Commerce Server 2009 Orders System Development without a Web App
I'm working on a project where a local team is responsible for developing some custom operational sequence components. This team is not co-located with the remote team performing the main web development which has a their own source development repository. Because the teams and source repositories are split, it is difficult to utilize the main web app as the host process for the operational sequence component development effort. I recently ran across a blog entry titled "Using Commerce Server 2009 outside of a Web Application" which provides an explanation and some sample code how to execute a product query against a Mojave catalog with a simple console application. Since several of the targeted operational sequence components need to execute against the Mojave “Basket” entity, extensions to this sample are needed to get Mojave operations to successfully execute. I thought if this could be extended to support the orders system, using console applications, or perhaps even unit test projects, would be an ideal way to provide a host process for the operational sequence component effort.
For each pipeline configuration file that is already configured in the application channelconfiguration.xml file, additional entries to the <pipelines> section under <ServiceConfiguration><Sites><site> section is needed. The following should be added so that Mojave, running as a console application, can find the relevant pipeline configuration files:
<pipeline
name="basket"
path="pipelines\basket.pcf"
transacted="false"
type="OrderPipeline"
loggingEnabled="false" />
<pipeline
name="total"
path="pipelines\total.pcf"
transacted="false"
type="OrderPipeline"
loggingEnabled="false" />
<pipeline
name="checkout"
path="pipelines\checkout.pcf"
transacted="false"
type="OrderPipeline"
loggingEnabled="false" />Like wise a folder named “pipelines” containing the files basket.pcf, total.pcf, and checkout.pcf should be added to project. These pipeline configuration files can be found as part of the Commerce Server install under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Commerce Server 2007\Pipelines.
Once this console application host is established, the appropriate Mojave Basket entity operations (query, update, delete) can be involved via the Mojave API, which will result in success execution of the out of the box operational sequence components for the Orders sub-system including those which execute the legacy pipeline configuration files (*.pcf) and their pipeline components. Turning on pipeline logging verifies the fact that these components are executing.
Once this is established one can add your own custom operational sequence components, plug in the configuration for for the message handler elements in the channelconfiguration.xml file and have them execute, debug them, whatever needed.