Evaluating AbleCommerce - a few questions

[jonlynch71]

Hi,

I am currently evaluating AbleCommerce for a retail site implementation to replace Commerce Server 2002, and I have a few questions for anyone familiar with AC 7.0. Thanks in advance for your help.

Jon

API
1) Are "pluggable" API's provided? I want to be able to implement interfaces for several areas of the site... for example Tax calculations and Discounts. I see there are ITaxProvider and IShippingProvider interfaces provided. Is there a similar one for Discounts? Are these "plugged-in" via web.config?

2) Do you use the .NET 2.0 Membership/Role/Profile provider model? Is the data stored flat, or in ugly serialized fields like the default MS providers?

3) What do you use for data-access? Hand-coded DAL, OR/M ActiveRecord?

4) What is the provision for adding domain-specific business-logic? Where is it stored?

5) Do you use SQL stored-procedures?

Documentation
1) Is a Data Model available?

2) Is a complete developer API reference available, with examples for how to implement common scenarios?

3rd-party software
1) In addition to NVelocity, do you use any other 3rd-party open source software, such as log4net, nHibernate, Lucene, Subsonic?

Integration
1) We would need to do bidirectional integration with our back-end Peoplesoft system. What interfaces, services, events are provided that would enable this?

Recurring orders
1) Are customers able to specify the delivery frequency of recurring orders (eg. 4/6/8/12 weeks).

2) Are customers able to change the details of a recurring order? eg. add/edit/delete line-items, change the payment & delivery method, etc.

3) Is it possible for a site administrator to specify a subset of products available for recurring delivery? Is it possible for a developer to code this specification via an interface?

4) Is it possible to have a recurring order that also contains "one-time" line-items?

[FredM]

2) Do you use the .NET 2.0 Membership/Role/Profile provider model? Is the data stored flat, or in ugly serialized fields like the default MS providers?

We use the membership provider and role provider framework, but we use a custom implementation. This means we can use the Membership API but it works against our custom tables.

We did not make use of profiles.

Documentation
1) Is a Data Model available?

2) Is a complete developer API reference available, with examples for how to implement common scenarios?

More documentation is in the works. It will be released after we go final. At this time we just have the rough guide to the api at viewtopic.php?t=5511

Recurring orders
1) Are customers able to specify the delivery frequency of recurring orders (eg. 4/6/8/12 weeks).

2) Are customers able to change the details of a recurring order? eg. add/edit/delete line-items, change the payment & delivery method, etc.

3) Is it possible for a site administrator to specify a subset of products available for recurring delivery? Is it possible for a developer to code this specification via an interface?

4) Is it possible to have a recurring order that also contains "one-time" line-items?

1. Yes. They can specify a number of weeks or months.
2. This would need to be customized.
3. You can use the kitting feature to offer multiple subscription (recurring payments) based products. This is built in and does not require a developer to code it.
4. If you mean can they purchase both a subscription item and a one time payment item in the same order, yes. AbleCommerce supports this.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

1) Are "pluggable" API's provided? I want to be able to implement interfaces for several areas of the site... for example Tax calculations and Discounts. I see there are ITaxProvider and IShippingProvider interfaces provided. Is there a similar one for Discounts? Are these "plugged-in" via web.config?

There is no interface for discounts. APIs are "plugged in" using a database record.

2) Do you use the .NET 2.0 Membership/Role/Profile provider model? Is the data stored flat, or in ugly serialized fields like the default MS providers?

We keep things simple and flat - one data element per database field. That is true for user (member) data as well as almost every other kind of about the product.

3) What do you use for data-access? Hand-coded DAL, OR/M ActiveRecord?

Currently we use a generator to make the base DAL, with hand coded work on top of that for additional business logic.

4) What is the provision for adding domain-specific business-logic? Where is it stored?

Depends on what kind of logic.

5) Do you use SQL stored-procedures?

Not currently.

1) Is a Data Model available?

Possibly. The modeling is done through Visio. In the past we have published the diagram but it's much larger in this release than ever before. I have tested other tools for database documentation to look for an alternative.

2) Is a complete developer API reference available, with examples for how to implement common scenarios?

Additional developer documentation is in progress, a lot of work has been done over the last two or three weeks.

3rd-party software
1) In addition to NVelocity, do you use any other 3rd-party open source software, such as log4net, nHibernate, Lucene, Subsonic?

Log4net and FCKEditor.

1) We would need to do bidirectional integration with our back-end Peoplesoft system. What interfaces, services, events are provided that would enable this?

Generally integrations are built on top of the object library that we provide. If you want a deeper integration, you can obtain the source code for the object library and customize from there.

[AbleMods]

ComponentArt WebUI is used for certain menu functions. Not necessarily open-source but a third-party component nonetheless.

[tim.stokes]

Hi,

Any idea when the full 7.0 developer documentation / SDK will be released? I can only find this for 5.5.

Thanks,
Tim