In theory, CS2K can be used to deploy a working e-commerce site and all necessary back-end support straight out of the box. In practice you usually have to customise various parts of the product for each site deployed.

CS2K trades ease of use for massive internal complexity. To customise it effectively you have to understand its architecture and know which files support which features using what formats.

Professional Commerce Server 2000 Programming does this by taking a functional approach. It examines Profiling and Authentication, the Product Catalogue System, Pipelining, Business Analytics and so on, as if they were separate products (which, of course, some of them are).

Professional Commerce Server 2000 Programming consumes more paper explaining where features are, what they do and how to access them than actually programming anything. It also fails to tell a story, reading instead as a collection of somewhat unappetising recipes, albeit recipes for success. If you've bought CS2K you'll make faster progress if you have this book by your side--just don't expect to particularly enjoy the process. --Steve Patient