Shopping Carts

[Nancy Palmquist]

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?
> 
> Find one *you* think is the best fit for your B2B or B2C customers, since there 
> are none AFAIK that talk directly to filePro databases. You are going to have to 
> export the data from whatever datastore your shopping cart keeps in to filePro.
> 
> 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.
> 
> While it can be done, filePro CGI is not probably the best tool to accomplish 
> what you want to do.
> 
> You also may want to investigate full blown ERP's that contain all the back 
> office apps that you already have in filePro that also contain a webstore 
> component. OpenBravo and Opentaps come to mind, as does totally web based 
> solutions like NetSuite.
> 
> YMMV
> 
> --
> Walter

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.)

Now I do quite a bit of web stuff for my clients but I have not had to 
make a store yet so I am not familiar with the tools suggested.

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.)


Nancy

-- 
Nancy Palmquist 		MOS & filePro Training Available
Virtual Software Systems	Web Based Training and Consulting	
PHONE: (412) 835-9417		   Web site:  http://www.vss3.com