“I am pleased to report that Commerce Server 2007 has shipped (or RTM-ed in MicroSpeak). Tonight the team has signed off on the Enterprise, Standard, and Evaluation editions in English, French, German, and Japanese. This is another remarkable day in Commerce Server history – as it represents the culmination of 2.5++ years worth of efforts to bring what we think is a very cool solution to market, featuring major enhancements“

Commerce Server 2007 has shipped!

"Use the Interview Worksheets during the interview process to assess a candidate’s level of proficiency for this competency. Competency questions are included along with space to note the candidate’s response and your thoughts about it. After the interview, use your notes to rate the candidate’s overall proficiency level within this competency."

Education Competencies: Interview Worksheets

With Commerce Server almost done it’s good to hear that the StarterSite is receiving extra attention and that it will be available as a web download meaning that we’ll see more frequent releases than we did with the retail sites.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the final StarterSite has to offer as the beta version didn’t have a whole lot to look at. Lets hope that folks have gotten the message and don’t base their entire frontend on the StarterSite which has been the case often times in the past.

Check out the Starter Site Update post by Ryan Donovan for more information.

Looks like we can stop thinking about WinFX and concentrate on .NET Framework 3.0 instead. Somasegar announced that WinFX will be renamed to .NET Framework 3.0. Note that the CLR will still be 2.0 so no innovations on that front. Also worth of note is that this will not affect shipping dates in any way, seems pretty straightforward that it shouldn’t but there I said it

.NET Framework 3.0

I’ve been waiting for AMD and Intel to release their new platforms before getting a new PC for the home office. Specifically Intel interests me as they have a new architecture which promises to bring both higher speeds and lower power consumption. What is interesting is the price of these new parts. While the AMD parts are keeping their prices while not introducing any significant performance gains, the Intel parts show real promise: Not only performance wise but also in their pricing which seems to be very competitive with AMD.

SHG.dk has prices on the new Intel parts already and I expect that they will drop a little before introduction as was the case when they had AMD AM2 prices listed before launch. Of course we can expect the Core Duo 2 chips to become available July 23rd.

Worth of note is that Intel is keeping the LGA775 socket around this time while AMD has introduced a new socket called AM2. This means that many custom coolers can be used with the new Intel chips and not with the AMD chips.

Also Nvidia will be launching their nForce5xx chipset for the Intel platform which to me is very interesting as there hasn’t really been a good SLI chipset for Nvidia cards and Intel up until this point. Yes the previous nForce chipset is available but I really don’t see that as a really solid SLI platform for Intel compared to what we’ve got available on the AMD platform.

Here’s an obscure fact for you if you’re still running Commerce Server 2000. Recently we needed to upgrade our database server which is running on Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2003 SP1. Now SP1 introduces some new security aspects for MSDTC which means that requests can be authenticated. Unfortunately for Commerce Server 2000 the default setting is to authenticate everything which renders CS unable to connect to its data store. The symptom of this is varied: I’ve experienced both a direct error from MSDTC and a non responding web site and, the former is easily diagnosed the latter is not.

The solution to this mess is the following:

Through Run in the start menu bring up dcomcnfg.

Expanded the Component Services / Computers nodes.

Right-click My Computer and choose Properties.

Click the MSDTC tab.

Click the Security Configuration Button.

Check the Network DTC Access.

Set No Authentication Required.

Click OK.

Vinayak has a great post on the expanded virtual catalog feature of Commerce Server 2007. If you are wondering what the new version of CS will bring check it out. Here’s a snip for you:

“Virtual catalogs is a key feature we improved upon in Commerce Server 2007 to allow you to further customize your base and virtual catalogs. These features will enable additional  scenarios which were not possible in previous versions. If you are not familiar with virtual catalogs, read this post.”

New Virtual catalog features in Commerce Server 2007