Posted Date Published 8/26/2009 9:52:36 PM
Commerce Server Staging (CSS) and Catalogs
A few things you didn’t know about CSS and how catalogs move from one environment to another. The process of using the CSS is pretty simple just use the MMC console for CSS and setup your project but there are some undocumented and some scenarios that will cause you some issues that you need to be aware.
So will I sing praise unto thy name for ever. that my Commerce Server site may daily perform
Someone had asked as to why his relationship would not move form one environment to another and I didn’t dive too deep into it and I couldn’t help him. As it turns out that my current client run into something very similar. So did some work and found out the reason.
Here is the scenario, have two catalogs in catalog one create a relationship add items form catalog two. Now setup a CSS job that will move your items from one server to another but choose catalog one. The job should be expression based. The relationship will not move by default. If you look there are three values that can be set for an expressional export None, Immediate Children and All Levels. If you select either Immediate Children or All Levels only then your relationship will be moved to the target environment.
The reason is simple you setup a relationship between two different catalogs but you select only one to move so you have to be explicit on what the export should do.
Another issue I have noticed is that when running CSS to move products is overwriting hierarchies and relationships. When you use the Catalog Manager this feature is available.
But this option is missing when using CSS. It’s true that this option is not available through the UI but you can modify this using the project XML. When you create projects using CSS the project properties are created in the registry and xml file if using the data project. The project files are stored in “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Commerce Server 2007\Staging\Projects” if Commerce Server is installed using defaults. In the xml file there is an ImportOption that is set to Yes=True by default but you change this behavior.
Now an over all look on the Import option for over writing category hierarchy and relationships. The product is using two catalog features but have only one option what if you wanted to overwrite your relationships but not your category hierarchy or the other way around, well your out of luck. Here is another scenario where things will get a bit tricky what if you only wanted to export your price property? In this case you would setup your CSS and set the property import option to overwrite relationship and category hierarchy to true. The exported XML file will only have one property the price. When you do the import the primary parent category will be removed if you had setup primary category with your product. So why does this happen? The reason is simple the primary parent category is setup as a property with the product when the export happens it exports all the parent categories and when an import happens the primary parent is removed because we have parent categories and setup to over write relationships.
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