Re: [mv] Preview of Akopia Interchange

[cfm@maine.com]

******    message to minivend-users from cfm@maine.com     ******

On Thu, Jul 13, 2000 at 01:21:13AM -0400, Mike Heins wrote:
> ******    message to minivend-users from Mike Heins <mikeh@minivend.com>     ******
> 
> Highlights:
> 
>     -- Order management. Orders can be viewed, listed, deleted, and
>        status changed.
>     -- Customer management; customers can be edited and new orders
>        /customers can be entered via admin personnel.
>     -- Item editor with links to inventory and extended pricing.
>     -- Merchandising interface, for updating featured products (barry
>        demo only). 
>     -- Order and traffic statistics.
>     -- Affiliate management with reports.
>     -- Page editing
>     -- File transfer capabililty.
>     -- Administrative users management with groups.
>     -- Salestax interface.
>     -- Shipping mode creation interface.
>     -- Payment mode management interface.
>     -- Order button builder.
>     -- Search link builder.
>     -- Report generator.


Maybe it's just the impression I have, but I'll spit it out; take it
with a grain of salt, Mike.  You must stick to your vision.  ;^)

Seems to me that the overwhelming bulk of the effort with minivend is
going into the user interface, not the catalog mechanics/session manager
and so forth.  Looking at those highlights, I can understand how any one
of them might be of real use to many.

I can also say that not a single one is of any interest to us here.
As far as we are concerned, every one of those is better handled 
outside of what we would consider a "shopping cart".  The cart 
system should pull info out of the databases for products, 
shipping, auxilary information but it need have no no knowledge 
of how they got there let alone be charged with putting them there.

We've been working some time on moving from 3.14 to 4.03, mostly because
we wanted to stay in the stream for the catalog core.  That's been a
lot of work because we are standardizing our "API" and custom minivend
libraries at the same time.

What **I** want for Christmas is a separation of the minivend core and the
minivend minimate/user interface into distinct independant packages.  

I promise I'll be good!  ;^)

--

The "core" and the user interface could then be free to develop
independantly.  For most intents and purposes, the database table
layout becomes the common API and of course there could be some
shared modules.  Minivend::UI might be version 7 while Minivend::Core
might only move to 4.6 (I'm granting it **is** 4.5 now, right?)

Maybe this does not interest anyone else.  I would guess, however,
that the more minivend tries to do, the less appealing it will be
for those of us in the sharp pointed stick department; there are
only so many resources that will be invested in it.

Best -$.02

cfm
-- 

Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                             cfm@maine.com
MaineStreet Communications, Inc         208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
1.207.657.5078                                       http://www.maine.com/
Database publishing, e-commerce, office/internet integration, Debian linux.
-
To unsubscribe from the list, DO NOT REPLY to this message.  Instead, send
email with 'UNSUBSCRIBE minivend-users' in the body to Majordomo@minivend.com.
Archive of past messages: http://www.minivend.com/minivend/minivend-list