Accounting packages are just wierd. How companies use them are even wierder. Getting a compnay (or their accoutants) to change accounting systems (le alone learn any new software) is a lesson in futilalty. Probally the best thing you can do is provide ways to export data, and pray. In other words this shouldn't be made a priority, although it would be a nice sell.
Thats is why we should offer an API and let the developers "hook" in whatever accounting software they want.
3) many of the features in packages such as Intershop
If you want to have some fun start the debate in the office wether you should store your inventory in Zope or a SQL database. Clearly both approaches have their merits but it all depends on the situation. I have yet to see an off the shelf integrated e-commerece solution that makes anyone happy yet.
Possibly NEITHER! (put that in your pipe and smoke it). Maybe the inventory info can come from our accounting system? That would be a feature not really offered by any existing commerce package- what most ecommerce packages attempt to do is EVERYTHING. What the aim of this project should be is to offer a way to sell products that live in an existing system( such as Quicken or SAP ) and allow the process of marketing/retail to be automated through the net. *Anything* that has to do with accounting should be the domain of the accounting system.
My current line of thingking on e-commerece in Zope would be to provide a series of components, not necesaryily an integradted store.
This seems like the natural OpenSource/Zope way to do stuff.
* Some form of shopping cart object
- you are correct sir
* Inventory control objects that can categorize items for sale but can come from different datasources ZODB, SQL, etc...
- you forgot the exterior accounting system.
* Credit Card Processor object *cough Wampum Generator cough cough* * And a way to do reporting (This makes my head hurt)
- this could be taken care of by the accounting software.
Let the developers glue it all together.
- thats what were here for. -Josh Zeidner Phylogenic Inc. _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com