For Site Server, Commerce Edition developers there are seven complete pre-built "template" Web sites that provide a good cross-section of business models and functions to launch development efforts. Five of the templates ship with the product, while the other two are available on the Web. Although buy-side and sell-side sites are represented and seven templates might sound like a lot, we strongly feel this selection needs to be expanded in order to be more useful to developers. The Site Foundation and Site Builder wizards included with the products are helpful, but work only in one direction; rerunning a wizard automatically wipes out any previous work, an acknowledged weakness that Microsoft plans to improve on in a future release. Site Server, Commerce Edition also includes six evaluation versions of payment services, which can be fully activated with a phone call, and also is integrated with the Microsoft Wallet product, which allows users of both products to make payments directly from their Wallet accounts.

Site Server, Commerce Edition's membership and personalization capability is a well-implemented feature that makes use of an LDAP membership database, which at present requires using SQL Server. We found it fairly easy to personalize content on our sample site based on user ID, and it seemed straightforward to use the Direct Mailer to target e-mail messages to specific users. In addition, the Ad Server can be used to display customized ads and prepare user-analysis reports regarding usage. We used the product's Rule Builder tool to execute ASP/VBScript code within pages to present information based on membership data, but this procedure would be much easier if Microsoft would add a Rule Wizard.

Site Server 3.0, Commerce Edition does the job capably for large, custom-built e-commerce sites--but it isn't very approachable for less savvy business users. It should be possible, for instance, for non-programmers to easily set up and maintain business functions, such as advertising. Site Server also lacks any built-in catalog management capability, which is a very serious drawback. Site Server, Commerce Edition supports XML currently, but offers no out-of-the-box support for OBI. (For more on Site Server, see our Sneak Preview on page 30.)

Netscape ECXpert 1.1.1/BuyerXpert 1.5.2/SellerXpert 2.0
Like Open Market, Netscape focuses on the need for out of the box solutions, and within this focus, it does an admirable job. The B2B solution we tested, consisting of ECXpert 1.1.1, BuyerXpert 1.5.2 and SellerXpert 2.0, provided the highest overall level of functionality without extensive customization of any of the products we evaluated.

The product segmentation within this solution is clear: ECXpert, as the front end to BuyerXpert and SellerXpert, handles the back-end connectivity to legacy systems, manages the membership database and communications security, and processes transactions; BuyerXpert maintains the buyer membership database and manages purchasing (buy-side) transactions; and SellerXpert handles catalog maintenance, oversees selling transactions (customer payment, order tracking and so on) and maintains the seller membership database.

The GUI for each product is well-designed and very easy to use, although the administration is still largely module-based instead of being centralized. However, all the administration can be done effectively, and remotely, over the Web.

Netscape's standards support is superb, and its EDI integration far surpasses that of the competition. OBI and EDI are supported in all three modules, which make use of EDI transaction templates, built-in data mapping tools and back-end connectivity to Oracle Financials and SAP R/3. All three modules are fully transactional, built on Visigenix's CORBA-compliant ORB. SellerXpert also supports X.509 digital certificates, as well as SSL, S/MIME and RSA password and credit-card encryption.

Platform support, however, is limited; Solaris and NT are supported on the ECXpert module, and only Solaris on BuyerXpert and SellerXpert. LDAP support is available only for ECXpert.