A note on EPiServer Commerce entry data and serialization

To improve performance, catalog entry meta data is serialized and stored in a field for each catalog entry. This allows all meta data information to be fetched from a single field and de-serialized, which reduces the number of database calls and greatly increases performance compared to non-serialized data fields.

The SerializedData field should be updated after updating any catalog data through 3rd party sources. The SerializedData field is part of the CatalogEntryDTO (data transfer object), and will be cached based on catalog cache settings. Storing images and files in meta fields will increase the size of the serialized data, and increase catalog cache size.

From the Commerce 7.5 documentation:
http://world.episerver.com/Documentation/Items/Developers-Guide/EPiServer-Commerce/75/Catalogs/Guidelines-for-working-with-catalogs/

Frequent used IOC Services in EPiServer 7 CMS – EPiServer CMS note

From: Important IOC Services in EPiServer CMS – EPiServer CMS note.

A list of the most frequent used IOC services for the CMS
Usage

ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<ServiceType>();

Services

DisplayChannelService – Handle display channels
IContentLoader – Load Content
IContentRepository – CRUD operations for content
IContentVersionRepository – Handles versions of IContent
ILanguageBranchRepository – Handle language branches
IPageCriteriaQueryService – Searches in content
LocalizationService – Handle translations
PageTypeRepository – CRUD operations for page types
UrlResolver – route helper to get URLs for content

Simple SQL script to show all Associations in EPiServer Commerce 1

There seem to be no good way to show all Entry Assocations (e.g. entries that have listings for accesories or related products set),  in Commerce, so I just created some simple SQL scripts

Show all

SELECT CatalogAssociation.CatalogEntryId, CatalogEntry.Code, CatalogEntry.Name, CatalogAssociation.AssociationName
FROM    CatalogAssociation INNER JOIN
                 CatalogEntry ON CatalogAssociation.CatalogEntryId = CatalogEntry.CatalogEntryId

If you need the associated entries as well, dig into this table:
[dbo].[CatalogEntryAssociation]

Where association contains ‘Expired’

SELECT CatalogAssociation.CatalogEntryId, CatalogEntry.Code, CatalogEntry.Name, CatalogAssociation.AssociationName
FROM    CatalogAssociation INNER JOIN
                 CatalogEntry ON CatalogAssociation.CatalogEntryId = CatalogEntry.CatalogEntryId
				 where CatalogAssociation.AssociationName like '%Expired%'

Most common associations counted
A variant for showing the most common associations (counted) are:

SELECT distinct CatalogAssociation.AssociationName, Count(*) as Count 
FROM    CatalogAssociation INNER JOIN
                 CatalogEntry ON CatalogAssociation.CatalogEntryId = CatalogEntry.CatalogEntryId
				 GROUP BY AssociationName
				 order by Count Desc

How to convert url text to clickable hyperlink in Excel?

How to convert url text to clickable hyperlink in Excel?

Supposing you have multiple urls in your worksheet, but they are not linked, and now you need to convert all the unlinked urls to clickable hyperlinks, as following screenshots shown. Of course, you can double click them one by one to make them clickable, but this will be time consuming if there are lots of urls. How could you convert multiple unlinked urls to clickable hyperlinks automatically in Excel?

via How to convert url text to clickable hyperlink in Excel?.

More tips:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2595692/how-do-i-convert-a-column-of-text-urls-into-active-hyperlinks-in-excel