Solutions Customization and Integration – Part III

It has been a while since I posted an update on this project… So here it goes.

Since my last post, the project I am working on has evolved to a 3-piece solution tying in AspDotNetStorefront ML 7.0, Community Server 2007 SP1 and a fully custom e-Learning solution built on Flash and .NET controls.

Due to the complexity and unique features on this project, the architecture and design grew to be very specific and custom – beyond the normal skinning of the out-of-box products and turning features on/off. The final architecture came down to an intermediate Data Application Layer (DAL) and Business Logic (BL) layer that encapsulates and partly overrides the methods/classes provided by Community Server and AspDotNetStorefront. The thinking behind this implementation is to retain the core functionality of both systems, allowing us to implement software upgrades easily and support the application maintenance and enhancement lifecycle. The e-Learning system, being that it’s designed from scratch, will expose a custom BL and DAL.

Interfacing with Community Server’s and AspDotNetStorefront’s API allows us to work outside the framework of classes/methods provided by both products, as well as build our own custom layer of methods/classes to define and produce entities that consume/provide data apparent to the application as designed. The presentation layer, will be modeled around the common ASP.NET practices of .aspx files, custom controls and a selection of controls from ComponenetArt’s WebUI product.

The single sign-on architecture has changed slightly since my last post. The approach taken now, for the sake of simplicity and ease of management, is to have Community Server act as the central point for account management/creation using ASP.NET’s membership provider, and have back-end processes that replicate billing/transactional data to AspDotNetStorefront. This allows us to collect all the data we need about a user in a User entity from the Community Server and AspDotNetStorefront databases.

The project is currently undergoing the initial stages of development, with a target date for launch of mid-2008. Stay tuned for more updates…

250+ Tools for Web Developers

Found a great list of links to more than 250 online tools to help you refine your Web development skills and deliver some quality sites.

Click Here to view the Mashable.com post, and Click Here to download a bookmarks file containing all the links on that page that you can easily import into your Web browser.

Enjoy!

Making the Switch: Windows to Mac

Well, I finally caved in and picked up a MacBook Pro for my business, and I must say that it truly is a work of art!

Next to ThinkPad’s for quality laptop builds (all my previous laptops), MacBook Pro’s are by far the most impressive in build, design and elegance. Definitely kudos on the hardware and system features – and double kudos on the built-in camera, dashboard, bluetooth and juicy CPU and hard drive.

The experience of switching over has been rough – from keyboard shortcuts to applications, and mouse clicks to common tasks. Although I have not switched over completely, and highly recommend against a complete switchover, I am finding the Mac OS experience to be very impressive and powerful. Expose is great, window management is slick, everything looks nice and clean, and the human-to-computer interaction seems seamless and super user friendly most of the time (much like my iPhone).

To counter the complex experience of switching, I opted to install VMWare Fusion (reports show that it performs better than Parallels – lighter overhead on the OS, and faster performance). On that I am running Windows XP Pro SP2, and all my Web development applications (Visual Studio, IIS etc.). There is no way I would have been able to switch over completely, even with the open source Web development applications out there (e.g. eclipse, mono etc.). Additionally, I picked up ConceptDraw to support some of my Visio work, however I still have Visio installed on my VMWare image just in case.

Besides the extreme learning curve of having to learn to do things in a new way, I gotta give it up to Apple for creating such an amazing product with a very reliable and impressive OS.

Time to stop by the Genius Bar to bulk up on some knowledge so I can use this puppy to its maximum potential!

Commerce Server 2007 – No CISP/PCI PABP Certification?!?!

Yes, unfortunately this is true, and is a major competitive factor between CS 2007 and products like AspDotNetStorefront.

Fear not, for there is hope, and a whole lot more!

IP Commerce, a software company enabling open commerce services between businesses, delivers a toolkit designed to integrate with Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 to support multi-service connectivity for retailers, end-to-end e-commerce solution that includes traditional and alternative payments, and provides for compliance with Payment Application Best Practices (PABP), a sub-set of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard.

Commerce Toolkit for Multi-Channel Retail (MCR), integrates with the Commerce Server 2007 Starter Site to deliver alternative payment options, including electronic check processing, stored value and gift cards, express checkout, and bank card processing as a traditional payment option.

Below is a list of the key features delivered:

• Access to new and emerging payment types
• Seamless integration of multiple e-commerce services
• Reduced transaction costs through flexible payment options
• Dynamic management of payment types from a single location
• Security-enhanced, PCI-compliant solution

Enjoy!

AspDotNetStorefront Configuration Best Practices

Below is a list of some “critical” items that should be configured in your AspDotNetStorefront production environments.

> Rename and secure the “admin” folder:

1. Change AppConfig.AdminDir
2. Change the folder’s name
3. Assign a Windows-level login to that folder

> Change admin username from admin@aspdotnetstorefront.com to something within the site’s domain

> Change admin password to something cryptic and set AppConfig.AdminPwdChangeDays to something reasonable/safe

> Set strong passwords (optional)

AppConfig.UseStrongPwd = true

> Cycling your encryption key

The admin will auto-notify you based on AppConfig.NextKeyChange value. Use this page in the admin to reset your encryption key manually: changeencryptkey.aspx

> Set this AppConfig so the user is not always trapped in an SSL state after hitting My Account and/or Checkout pages.

AppConfig.GoNonSecureAgain = true

> Reset Cache

This is actually a call to a stored procedure and can be automated in the DB as a trigger whenever a catalog change occurs.

exec aspdnsf_CreateMissingVariants

You should always run it after any product catalog changes, as well as AppConfig and String Resource updates.

> Admin SSL

Configure IIS to force SSL on the admin folder.

> Caching

AppConfig.CacheMenus = true

> Monthly Maintenance

This should be run monthly on weekends late at night… Admin/Misc/Monthly Maintenance