Profiles System Description

The Profiles system lets you create, collect, track, store, and use business data objects.

The Profiles System stores two main business data object types: profiles and site terms. You use profiles to characterize users, organizations, addresses, credit cards, currencies, and other objects that you want to define and track to support your business objectives. You use site terms to provide a limited set of choices for users when they enter personal preferences or other information in your Web site. The Profiles System includes the following functional and scale benefits necessary to support large-scale enterprise deployments:

Data partitioning. Allows for distribution of physical stores for membership and user profiles.
Data aggregation. Allows for unified access to multiple heterogeneous physical stores, such as SQL Server.
Data encryption. Provides hashing and encryption properties for storing sensitive data such as credit cards and user passwords.
User profile management user interface. Access and manage profiles and site terms through the Customer and Orders Manager Windows Smart Client Web services-enabled application.
Profile schema management user interface. Create, modify, and manage profile definitions and site terms by using the Profile Schema Manager.

Features

The following table describes the Profiles System features and enhancements:

Table 1. Profiles System Features
Feature	Description
Data Management	Predefined profiles. Default profiles for addresses, blanket purchase orders, credit cards, organizations, user objects, and currency. Manage profile schema. Extend the Profiles database schema by creating your own custom properties for profile definitions. Profile definition management. Create, change, and delete data sources, data objects, and data members. Add custom attributes to data sources, profile definitions, and profile properties. Create, change, and delete profile definitions. Change and organize profile properties. Schema import/export. Import and export profile schema.
Application Programming Interfaces	Authorized profile API. Manage profile authorization programmatically. Bulk query syntax API. Perform bulk query of profile database programmatically. Profile runtime API. Find, create, and store user profile data programmatically. Profile schema API. Manage profile schema definitions programmatically. Site terms management API. Manage definition of site terms programmatically. Profile Web service API. Allows for distributed management of the Profiles System plus client connectivity support.
Applications	Customer and Orders Manager. Find and view user profiles and define site terms by using a Windows Smart Client Web services-enabled application. Profiles Schema Manager. Manage profile definitions and site terms.
LOB Support	BizTalk Adapter for Profiles. Exchange profile data with external systems programmatically. Synchronization. Synchronize any line-of-business system with profile data on the production server.
Reporting	Analytics integration. Generate reports on user activity. Distinct Users by Time New Registered Users Registered User Properties Registered Users by Date Registered User Days to Register User Registration Rate User Trends
Security	Profile data encryption/decryption. provides two encryption methods: one-way hash for storage of password secrets, and asymmetric encryption for storage of credit cards and other data that requires separate decryption. Property encryption. Support for one-way hashing of passwords and asymmetric, reversible encryption for properties. Membership provider for Microsoft Visual Studio. Support for Profiles data store to participate in ASP.NET membership authentication.