Object Support for Purchase Completion

As with object support for shopping baskets, object support for completing the purchase can be divided into two broad categories. The first category contains the objects that Commerce Server offers for accessing a variety of resources including the following:

Transactions. Stores information about shopping baskets and orders.
Transactions Config. Stores information about shipping methods and rates, tax rates, state and region codes, and order status codes.
Profiles. Stores information about the shopper, including name, address(es), billing information, and so on.
App Default Config. Stores information about currency locale and symbols, billing and payment options, privacy options, unit of measure for weight, and so on.
Product Catalog. Stores information about the products being purchased.

The following table shows the main objects used during the completion of a purchase in Commerce Server:

Order Completion Object	Description
AppConfig	This object is used to retrieve a variety of site configuration settings such as the names and codes of various countries and regions.
DataFunctions	This object is used to perform a variety of locale-based formatting, parsing, and value range checking.
EuroDisplay	This object is used to convert and format currency amounts when multiple currencies are displayed.
GlobalConfig SiteConfig SiteConfigReadOnly	These objects are used to access the App Default Config resource.
ProfileObject ProfileService	These objects are used to access the Profiles resource.
Shipping ShippingMethodManager	These objects are used to manage and display shipping information.
Various order-related objects	Some of the properties and methods provided by the OrderForm and OrderGroup objects that have already been mentioned are also used in the course of completing a purchase.
Various product catalog objects	Some of the properties and methods provided by the product catalog objects that have already been mentioned are also used in the course of completing a purchase.

Clearly, a wide variety of Commerce Server objects are used during the process of completing a purchase.

As with shopping baskets, the second broad category of object support employed during purchase completion involves the use of Commerce Server pipelines. In the Commerce Server Solution Sites, two distinct pipelines are executed during the process of completing the purchase. The order total pipeline, defined by the pipeline configuration file Total.pcf, computes the shipping and handling charges, tax, and the order total The checkout pipeline, defined by the pipeline configuration file Checkout.pcf, receives and accepts payment information and completes the transaction.

In Commerce Server 2002, the purchase completion functionality can also be accessed using .NET-managed code using either the Commerce Server Base Class Libraries (BCL) or the Commerce Server Primary Interop Assemblies (PIA). In the BCL, the classes related to purchase completion have been re-factored a bit to make them easier to use, and are accessed using the namespaces
Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Orders, Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Profiles, and Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Pipelines.

In the PIA, the classes used for purchase completion are straightforward wrappers of the classic COM order objects, and are accessed using the namespaces Microsoft.CommerceServer.Interop,
Microsoft.CommerceServer.Interop.Orders, and Microsoft.CommerceServer.Interop.Profiles.

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