Setup, One-Time, and Infrequent Tasks

This section discusses the catalog publishing tasks that need to be performed only once in order to set up a catalog for publication, or in some cases, when some relevant change is made, such as to the catalog schema or to the trading partner URL to which published catalogs are sent. These tasks are:

Preparing catalog data for publication. As delivered, AFS is designed to publish catalog data that exists in the Commerce Server Product Catalog System. Obviously, suppliers who are already using this catalog system will have a simpler time publishing their catalog data, but there are other options. Suppliers have several options for preparing their catalog data for initial publication and maintaining it for subsequent publications, based on where the catalog data is stored:
- If the supplier is already using the Commerce Server Product Catalog System to maintain their catalog data, they need to make sure that they have installed Commerce Server SP1 or later, and that their catalog supports the required properties.
- If the supplier intends to start using the Commerce Server Product Catalog System to maintain their catalog data, perhaps as part of building a new e-commerce Web site, they need to use Commerce Server SP1 or later. To initially populate the catalog system, electronic catalog data can probably be manipulated into one of the formats that can be imported into Commerce Server, either XML or comma-separated values (CSV), or they can enter it by hand using the catalog modules of the Commerce Server Business Desk application.
- If the supplier uses a different catalog system to maintain their catalog data, they can either come up with a way to periodically import that data into the Commerce Server Product Catalog System, or they can create one or more of their own maps for converting from some other BizTalk Server–compatible source format into the appropriate destination format(s).
  The former option means that the import processing must essentially become the first step in periodic catalog publication. The later option will probably involve significantly more effort, including the modification of the Catalog Publisher Business Desk module that comes with AFS.
Working with BizTalk Server maps. Another one-time or infrequent task concerns the product catalog schema. The maps supplied with AFS assume that the default Commerce Server catalog scheme is being used. If a supplier is using the Commerce Server Product Catalog System and has changed the default schema, they may need to modify, or create new versions of, the appropriate map(s). If this is required, the ExportXML method of the CatalogManager object can be used to create an XML-Data Reduced (XDR) file that captures the current Commerce Server catalog schema in the form of a version 1.5 XDR file. Such XDR files can be used with BizTalk Mapper for recreating maps that take Commerce Server catalog schema changes into account. Whenever the product catalog schema is modified, it may be necessary to update the corresponding maps.
Performing other BizTalk Server configurations. In order to process documents, BizTalk Server requires a number of different "artifacts" to be created. These artifacts contain the BizTalk Server information that constitutes trading partner organizations, applications, document definitions, message envelopes, channels, and messaging ports. For the most part, AFS automatically creates the BizTalk Server artifacts that it requires. One exception, that applies when the published catalog is supposed to be posted to a URL supplied by the trading partner, is the transport messaging port and corresponding transport channel. Essentially, this is how you tell BizTalk Server where to deliver a document. When necessary, a supplier should use BizTalk Messaging Manager to create these custom artifacts, and then select the new transport channel when creating a trading partner profile in AFS (see the following task).
Creating a trading partner profile. For each trading partner to whom a supplier is going to publish a catalog, the supplier must create a trading partner profile for that trading partner in the Trading Partner Manager module in Business Desk (the Trading Partner Manager module is one of three new modules provided in the AFS Solution Site). A trading partner profile consists of the following information:
- A unique name for the trading partner.
- A shared secret that is used in cXML for authentication.
- The catalog format to be used (cXML 1.1, cXML 1.2, or xCBL 3.0).
- The BizTalk Server transport channel associated with the trading partner.
- For xCBL 3.0 only, the URL that the trading partner has established to receive (purchase) OrderResponse messages.
Creating a Catalog Publication. For each catalog within the Commerce Server Product Catalog System that is going to be published to a specific trading partner, the supplier must create a catalog publication in the Catalog Publisher module in Business Desk (the Catalog Publisher module is another one of the three new modules provided in the AFS Solution Site). A catalog publication consists of the following information:
- The name of the catalog to be published.
- The trading partner to which the catalog is to be published, as established by creating a trading partner profile for that trading partner.
- The supplier's identifier in a particular credential domain. For example, a nine-digit Dun & Bradstreet Data Universal Numbering System (D-U-N-S) number.
- The credential domain in which the supplier's identifier is unique. For example, Dun & Bradstreet.

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