[ic] Multi store administration

Bruno Cantieni, Digital Landscape bruno@digi-land.com
Thu, 1 Mar 2001 13:53:59 -0500


We are planning to use IC to run multiple stores.
Single server, individual domains, virtually hosted, probably but not necessarily using MySql.
(We have test stores successfully running with internal and MySql db's).

We setup and maintain the stores and content for the vendors/clients.
The remuneration model is commission based.
We get a commission on each completed sale/transaction by any of the stores/vendors.

Scenario 1 (what we are doing now):
In order to track commissions earned, we allow each of the vendors to mange their own orders but do
not allow them to delete orders from the database.
We log on to each store once a month, download all the orders, calculate commissions offline and
delete completed orders subsequently.

Scenario 2 (what we would like to do):
Similar to above but mirror all the orders from all the stores in a separate database so we don't
have to log on to each store/catalog separately.
This "consolidated" order database is not accessible by the individual store owners but should
reflect any changes the store owners make to their own order databases (e.g. order status).
Once we have our commission numbers, we delete the completed/fulfilled orders from the
"consolidated" database and this process should then automatically delete the corresponding order
from the appropriate vendor database.

Scenario 3 (just fishing):
All the vendors share a common order database but can view/edit/mange only their own store specific
orders (via some vendor ID field/identifier?).
If there are no security issues with this approach, it might be the most elegant.

Is anyone doing anything similar?

Is there an altogether better way?

And how would one implement such a solution in IC?

(IC 4.6.3 / Apache / RH Linux7)

Thanks in advance for any tips or advice.

Bruno Cantieni
Digital Landscape