for a full-featured CS02 application.