I’m just writing this quick little trouble shooter, because there doesn’t seem to be much on the net about it. And I always seem to forget to do it.

So after doing some database restores and moving things around, I always seem to forget to change the profile partition connection string.

It’s quite simple… Open the Commerce Server Manager…

Right click on the SQLSource and modify the connection string to where your profile database is actually located.

 

Stack trace:    at Microsoft.CommerceServer.Interop.Profiles.ProfileServiceClass.Initialize(String sConfigStore, String sCatalog)
   at Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Profiles.ProfileContext..ctor(String profileServiceConnectionString, String providerConnectionString, String bdaoConnectionString, DebugContext debugContext)

Being a Microsoft Commerce Server MVP, when I got the news that Microsoft was transferring development of Commerce Server to a partner, Ascentium, I was at first a little disappointed. I have been working with Commerce Server for a few years, and have really grown to like the product and its extensibility. So being that I am not a man of many words, lets sum this up into a simple advantage/disadvantage list.

Disadvantages

• Subscription based licensing (Not a big deal for most companies, but for capital based accounting, not so good)
• Won’t be covered by Microsoft’s 10 year support lifecycle
• You’ll have to keep your platform a little more current (I know a lot of sites still using Commerce Server 2000)

Advantages

• Substantial decrease in cost
• More aggressive release cycle (I would expect every 6 months or so)
• Not bound by Microsoft’s development policies
• We should start seeing integrated components like PayPal, Amazon, etc..
• Faster releases
• Better testability with releases
• Improved delivery format
• More personal experience for partners and developers
• When dealing with the non-Giant firms, your relationship is more personal and valuable
• Ascentium has committed to delivering the product and has a great road map

Reasons

This is only speculative but here’s my take. I imagine several higher ups in Microsoft sat in a room and realized simply that there weren’t many new Commerce Server customers, why?, because the product was becoming dated. So, what to do, this is what I would have done… (And what I believe they did…) Well, we can transfer the development of Commerce Server to a partner, for all the reasons above, and keep a good enterprise e-commerce platform that runs on the Microsoft Stack, and we’ll still get the licensing revenue for Windows Server, SQL Server, BizTalk, and possibly SharePoint. All is all, a good decision on the part of Microsoft, whether it went down this way or not.

Summary

So in summary, while there are few disadvantages, I feel the advantages far outnumber the negative. One key thing that was never listed on either side was customer perception. This could swing either way, many customer are comfortable with the Microsoft product lifecycle and even depend on it. Other customers however, feel that Microsoft wasn’t allowing them to be competitive, falling behind the competition. Being that Commerce Server is still being developed by the same “people” as it was before, the product will be the same strength.

A quick note about the Ascentium/Microsoft buzz about Commerce Server, here’s an official press release from Ascentium. And here it is again on their site.

When you first start out developing for Commerce Server 2009 R2, you notice there are quite a large amount of code that they provide you to get started with.

Where To Start:
First you need to find the CommerceSharePointExtensibilityKit.zip file located at C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Commerce Server 9.0Extensibility Kits
In this file you’ll see two Visual Studio solution files. I’m a fan of VS2010, so we’ll work with that, although it isn’t what these solutions were meant for.

Open the SharePointCommerce solution. Allow Visual Studio to do it’s conversion. You’ll now need to add the two other projects Common and SharePointCommon. They are located in the named directories from the base solution directory, you shouldn’t have any issues finding them.

Create your own SNK file:
Create a small console application with a SNK of your own choosing. Add signing to the project, then retrieve the PublicKeyToken for later use.

Replace the SNK file:
Copy your SNK file over the built in file MSSharedLibSN1024.snk, don’t delete rename, this will just create more work for you later.

Perform the following Search and Replace Operations within all files in the solution:

Search For:
Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35

Replace With:
Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=<YourKeyHere>

Search For:
Culture=Neutral, Version=1.0.0.0, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35

Replace With:
Culture=Neutral, Version=1.0.0.0, PublicKeyToken=<YourKeyHere>

Manually Edit this file:
CommerceSharePointExtensibilityKitSharePointCommonFeatureActivationCommerceFeatureActivationJobDefinition.cs Line: 1836
"Microsoft.CommerceServer.Interop, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=<YourKeyHere>" 

Replace with:
"Microsoft.CommerceServer.Interop, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"

Now you will be able to build the entire solution, create the three WSP’s used by the custom installer, and use their handy tool to provision the site.

So I received my regularly scheduled MSDN Flash newsletter, Volume 15, Number 19. I look in the new software available and it’s showing Commerce Server 2009 R2. I signed in to MSDN and there it was located under new downloads.

I haven’t heard any announcement other than that.

I will see what I can find out and post more… But the Standard and Enterprise editions are both there for download.

So I just recently spun up a new virtual machine to do some Commerce Server 2009 R2 work. Did all my standard installation work, everything seemed good.

Then when I went to view the site, I get the following error:

An exception occurred when trying to issue security token: User DOMAINUSERNAME is not authorized for the operation CommerceQueryOperation_CommerceClaim . Please open  CommerceEntityAuthorizationStore.xml in Authorization Manager and add the user to CommerceClaimRole AssignmentsCommerceQueryOperation.

The site was returning a 500 error, and this was all that was given in the event log. Since I needed a quick fix, this is only a development machine you know.

I turned to the channel configuration file, there is a new element called CommerceAuthorization, it was set to required.

Simply make the change here to Disabled, and the error will disappear…

Here is where to find the CommerceAuthorization element in the ChannelConfiguration.Config file.

This is the Exception that we will be looking at today: The requested operation could not be performed because the CommerceEntity ‘CustomEntity’ does not map to a Commerce Server profile definition. [FaultException`1: The requested operation could not be performed because the CommerceEntity 'TaxForm' does not map to a Commerce Server profile definition.] Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Utility.ProfileMetadata..ctor(CommerceEntityDefinition definition) +465 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Utility.ProfileMetadata.CreateProfileMetadata(MetadataCacheKey key, String modelName) +172 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Utility.<>c__DisplayClass5.<Get>b__4(MetadataCacheKey key) +54 Microsoft.Commerce.Application.Common.CachedFactory`2.GetOrCreate(TKey key, CreateInstance`2 factory) +435 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Utility.ProfileMetadata.Get(String modelName) +288 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.ProfileOperationSequenceComponent.get_Metadata() +89 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.ProfileOperationSequenceComponent.get_PrimaryKeyName() +40 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.RelatedProfileProcessorBase.ProcessQuery(CommerceQueryRelatedItem queryRelatedItem) +335 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.RelatedProfileOperationSequenceComponent.ExecuteQuery(CommerceQueryOperation queryOperation, OperationCacheDictionary operationCache, CommerceQueryOperationResponse response) +786 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.OperationSequenceComponent.Execute(CommerceOperation operation, OperationCacheDictionary operationCache, CommerceOperationResponse response) +348 Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.ProfileOperationSequenceComponent.Execute(CommerceOperation operation, OperationCacheDictionary operationCache, CommerceOperationResponse response) +116 Microsoft.Commerce.Broker.OperationSequence.ExecuteComponentTree(List`1 executionTreeList, CommerceOperation operation, OperationCacheDictionary operationCache, CommerceOperationResponse response) +1040 Microsoft.Commerce.Broker.OperationSequence.Execute(CommerceOperation operation) +276 Microsoft.Commerce.Broker.MessageHandler.ProcessMessage(String messageHandlerName, CommerceOperation operation) +241 Microsoft.Commerce.Broker.OperationService.InternalProcessRequest(CommerceRequest request) +494 Microsoft.Commerce.Broker.OperationService.ProcessRequest(CommerceRequest request) +471 Microsoft.Commerce.Common.OperationServiceAgent.ProcessRequest(CommerceRequestContext requestContext, CommerceRequest request) +151 So I checked all of the standard things:

1. Verified that ‘CustomEntity’ was setup correctly in Commerce Manager
2. Ran a simple 2007 API based script to verify the relationship was setup correctly and that the ‘CustomEntity’ profile object was being returned correctly
3. Checked the MetaDefinitions.xml and the ChannelConfiguration.config files to verify that they were indeed correct.
4. Then I started scratching my head, I went over and over everything, and couldn’t figure out what was causing the problem.

Then I started using Reflector, in Visual Studio integrated mode, I choose the following assemblies to debug.

• Microsoft.Commerce.Broker
• Microsoft.Commerce.Common
• Microsoft.Commerce.Contracts
• Microsoft.Commerce.Providers

Then we start the debugging process and the exception occurs, but with out any indication as to why. Then I start stepping through the code and I notice a line in the Provider assembly.

 if (((target != null) && ProfileAssembly.Equals(target.get_CommerceServerAssembly(),
StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) && ProfileTypeName.Equals(target.get_CommerceServerClass(),
StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
          {
            return target;
          }

What this code is doing is essentially, checking the data we provided in our MetaDefinitions.xml file to make sure that it matches the assembly information.

  <!-- Custom Entity Start-->
            <CommerceEntity name="CustomEntity">
                <DisplayName value="Custom Entity" />
                <EntityMappings >
                    <EntityMapping
                                  csType="Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Profiles.Profile"
                                  csAssembly="Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime, Version=6.1.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
                                  csDefinitionName="CustomEntity"
                                  csArea="Profiles">
                        <PropertyMappings>
                            <PropertyMapping property="Id" csProperty="GeneralInfo.u_Custom_Entity_id" />
                            <PropertyMapping property="FormName" csProperty="GeneralInfo.b_Custom_Entity_image" />
                            <PropertyMapping property="DateCreated" csProperty="GeneralInfo.dt_date_created" />
                            <PropertyMapping property="FormImage" csProperty="GeneralInfo.u_Custom_Entity_name"/>
                        </PropertyMappings>
                    </EntityMapping>
                </EntityMappings>
            </CommerceEntity>
            <!-- Custom Entity End—>

Do you see the problem? Well at first neither did I, and for that matter at second or third…. Look closely at this line csAssembly=”Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime, Version=6.1.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ Is should actually read: csAssembly=”Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime, Version=6.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ Once that simple typo was corrected, the whole process seemed to come to life.

I will be speaking at IT Camp Saturday in Ft Lauderdale on July 23rd. This session will cover the basics of Commerce Server 2009 R2 and SharePoint 2010, with emphasis on Business User’s Content Management and Catalog Management. I will be entertaining questions and presenting a demonstration of key features. Here is the link to the session, and the link to registration.

The latest CTP has been added to the Microsoft Download Center

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=212469

Read the original post from Wayne Smith,  Commerce Server Product Manager here.

Just to let everyone know, I will be speaking at an Open Question and Answer Session at in Tampa on March 19th, 2011

http://itcampsaturday.com/tampa/sessions/?session=27

 

Here is the link to register

http://tampaitcampsaturday.eventbrite.com/

 

Looking forward to seeing you there.