Commerce Server 2007: No Cache refresh using Host Headers

As you all know I have been working hard writing, eating and bleeding commerce server 2007 for the past year.

One thing I could never get past was why I could not do a site cache refresh from the tools provided with commerce server 2007. The tools that are provided are what you would call management tools (mostly well written web services.). Within these awesome tools is a cool little button called refresh. It’s sole purpose is to refresh the catalog,user base and or discounts without killing the database or web site. Killing I mean using IISReset to well reset or reboot the IIS server.

Well when clicking on the refresh button I would get an error mostly consisting of a 401.1 error with a little bit of information.

With frustration due to this error I went on a long quest using multiple search engines and lots of home time studying reasons this one function was failing to no avail. The forums at MSDN told me I was crazy and that it would work. Even got into a bit of a forum fight (you know those types of fights geeks have about which star wars series is better. 1970’s or 199x-200x (nothing physical just funny)). I had given up thrown in the towel other than using a url to do my site cache refreshing (only with service pack 1 installed mind you).

Due to the whole quest thing I found a lot of commerce server developers with blogs and subscribed to them.

A great blogger  Ravi Kanth  posted this on his blog on September 8th 2008:

“Cannot refresh commerce server cache when using host headers

Commerce server cache refresh through URL will not work if you are using host headers in your web site. You may receive IIS 401.1 error when you try to access the site.

The problem is not due to Commerce server but this issue occurs if you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 include a loopback check security feature that is designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, authentication fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local computer name.Click below link and do the changes suggested by this article.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896861 “

He goes further to describe why and how to do a work around.

Please Commerce Server 2007 team – Max Akbar (link love to Max when he fixes this) Please fix this.