| Jeff Lynch 2006-02-11, 6:03 pm |
| Ravi,
Excellent idea about writing pipeline (web service) components to pull
inventory data. I honestly hadn't thought about it that way.
--
Jeff Lynch
"Ramblings From A [Microsoft] Connected Universe"
http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeff.lynch
"Ravi Shankar" <shankycheil@newsgroup.nospam> wrote in message
news:AF307737-B9A2-43ED-A73C-0E9C36EF8E15@microsoft.com...[vbcol=seagreen]
> Hi Steve,
>
> The integration you propose is definitely doable in the CS2002 & BTS2004
> scenario and if you look at the Retail2002 site you'll encounter the
> Retail2002B2b site which is built specifically for the purposes of aiding
> integration with the Back-end and partners.
>
> There is not much available in terms of back-end inventory integration
> other
> than a whitepaper from Microsoft at () which recommend tweaking around
> with
> catalog tables to incorporate inventory levels.
>
> In my expirience this above method would only work with a centralized
> distribution architecture. Before working with Inventory there are a few
> points that you'd need to keep in mind such as
> 1. When is the material actually considered allocated to the order (on
> placement of order or only when it is picklisted -> this operation is
> something that is typically handled at the ERP backend) This will decide
> on
> where the inventory needs to be deducted.
> 2. How are order modifications & cancellations handled because both impact
> inventory.
>
> In terms of creating an integration scenario that would not cause too much
> grief when migrating to CS2006 & BTS2006 you should definitely go the XML
> route to provide loose coupling and run into grief if eith product changes
> undelying schemas.
>
> You could look at writing pipeline components for MSCS which call a
> webservice on the ERP to get inventory statuses. These components when
> incorporated into the basket pipline would provide customer with
> information
> on product availablity.
>
> --
> Ravi Shankar
>
>
> "sshier" wrote:
>
|