I have finally got around to looking at Commerce Server 2006 this weekend and even got around to trying out the migration wizard. So as promised here are my findings.
I installed Commerce Server 2006 on a Windows 2003 Virtual Server running with 618megs of RAM. I firstly had to uninstall 2002 and Feature Pack 1 but left all the databases behind from my previous site. Next I installed Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1 and then Visual Studio 2005 so I could have a play around with creating sites from scratch. Finally I got around to installing 2006, and what a breeze it was to install! However it may have been so easy because it was picking up some of the settings from my previous 2002 install along with the accounts I had previously installed (very interesting). You can imagine that after the initial install I couldn't wait to try out all the features I had used in previous versions of the app, and having a look around everything seemed to be pretty much the same the Commerce Server Manager was just the same old app and layout it had always been. Anyway my next step was to migrate the site I had on the machine previously and to do this a Migration Wizard is supplied with 2006. I was expecting many problems, but as the install the migration wizard also breezed through, I scratched my head in bewilderment, there must be a catch somewhere something that would have me spending hours on configuration...nope nothing at all.
Okay now that I had migrated the site over, remember this is the data the site runs on and not the code, the code I knew from reading the documentation will need some changes to it to use the equivalent called in .NET 2.0. I decided to see what the new Catalog Manager would look like with my products, so I fired up the new install of Catalog Manager (looked more or less the same as the old version except for a few design changes) and bingo I hit my first error. It could not connect to the Catalog Webservice, taking the URL to the ASMX and placing it in a browser I got a "could not find Microsoft.CatalogServer" puzzled I decided to install the version of the Catalog Server webservice that comes with the CSharp.pup file into my Commerce Server site (maybe the migration hadn't migrated the webservice over?), but I still ended up with the same result but a slightly different error. It was only after looking over the install docs that I realised I had missed out a vital part of the install I had forgotten to convert the website the webservice was using to use ASP.NET 2.0! Easily done by right clicking on the Web in IIS selecting properties and then the ASP.NET tab and selecting ASP.NET 2.0 from the dropdown and suddenly everything works!
Catalog Manager
The catalog manager in 2006 appeared to be a revamped version of the one in 2002 Feature Pack 1, it also seemed to be remarkably fast even on a virtual PC. They had gotten rid of some of the annoying features such as not being able to maximize a product editing window and hiding the tree view when searching for products. All my product data appeared to be nicely migrated across and all intact.
Customer and Orders Manager
My next step was to try a new app in Commerce Server 2006, the Customer and Orders Manager. It is built along the same lines as the Catalog Manager, a winforms app connecting to Commerce Server by way of .NET webservices. This winforms app makes use of the Orders WebService, Profiles Webservice and the Catalog Manager webservice all are new web services except for the Catalog Manager webservice which was introduced in Feature Pack 1 for Commerce Server 2002. After a bit of configuration mainly making sure I had given the appropriate permissions to my account for the webservices using the azman.msc application I got into the app and suddenly realised where all the functionality that used to be in BizDesk went. Yep BizDesk is no more and replaced with this rather cool application you could probably give to a cutomer service team. I could look into shopping baskets, view customer profiles, view orders and their status just as in BizDesk but with so much speed and a user interface that was so much more friendly. What was even better was that all the transactions and order history from my old 2002 site had all been brought over.
Commerce Server Stager
I haven't had much chance to look at this but as soon as I opened it and played around, I noticed it was almost identical to the publishing tool that used to come packaged with SiteServer. However this upgraded version allows the deployment of business data such as site terms, discounts and catalog data. Sounds as though we finally have a proper deployment/migration tool for Commerce Server!
Anyway thats all I have for now. More next time when I get a better look at the Stager, Migration of a site and development of a new site.