[ic] Interchange, RedHat & the future

[Miles Clark]

Mike -

Thanks to you and the others that posted a reply.  Interchange is 
looking good to me, and I plan on pursuing it further.

Quick question - you mention below that you recommend 4.9 be used for 
all new development.  How far away is 4.9 from being considered ready 
for production?   Ideally, I'd like to have some live stores up before 
the 5mos your estimating for a IC 5.0 release.

thanks again,

Miles



Mike Heins wrote:

>Quoting Miles Clark (mmc@tolosatech.com):
>  
>
>>Hi All -
>>
>>I'm new to Interchange, and am evaluating it as a commerce platform for 
>>my company.  I had a few general questions that I'd through out to the 
>>list & see if anyone had any input.
>>
>>* How scalable is Interchange?  Has it been used in production with 
>>20,000 - 30,000 products?  How'd it perform?
>>    
>>
>
>I've seen up to a million. Obviously you need to make allowances
>for searches and selects, but there is no limit beyond what your
>database and skill can do. No software can repeal the laws of
>physics.
>
>Many of the techniques used in foundation are not suitable for
>larger product sets, but you can change them or disable them
>to avoid problems.
>
>  
>
>>* How customizable/extendable is Interchange?  How difficult is it to 
>>add new ITL tags?  Create a library of templates that customers can 
>>select from?  Add new payment processors?  Integrate with other web 
>>services (particularly J2EE services)?
>>    
>>
>
>Bearing in mind I am prejudiced as one of the major authors, I would say
>it is unmatched for extensibility. As for ease of adding tags, you
>create a file, restart, and there it is. In fact, every IC tag in 4.9
>(which I recommend all new developement use) is a UserTag. They are
>fully as powerful, nay indistinguishable, from the intrinsic tags.
>
>Adding new payment processors is a breeze within the limits of their
>API. There are quite a few templates to work from.
>
>As for integrating with J2EE, I don't know enough about it to say.
>It *should* be as easy as with anything, but it is not Java of course.
>I really know nothing about it.
>
>  
>
>>* What are Interchange's weak spots?  
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Ease of use is probably the biggest. It is a complex beast, and
>you have to make an investment of time (and if you are a serious
>outfit, money) to get it going.
>
>Scaling to very large traffic sizes is not very well lined out. If
>you have a million page views a day, you need to put as much effort
>into IC as with any dynamic site. But it is possible.
>
>It uses a fair amount of resources, but since we don't represent it
>as something to run on your $10 per month hosting account, I don't think
>that matters much.
>
>  
>
>>What I'm looking for is a little advocacy.  So far, I've been really 
>>impressed, but would like to know what issues I'm likely to run into 
>>should we commit to the product.
>>
>>One other question - as I was scanning the lists, I noticed that RedHat 
>>disbanded it's ecommerce division (& active support of Interchange) this 
>>last summer.  Why?  Were there issues with Interchange specifically? 
>>    
>>
>
>No. It was a decision to eliminate divisions that Red Hat did not feel
>were at the core of their business. I believe they made the right decision,
>myself, trying to be objective.
>
>  
>
>>Did they find a replacement they liked better?
>>    
>>
>
>They decided Ars Digita was a better *content management* solution, which
>it may be. Time will tell. 
>
>As far as ecommerce goes, no.
>
>  
>
>>General business climate?  
>>    
>>
>
>That made a difference to *everyone*. As of July 2000, the big ecommerce
>deals stopped and everyone retrenched.
>
>As far as committment, you should know that all of the core developers
>of Interchange who were working on it a year ago are still with it
>today. Actually, from a code and development perspective, the impact of
>the parting with Red Hat has been positive. I think I can say I am the
>biggest contributor, and I have had my hands untied and am doing a lot
>of work taking IC to the next level. Time again will tell, but I believe
>in 5 months IC 5.0 will hit and we will be the best advanced ecommerce
>platform out there.
>
>  
>