Shopping Carts

[John Esak]

I agree in most respects, but you don't *need* specific FP hooks from the
standard carts like US Commerce or Zen Cart.... they all dump ascii files if
you want them, and these can be easily grabbed with FP. 

I will demonstrate this at the conference.

John Esak


> -----Original Message-----
> From: filepro-list-bounces+john=valar.com at lists.celestial.com
> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+john=valar.com at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf
> Of Fairlight
> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 2:39 PM
> To: filePro
> Subject: Re: Shopping Carts
> 
> On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 12:57:22PM -0400, after drawing runes in goat's
> blood, Nancy Palmquist cast forth these immortal, mystical words:
> > Walter Vaughan wrote:
> >
> > > mtauber19 at patmedia.net wrote:
> > >
> > >> Does anyone have a recommendation for setting up a shopping cart on
> > >> the web using filepro cgi as the database?
> 
> Yup.  Have your wallet ready, or be ready to sink some serious time into
> developing it yourself.  It's not going to be trivial to do correctly.
> That's not a scare tactic, that's a flat-out reality.
> 
> > > For example if you use OSCommerce or one of it's derivatives, they
> > > typically store the information in MySQL. You will then have to write
> > > exports from MySQL into a format that can be imported into filePro.
> All
> > > of this is going to be custom work.
> 
> Concur.  And the reason it'll be custom is because there's not been a
> market for a shopping cart with fP hooks, so nobody's written one.  I
> thought about it.  But I decided based on the lack of market demand for me
> to write the storage module for FairPay (my PayPal->datastore IPN package)
> for filePro, that there was no way in hell it was a sane decision to sink
> 10x that development time into a full-blown shopping cart.  Not given the
> market share fP has.  It was something I considered and wrote off as
> likely
> to be a horrible (possibly zero) ROI.  I was arguably the most likely
> person I know in the fP community to bother to write such a creature, and
> I
> passed on it.  What's that say?
> 
> > > While it can be done, filePro CGI is not probably the best tool to
> > > accomplish what you want to do.
> 
> Concur ^ 128.  If you're going to do it, use OneGate as the bridgeware.
> 
> > If you right about the MySQL stuff, then the odbc version of filePro
> > could get/put data into those files.  So you could send info to filePro
> > and process stuff using filepro.  You could also return data to the SQL
> > data and back to the brower.
> >
> > Now the fpCGI part is not relevant to this interaction.  All fpCGI (or
> > any CGI program used in this way) does is collect the data submitted
> > via the browser and passes it somehow to an executed program (let's say
> > filePro).  It really has nothing to do with the interaction except to
> > provide some security and execute an appropriate process with all the
> > background information necessary (config files, environment variables,
> > stuff like that.)
> 
> Where do you think the data is coming -from-?  No, the CGI portion doesn't
> (necessarily) directly handle any fP<->SQL communication, nor does it
> directly handle any card/merchant processing.  But the shopping cart data
> itself has to come from the browser in the first place.  I fail to see
> how CGI is wholly irrelevant.  Unless you're specifically limiting its
> relevance within the context of fP<->SQL, in which case it may or may not
> be irrelevant depending on the design model and the desired realtime
> nature
> of the processing.
> 
> > I do add that I have used onegate and fpCGI for this middle option and
> > both work well.  They do handle things differently and have advantages
> > over the other depending on how they will be used.  (Cost about the
> > same.)
> 
> They don't appear to support all their supported fP platforms:
> 
> Quoted from:  http://www.fptech.com/Products/Docs/fpcgisht.pdf
> 
> "fPcgi version are available for Windows. [95/98, NT], SCO Openserver.,
> Unixware.,  Linux, Sun Solaris,. IBM eServer iSeries, and now FreeBSD"
> 
> Note the apparent lack of AIX support.  They also don't claim to support
> Windows 2003 Server, XP, or 2000 (unless they're counting the NT base of
> those as NT support, which is possible).
> 
> OneGate, meanwhile, runs on any web server that supports CGI and has perl
> installed.  I haven't -tested- Vista, but I don't foresee any issues.  I
> also don't charge for cross-platform migrations if you happen to switch
> your OS. http://onegate.fairlite.com/
> 
> I'd also hesitate (other concerns aside) to put a shopping system on
> fpcgi,
> strictly because of the way it handles user count.  Or rather, doesn't.
> When your fP license is used up, you're done--immediate error page.  You
> don't want to generate even a custom error page telling someone you're too
> busy to take their money right now, please try later--unless you actually
> -have- to.  OneGate's retry facility makes this far less likely to occur.
> Even if the transaction takes slightly longer, it's more likely to go
> through the first time on a busy site, especially if your license count is
> tight for the traffic seen.
> 
> All that aside, the CGI interfacing is only going to be a portion of the
> project.  All the custom code you'll have to throw under -any- engine
> makes
> this a pretty pricey project to even contemplate.  I personally wouldn't
> estimate under five digits for it to be done correctly and
> comprehensively.
> I'd also allow 4-6 months for implementation.  Rule of thumb for the last
> 13 years has said don't expect to go into production with eCommerce sites
> for six months if you're starting from scratch.
> 
> Bests,
> 
> mark->
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