Microsoft KB Archive/165243

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{| The information in this article applies to:
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 * Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition version 2.0

SUMMARY
The following is a overview of Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition. To see additional information, please see the following Internet site:

http://backoffice.microsoft.com/products/siteserverE/

MORE INFORMATION
Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition is a comprehensive Web-site environment for enhancement, deployment and the advanced management of commerce-enabled Web sites on Microsoft Windows NT Server operating system and Internet Information Server.

Is Your Business Taking Full Advantage of the World Wide Web?
The Internet is having a profound effect on the way companies communicate with customers and partners. Establishing a strong Internet presence is enabling companies to reach customers in new and innovative ways and cost- effectively deliver their message. Transforming your Internet presence to an Internet enterprise through which you conduct business presents the opportunity to create a cost-effective channel for business transactions in the global market.

The most effective Web businesses enable managers to understand the impact of their site on different customer segments, deliver a personalized experience to each customer, employ a reliable content deployment process that maintains site availability, and actively manage and analyze their sites to support a process of continuous improvement.

Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition provides a comprehensive set of server components and management tools that help businesses manage the complete life cycle of their commerce-enabled Web sites. It significantly reduces the development time and cost required to deploy rich, dynamic commerce sites. Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition enables the sale of goods and services to customers and business trading partners. It provides the ability to easily deploy new content, deliver personalized experiences to customers, to analyze usage patterns, and manage site consistency and integrity. Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition enables businesses to understand in depth how customers are using their site and continuously improve the site to respond to customers' evolving needs.

Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition includes the following features to help you manage the complete life cycle of your Web site.

Add Commerce and Enhance Your Site
Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition enables you to sell goods and services over the Internet easily and cost-effectively. Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition can be used to create a high-impact site for your business to promote and sell to consumers or as a platform for corporate purchasing. Microsoft Site Server also enables you to extend and enhance your site through the easy creation of dynamic Web applications and the delivery of personalized content and experiences.

Commerce Server

Enables you to develop and manage dynamic, robust commerce sites. Commerce Server includes a comprehensive set of components, templates, and tools, including:

- StoreBuilder Wizard, a wizard enabling a simple, step-by-step approach to designing a commerce site. StoreBuilder Wizard removes the complexity of database schema editing, scripting, and HTML coding, and dramatically reduces site development time.

- Dynamic merchandising, support for easy, real-time administration of product and price promotions from any remote Web browser. Dynamic page generation, creation of custom Web pages on the fly using Active Server Pages to directly address the needs, qualifications, and interests of visiting customers.

- Order Processing Pipeline, a series of distinct stages to    process an order according to specific business rules. Each stage of the order processing pipeline handles targeted functions such as product tax, shipping and handling charges, payment authorizations, and inventory checks. The pipeline can be easily customized and is designed to enable integration with existing systems so you can easily extend your business to the Internet. The Order Processing Pipeline can be extended with many products from independent software vendors to enable support for international tax, shipping and handling, payment processing, EDI integration, integration with existing systems, and much more. - Buy Now, a powerful new online marketing solution that lets you embed product information and order forms in most any online context, such as on-line banner ads, for quick, spontaneous purchase by consumers.

- Commerce Host Administrator, a control center for site administrators and Internet hosting service providers that enables centralized administration of multiple commerce sites, while enabling individual site managers to update their sites remotely.

- Commerce Server Software Developer's Kit (SDK), a set of open application programming interfaces (APIs) allowing full extensibility across the entire Order Processing Pipeline.

- Includes Microsoft Wallet, client software that makes purchasing on the Internet convenient and secure. The Commerce Server SDK provides the tools to Wallet-enable your Web site.

- Industry Standard Security, support for real-time credit authorization with secure transaction protocols such as SSL and Secure Electronic Transaction (SET). Personalization System Works with Active Server Pages to dynamically generate Web pages based on stored user preferences. Personalization System enables you to deliver targeted content. Microsoft Visual InterDev Included as a promotion. The Visual InterDev Web development system is an integrated Web development system for building dynamic Web applications. It includes an integrated development environment, seamless connectivity to any ODBC-based databases, prebuilt components, wizards, and content creation tools. Visual InterDev provides everything a developer needs to  quickly develop and enhance Web sites for business-critical applications.

Deploy Content Robustly
Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition enables you to publish Web content easily and securely to one or multiple Web servers inside the corporate firewall or across the Internet. Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition provides you with the ability to stage and test mission- critical content before global deployment.

Content Replication System

Enables the implementation of site staging and mirror servers and the connection of departmental Web sites into a corporate backbone. Content Replication System provides a highly reliable, secure, and efficient way to move content within a corporation or across the Internet. Content Replication System automates the replication process. Web Publishing Wizard and Posting Acceptor Enables users to easily post Web pages to your Web server. Web Publishing Wizard automates the process of copying files from your computer to the Web server. Posting Acceptor enables Microsoft Internet Information Server to accept Web content from Web Publishing Wizard and other clients via HTTP Post. Posting Acceptor also integrates with Content Replication System to automate the posting of Web content to multiple servers.

Manage and Conduct In-depth Analysis of Your Site
Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition actively manages Web content, regardless of the mix of Web servers utilized. Analyze sophisticated multihomed, replicated, or distributed Web server environments and learn about traffic and visitor patterns over time. Microsoft Site Server, Enterprise Edition enables you to visualize the layout of your site, measure the site's effectiveness, and continually improve user experiences.

Usage Analyst, Enterprise Edition

Imports Web server logs and enables you to create custom reports for in-depth exploration of Web site usage data. You can classify and integrate other information with your Web site usage data to  get a more complete and meaningful profile of your visitors and their behavior. Enterprise management capabilities enable the central management of complex, multi-homed or distributed server environments***. Supports 28 Web server log file formats on Windows NT, UNIX, and Macintosh operating systems, including those from Microsoft, Netscape, Apache, and O'Reilly. Site Analyst Provides comprehensive site visualization, content analysis, link management, and reporting capabilities for managing Web sites. Easily visualize how your site is laid out, recognize repetitive content, and identify broken links. Site Analyst lets you create comprehensive HTML reports that detail site content and consistency. Site Analyst enables you to manage Web content efficiently and effectively in order to provide a positive user experience.
 * If you intend to use Commerce Server to support multiple domains you must acquire a Domain Access License ("DAL") for each additional domain. A "domain" shall mean the description of a computer's location on the Internet comprised of a second level domain name (e.g., microsoft) and a top-level domain name (e.g., com). For example, http://www.microsoft.com and http://www.microsoft.com/products are part of a single domain, while http://www.microsoft.com and http://www.msn.com are not.
 * To replicate content with Content Replication System, you must acquire at least one additional license to install Content Replication System on a second server.


 * An additional license is required for each server analyzed with Usage Analyst.
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Last reviewed: February 9, 1998

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