I thought I'd take minute or two to explain a little more about the core systems available in Commerce Server 2007 and the best way to do this is by (politely) stealing an image that Microsoft developed just for this purpose.
You can view the full size image here
Overview
Commerce Server 2007 is really an E-Commerce development platform which sits on top of several well designed and highly scalable SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005 databases. Accessing these databases is done by a set of core subsystems (.NET 2.0 APIs) designed to make data access very simple for the developer yet powerful and extensible enough for any global enterprise to implement. Each core subsystem (as shown above) can be accessed directly through the API methods and properties or through web methods provided by the various web services. Each of these core subsystems was designed to perform a variety of e-commerce related tasks from presenting products to your customers (catalog system) through placing orders on your web site (orders system). All were designed to integrate with each other to provide the developer with an extensive array of tools with which to develop a robust E-Commerce solution.
Profiles System
One central feature used to store and retrieve user and organizational information is the Profile System. A profile is made up of any data you'd like to keep or display in your web application. For example the user profile may hold the basic information about a registered user on your web site such as first name, last name, age and gender while the organization profile may hold information such as company name, credit limit, etc. The entire Profiles System is fully extensible and can be easily customized for any number of scenarios. I'll go into much more detail about this in a future post and it's pretty cool how easily a profile can be modified or extended. The key to remember about the Commerce Server Profiles System is that it can hold any number of different profiles such as addresses, users, organizations, blanket orders, credit cards and anything else you can think of.
Catalog System
I believe that the Catalog System is the "heart" of Commerce Server 2006 and it's generally where site users spend the majority of their time. It's also where site developers should spend the majority of their development time since a the product catalog can "make or break" an e-commerce site! Luckily, Commerce Server 2007 comes with an excellent catalog system which makes it pretty easy to design and deploy product catalogs. I'll go through this system in great detail in future posts, so stay tuned.
Inventory System
This "new" subsystem is a real "must-have" for any B2B e-commerce site and was one of the biggest shortcomings of Commerce Server 2000 and 2002. I'm just starting to play around with this feature but so far, the integration with the catalog and orders system looks awesome! Basically this is how you manage inventory for the items sold on your site and processed through the orders system. But... it's not a full-fledged inventory management system and really wasn't design to be one! Think web site inventory not back-end (LOB) system inventory.
Marketing System
This system is really a collection of different features including discounts (very important), advertising & targeting (yawn) and direct mail (double yawn). I'm going to be completely honest here but other than discounts I never use this subsystem in a B2B scenario. Targeted content and advertising are obviously important for a B2C site but direct mail? Come on guys, what company dares to spam someone these days?
Orders System
This is my new personal favorite since the Commerce Server development team has spent countless hours refining and updating this system for the .NET 2.0 Framework. It's also one of the most extensible parts of Commerce Server 2007. In fact, a developer can inherit from most of the base orders classes to extend them or even replace them as needed. And it's really pretty simple once you get over the shock of actually being able to do this. By the way, all the tools you need to extend this system (including an xsd and sproc generator) are included with Commerce Server 2007 as standard. Talk about a paradigm shift in e-commerce development!
Data Warehouse System
Given all the other new features, I didn't expect much improvement here but was I wrong! The new CS data warehouse uses SQL Reporting Services to present site analytics so it's completely customizable for any developer using VS2005.
Other Cool Features (for future posts)
Staging System, BizTalk Adapters, MOM 2005 Management Pack, Web Services, StarterSite, Custom Membership Provider, etc.