XSE.NET

asp:review

XSE.NET

An ASP.NET Shopping Cart and Hosting Service

By Mike Riley

Writing a shopping cart application is a rite of passagefor many ASP.NET programmers, especially those who learned ASP.NET viaintroductory books and tutorials featuring the shopping cart as the exampleapplication. And yet, writing a good shopping cart is hard work, especially asthe feature list continues to expand to include customer ratings, nestedproduct categories, wish lists, e-mail alerts, shipping details, e-commercetransaction monitoring, reports ... the list goes on and on.

Reviewing the generic nature of shopping carts, it s awonder why Microsoft opted to not include such controls in ASP.NET 2.0. Perhapsthe new login controls, role management, master pages, and profiles in the 2.0release kept the ASP.NET team too busy to tackle shopping cart management ormaybe they decided that such a control is too quickly evolving to encase in acomponent that would remain part of the ASP.NET 2.0 legacy for years to come. Inany case, the folks at IQ Services saw this omission as a perfect opportunityto not only create a sophisticated .NET-based shopping cart application, butalso host it as well. Shopping cart data can be stored within either aMicrosoft Access or SQL Server database, and the solution can be purchased as asingle, stand-alone ASP.NET Web application, hosted by another ASP.NET provider,or hosted and managed by IQ Services. An SDK can also be purchased separately;this is available by request to licensed users and features a Visual Studio.NETC# project demonstrating how to use XSE.NET s shopping bag user control, aswell as execute stored database queries (it also provides the source code tothe Authorize.net gateway class used by XSE.NET).

Figure 1: After installing thesoftware, the first task at hand is to set up the administrator account.

The version I reviewed for this article, 1.1.1501.9, wasonly 1.x aware and may require .NET 2.0 IIS users to execute the aspnet_regiis-i command within the WindowsMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv1.1.4322 folder toproperly register the correct framework before installing and running thesoftware. Once running, the array of options and administrative capabilities isimpressive. The customer-facing store front delivers all the functionalityexpected of a sophisticated e-commerce shopping experience today, and both thestorefront and admin backoffice pages are friendly with Internet Explorer,Firefox, and Safari browsers. Product searches, category menus, multiple productimages/selections, cross sells, wish lists, email-a-friend , and shopping cartmanagement with payment options are just some of the application s highlights.

The back-end administration feature list is nearly fivetimes as long, with several managers supplying granular control to the storeadministrator for virtually every aspect of XSE.NET. These include the PropertyManager (main settings, layouts, templates, messages, and custom properties),Product Manager (product listings, attributes, promotion, and specs), CategoryManager (product categories/sub-categories and related icons/images/templates),Supplier Manager (manufacturer and publisher database), Author Manager(database consisting of author/artist/agent of the product), Promotion Manager(for date-driven price promotions), and other modules for Discounts,Availability, Payment, Shipping, Affiliates, Tax, Customer, and SalesManagement. Visit http://www.ecommercesoft.net/features.phpfor the all details too numerous to list here.

Figure 2: The XSE.NET customerinterface is well organized and feature-rich.

The hosted approach offers several tiered service options,including a $30/month leasing plan that is the most hands-off (code-wise)approach while allowing XSE to deploy and manage the software at anotherASP.NET hosting partner of your choice. The next tier is leasing the softwarefrom XSE and allowing them to host it, as well. This ranges from $49/month tohave XSE host the software and data in a Microsoft Access database, to$69/month for the data to reside in a SQL Server database. A premium version ofthis plan, with guaranteed uptime, premium technical support, and unlimitedupgrades, ranges from $89/month for the Access version to $99/month for the SQLServer edition. Lastly, the software license and compiled bits can be purchasedfor tether-free software control. Note that regardless of which option isselected, it is still the responsibility of the store owner to configure thesupported gateways: Aurhorize.Net, DPS payment express, FirePay, PayFlo Pro,and PayPal are XSE.NET s currently supported payment services.

In general, the installation and configuration of thesoftware was a breeze, the administrative portion of the storefront wasintuitive, and the features worked as expected. I did find that the defaultfont for the store items was a little small for my tastes, but this was easilyaddressed by modifying the templates. Ultimately, the real question comes downto which software licensing or leasing variant to choose and if the applicationis worth the cost. I ve used several GNU-GPL open source e-commerce packages inthe past, with my latest favorite being the PHP-based osCommerce available at http://www.oscommerce.com. While notASP.NET-based, osCommerce does offer several of the key features that XSE.NEThas to offer. Oddly enough, for a company that is marketing an ASP.NET approachto the electronic shopping cart market, IQ Services even runs its main Web siteand Web marketing materials via PHP, sending a mixed message about which Webscripting technology they prefer to work with. In spite of this discrepancy,and the ongoing free-versus-fee concerns of open source versus proprietarysoftware today, XSE.NET still offers a number of advantages compared to freeshopping cart counterparts, whether they be ASP.NET or PHP-based.

Figure 3: The administrativeinterface provides a variety of functions to meet nearly every major need thata sophisticated e-commerce site should offer.

Although I am hesitant to advocate the hosted option foruse by experienced developers and site administrators who manage their own Webapplications and sites, companies without in-house expertise might opt for thehosted option to minimize headaches associated with version control andconfiguration management. I am partial to the full version purchase, but wouldprefer to have access to all the source code to customize if necessary ratherthan the limited SDK that IQ Services currently provides. Even so, thetechnical aspects of the product are attractive and I encourage anyorganization that has standardized on ASP.NET 1.x and is currently seeking an e-commercesolution to take a closer look at XSE.NET. A live demo of the product isavailable at http://www.ecommercesoft.net/live-demo.php.

MikeRiley is anadvanced computing professional specializing in emerging technologies and newdevelopment trends. He also is a contributing editor for asp.netPRO. Readers may contact Mike at mailto:[email protected].

Rating:

Web Site: http://www.ecommercesoft.net

Price: US$579;leasing plans start at $30/month.