Associated Technologies

As previously mentioned, the solution relies on BizTalk Server to provide certain key aspects of its functionality, namely, the transformation and transportation of XML documents, as described in the following:

Transformation. XML document transformation concerns the process of transforming, say, a product catalog from one XML format to another semantically equivalent, but syntactically distinct, XML format.
Transportation. XML document transportation concerns the process of sending and receiving XML documents between the supplier and its trading partners.

The solution also relies on Microsoft Commerce Server in the following important ways:

Product catalog. The Commerce Server Product Catalog System serves as the catalog management tool that hosts the online catalog for Web browsing and remote shopping, and that supports the process of publishing product catalog information to trading partners.
Order processing. The Commerce Server Business Processing Pipelines System serves as the order-processing engine for purchase orders received from trading partners.
Remote shopping Web site. The Commerce Server Retail Solutions Site serves as the basis for the extensions that support the remote shopping that may be required, depending on the purchasing model being implemented.
Extensible user interface. The Commerce Server Business Desk application provides an extensible architecture that has been adopted by AFS to provide interfaces for publishing product catalogs, managing trading partners, and processing orders.

The solution also relies on Microsoft SQL Server as the data repository, both directly through new tables and extensions to existing Commerce Server tables, and indirectly because both BizTalk Server and Commerce Server use SQL Server.

Finally, depending on deployment choices, a couple of other Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers might be used in an AFS deployment. Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA) can be used as the firewall in a secure deployment, and Microsoft Application Center is available for managing multi-server Web site configurations (Web farms).

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