Issues with Interoperability Between Commerce Server and BizTalk Server

The BizTalk Interchange Manager Database property in the App Default Config resource of a Commerce Server 2000 site has a description of "The connection string of the BizTalk Interchange Manager Database, which stores messages sent from Commerce Server." This connection string is not used by Commerce Server to determine the location of the messaging database.

The catalogtovendorassociation object is used to return a list of vendors to Commerce Server. The catalogtovendorassociation object uses an encrypted connection string that is stored in the registry. To modify the connection string successfully, you must use the BizTalk server Administrator. For this reason, you must have BizTalk Server installed locally if you use the implementation that is demonstrated in the Commerce Server Solution Sites.

The current implementation demonstrated in the Commerce Server 2000 Solution Sites uses an IInterchange.Submit call. This implementation requires a license for the BizTalk Server on every CPU on the Commerce Server computer if you require integration with the BizTalk Server.

The BizTalk Server documentation includes a section titled "Submit a Document from a Remote Client." The implementation in Solution Sites does not use this method, nor does Microsoft recommend that you use this method to submit order or catalog XML documents from Commerce Server 2000.

If you still want to use remote DCOM calls from the Commerce Server 2000 computer to the BizTalk Server computer by following the instructions in the "Submit a Document from a Remote Client" topic, then a separate BizTalk Server license is required for every Commerce Server 2000 CPU that performs this function.

If you do not want to install Microsoft Commerce Server on the same computer as the Microsoft BizTalk Server installation, then Microsoft recommends that you use Message Queuing to send messages between the two systems rather than DCOM calls to IInterchange.Submit. By using Message Queuing you loosely couple the two systems, which leads to increased availability of the overall solution.

The Sample Solution Sites that is provided with Commerce Server 2000 are not designed to work in a two computer configuration and currently use COM Interchange.Submit calls. Microsoft is currently creating a white paper that will explain how to resolve this issue by using Message Queues to route orders from a Commerce Server 2000 computer to a BizTalk Server computer. In the case of sending catalogs, MSMQ is not recommended because the size of the catalog often exceeds the 4 MB size limit of an MSMQ message. In the event that catalogs need to be sent by using BizTalk, then send them to a shared file system rather than a message queue.

Because this connection string was not used by Commerce Server to connect to a remote BizTalk Server, the connection string has been removed in Commerce Server 2000 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

For additional information about the Service Pack, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

The following information is from the Commerce Server 2002 product documentation: