I've just completed a major upgrade of the ecommerce package
sponsored by Berklee College of
Music. Before I upload the new version I'd like to ask the
community a few questions. But first a some background
information on the new version (4.5b).
The upgraded ecommerce package will:
- Be more stable, having fixed many bugs and logged tons of
testing.
- Include up-to date documentation.
- Accept various credit card gateways instead of the obsolete
CyberCash.
- Accept various shipping rules in addition to the ecommerce
shipping rules.
- Handle goods that don't require shipping more
gracefully.
- Collect both the shipping address and the
billing address.
There have been some minor changes to the data model. Nothing
major, but automatic update scripts are not possible. For
example, the cybercash_log table has been removed. An update
script would not know to delete all records or leave the table
untouched. Or another example, the transaction_id of the
ec_financial_transactions table changed from integer to
varchar. In PostgreSQL one could change the type of the column
by way of dumping the data, reloading it to a new table but that
would destroy all references from other tables to
ec_financial_transactions.
Time for the questions:
- How many production sites deploy the 4.1a or the 4.2
ecommerce package?
- If you deploy an older 4.x ecommerce package on a production
site:
- Is there a need or desire to upgrade to a new (this?)
version of the ecommerce package?
- Do you think that upgrade scripts are required for your
site to upgrade to a new version? Or could you upgrade
just fine without them if the ecommerce documentation
listed all data model changes?
- If the new version is to be released without upgrade
scripts:
- Should the new ecommerce version be released as the next
version of the current ecommerce package regardless of the
missing scripts?
- Or should the new ecommerce version break with the past
and be released as a new package? Even though the design
is still strongly rooted in the 3.x version and the
version is not 100% OpenACS 4.x by design?
I appreciate all input and look forward to what the community
thinks is best.