AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

I'm working on a design for implementing several major customizations that are somewhat outside of AbleCommerce, but will need to interact with AC's API. I have a few questions.

1. How are other people customizing AC...?meaning, if I need to persist additional data outside the scope of AC, is the best practice adding additional fields to the relevant AC tables (then modifying the source API or extending it); creating a new table in the AC database (again modifying the source API or extending it); and finally, creating a separate database to persist the information and either extending the API or creating new objects all together.

Just looking for the best practices...some experiences that other people had in making their customization decisions

2. Can you access the AC database through the API in a totally separate application (i.e., Web Service)? There is a lot going on in the web.config file, and I can get any custom code to run within the store itself, but wondering how to get it to work outside of the store. Any experiences with this would be helpful.

Thanks

1. How are other people customizing AC...?meaning, if I need to persist additional data outside the scope of AC, is the best practice adding additional fields to the relevant AC tables (then modifying the source API or extending it); creating a new table in the AC database (again modifying the source API or extending it); and finally, creating a separate database to persist the information and either extending the API or creating new objects all together.

Just looking for the best practices...some experiences that other people had in making their customization decisions

Where ever possible create new tables. You can create them in the same database but better to prefix them with some word like custom_MyTable or derekz_MyTable. Then you can create your wrappers for them.

Read about Data Access Layer from here
http://wiki.ablecommerce.com/index.php/ ... cess_Layer

2. Can you access the AC database through the API in a totally separate application (i.e., Web Service)? There is a lot going on in the web.config file, and I can get any custom code to run within the store itself, but wondering how to get it to work outside of the store. Any experiences with this would be helpful.

You can create a child application inside the store application.

You can create a child application inside the store application.

So, what you are saying is that I could create a web service (.asmx) within the store application. Then it will utilize the store applications web.config file and the CommerceBuilder API should be good to go.

Additionally, are you saying that you cannot use the CommerceBuilder API outside of the store application (as far as interacting with the AC database)?

Thanks a bunch for all your help. You've answered a ton of my questions.

Yes you can create a web service in the store.
Yes it seems that in a totally different application it will not work or at least the store tokens will not get initialized.

We created a separate database and seperate dll for our customizations in Able Commerce. This allows to access the database and dll outside of Able Commerce in our accounting software and reporting tools. It was a long process but now that it is complete it is very helpful and I feel this was the best route for our setup. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm sure I've run into most problems trying to get our additions working with Able Commerce.