Commerce Server Licensing Clarification

I get asked this a lot of the differences between Commerce Server Standard and Enterprise. The resources on the web actually cause a few questions to be raised

 

Commerce Server 2009 Feature (32-bit and 64-bit)	Benefit	Standard	Enterprise
Functionality
Commerce Server Applications per Commerce site	Specific “applications” within Commerce Server can be created for better performance handling.	1	Unlimited
Number of Commerce Server Sites per Server	Specific “sites” within Commerce Server can be created for better performance handling.	10	Unlimited (Bound only by hardware or IIS limits)

 

The questioning usually comes around what is an “application” and what is a “site”.

Based on the MSDN site:

A) Commerce Server Application : A Commerce Server application is a logical representation of an application in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS); it appears in both the Commerce Server Manager and IIS console trees. In the IIS console tree, an application is either at the root directory level of the Web site or at a subdirectory level of the Web site. Web services do not count as Commerce Server applications for license purposes.

B) Commerce Server Site: A Commerce Server site includes a collection of site resources and ASP.NET-based applications that use these resources through the Commerce Server object model. With a Commerce Server site, you can administer the applications in the site as a group. Note that a Commerce Server site does not map to the concept of a Web site in IIS.

Based on these definitions, Standard Edition can have one of “A” and you can have 10 of “B” that leverages off that one “A”.

 

*****UPDATES******

 

This seems to be a hot topic as I got a few comments on clarification for what really is A and B.

Firstly, there is an update to MSDN to what an Application and a Site is:

“A Commerce Server 2009 application is a logical representation of a Web application in IIS. It appears in both the Commerce Server 2009 Manager and IIS management console trees. In the IIS management console tree, a Commerce Server 2009 application is either at the root directory level of the Web site or at a subdirectory level of the Web site. Commerce Server 2009 applications are also referred to as Web services.

When you unpack a site, a Commerce Server 2009 Web application is created. Customers use their browser to access this application. Web applications typically involve purchasing or ordering products that customers browse online, put in a basket, and ultimately acquire through the check-out process.

Depending on the components you select to install, as many as four additional Web applications (Web services) are created when you unpack a site:

• Catalog Web Service

• Marketing Web Service

• Orders Web Service

• Profiles Web Service

These applications are not counted against the Commerce Server 2009 Standard Edition limit of one Commerce Server 2009 application per site.”

So now an application is a web service. This makes things a ton easier.

I will attempt to show what these mean with some screenshots (as always, a picture is worth a thousand words!)

A – what is a Commerce Server Application?

According to the definition, we can see the applications in this screen shot of the Commerce Server Manager and IIS:

since by the definition by the definition a CS 2009 application is also a web service, we can safely say (excluding the 4 that come OOB), there are now 6 applications.

In IIS, from the picture above, I actually have 2 distinct web sites (SharePoint 35000 and SharePoint 35001) that are using Commerce Server Objects. The rest are just MOSS/IIS default sites.

B – what is a Commerce Server Site

This has been updated to reflect:

“A Commerce Server 2009 site includes a collection of site resources and .NET-connected applications that use the site resources through the Commerce Server 2009 object model. With a Commerce Server 2009 site, you can administer the applications in the site as a group. Be aware that a Commerce Server 2009 site does not map to the concept of a Web site in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS).

Sites can be packaged and unpacked in a PuP file by using Site Packager. You package your Commerce Server 2009 site (including the IIS metabase settings), site files from the file system, resources from the Administration database, and SQL Server databases into a single file. You also use Site Packager to unpack the Commerce Server 2009 site (or sections of it) onto other computers.”

 

Based on this description, and from the IIS point I made above I have 2 Commerce Sites, one that is Admin site and the other being a FBA site for the Green Label Site.

Thus net/net, I have 2 Sites and since they are each using the 4 web services or applications (that come OOB). I should be fine in terms of licensing for standard edition.

 

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