[.ca] Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 Resource Kit (ISBN 0735611289)

Waste of a Server Administrators Time!:
This book is not what I have come to expect from a Resource Kit. There are no procedural steps telling you HOW to do something. All of the information is very abstract. For example (page 317): "The site development process consists of the following steps: 1. Port Web pages from Site Server to Commerce Server." And that's it. They don't tell you HOW to do it. Here's another good one that's been driving me crazy and wasting my time (page 327): "You use the Membership Migration tool...to migrate membership data from Site Server to Commerce Server." That's really nice. HOW do I use this tool. I found it in the SDK directory, but it tells me nothing about actually using it. This book is for an upper management type who needs to look like they know what they're talking about when conversing with their administrators. That way they can say "how's it going with the new Commerce Server?" And I can say, "well I'm stuck right now on migrating our membership data". And he can say "well all you need to do is use the Membership Migration Tool, they gave it to you in the resource kit". And I can say, "Oh, really it's that simple hay? Well here you go, here's the tool, please show me more!"

Not The Developer's Edition:
I returned this book today. I'd hoped that it would be similar to Marco Tabini's "Professional Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition", which was loaded with examples, code, and how-to's. This book is not for the developer who will be building CS2000 web sites and needs to get up and running with the ASP code, site logic & code encapsulation used by CS2000. There are only a few snippets of code here and there and they relate to SQL server & BizTalk. This book does provide an good overview of the many features of CS2000, with some depth & explanation on a number of it's features. This book would probably be very useful to IT manager at a midsize to large company who is evaluating various e-comm solutions.

Hurry up Wrox!:
Read this book so you can be reminded to store your production servers in a cool, dry place. You'll also learn that a web server typically accesses information from a database server. ... As always, find out what you can on your own and then wait for a Wrox book to come out.