Microsoft has released a near-final version of its software for building e-commerce sites and renamed the product Commerce Server 2007, from Commerce Server 2006.
In a blog posting, Microsoft developer Ryan Donovan emphasised that the name change does not mean the software will be late. A focus of the upgrade is making it easier for customers to link their e-commerce sites with back-end applications from SAP and Oracle. This is achieved using BizTalk Server and its various adapters for linking to third-party applications.
Another selling point is an out-of-the-box starter site, which will include catalogue browsing, shopping cart, profile management and other pre-designed capabilities for setting up an online store.
It will be available to download when Commerce Server 2007 is released to manufacturing, scheduled for later this month.
Other new features include support for the service-oriented architecture development model and integration with Microsoft’s ASP.Net 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
The upgrade also will add better reporting capabilities and new tools for managing orders and customers and support server clustering, says Microsoft.