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Yes, I've spoken to the dotCMS team and they plan to have a new one out by about the end of the month.

Hi Vishnu,

I've sent you a mail with some details.

-Paolo

Hi Vishnu,

1.  have 1 Konakart Database, with multiple storefronts hosted on the same server

We are developing a multistore version of KonaKart. Our first version will require only one KonaKart instance for multiple stores, but each store will require its own DB schema. i.e. Its own instance of database tables.

2.  have the ability to publish catalogs that are different to each of these storefronts, with custom pricing of items?

Since each store has its own instance of tables, they can contain different catalogs.

Hi Lar,

I've sent you a personal mail with replies to your questions.

-Paolo

Hi Steve,

Although I agree with you that Magento have done a great job with their product, we don't really compete since most people that choose KonaKart, do so because of the underlying technology and so wouldn't consider a PHP solution, however good it may be.

Now as far as the UI is concerned, with KonaKart you can be as creative as you want because we supply all of the JSP and Struts source code which calls our API. One of the advantages of this architecture is that you can revolutionize the UI and still upgrade to the latest version of KonaKart very easily, since we go to great lengths to keep the API calls of new versions backwards compatible. If you take a look at http://www.konakart.com/konakart_cat_inspector/main.swf you'll see that it is a demo of a completely different UI (developed with OpenLaszlo technology) which however uses the same instance of the KonaKart engine as http://www.konakart.com/konakart/Welcome.do .

Our Admin App use AJAX technology (Google GWT) and so does the checkout process of the application. However, as I've just mentioned, you can add as many AJAX widgets as you'd like and completely modify the CSS style sheets etc. knowing that you can still benefit from new releases of KonaKart. There are some examples in our live sites section where our UI has been changed radically. E.g. http://www.evesrose.net/ , http://www.pc-adictos.com/ and ToyRaptor which is no longer live but you can still see a screenshot.

Paolo

Hi Steve,

We don't have plans to follow the osCommerce road map, although we've already implemented some of the features on that list.

Our first release back in early 2007 had an osCommerce compatible database and the functionality was very similar to that of the osCommerce base product although the underlying technology is totally different. Since then we've added many new proprietary features such as customer groups, one page checkout, bundled products, management of product quantities for different product options, product tags and tag groups,  merchandising functionality, promotion sub system, SEO, Birt reports, returns, support for different databases etc. In every release we provide a database script that can be run on the standard osCommerce database for any osCommerce user wanting to switch to KonaKart.

The reason for diverging from osCommerce is because we are aiming KonaKart at enterprise customers who tend to have different requirements compared to small store owners which are typical osCommerce users. For example, we've added auditing and roles to our Admin App which isn't functionality most osCommerce users really care about. We have SOAP APIs and support for databases such as Oracle, DB2 and SQLServer which are all requirements for larger users that need to comply with corporate wide technology decisions and need to interface to existing systems.

Are there any particular aspects of the OSCommerce 3.x development roadmap that you'd really like to see in KonaKart ?

-Paolo

Hi Andrew,

For consulting purposes we've built tools to help automate the deployment process.

When Tomcat is used, we normally deploy about 10 instances of KonaKart for each Tomcat instance. Depending on the spec of the server, each server may have multiple Tomcat instances. The automation involved is to ensure that each instance of Tomcat uses unique ports and that each KonaKart instance has a unique URL and properties file which configures the database connection.

Here's a link to an annotated diagram that shows how you can achieve load balancing http://www.konakart.com/images/kkArchitecture.jpg .

If you'd like to disclose more details about your project so that we can give you some personalized help, please send a mail to support at konakart.com and we'll get back to you.

Thanks,

Paolo

Hi Andrew,

I'm not sure that I fully understand your requirements. Are they that you'd like to use KonaKart to manage multiple stores like this ?

We do have one user (that we know of) who is implementing a number of
instances of KonaKart to create multiple stores. However, in his case each
store has different products, and so he has one database with a different user
for each store, so that each store can point to different tables. Also, unlike in
your scenario there are many admin app instances, each of which only
concentrates on one store without the possibility of moving products
between stores.

If that is the case, you can do it without having to customize KonaKart. The main work involved is in automating the installation of the multiple instances of KonaKart and deciding how many instances to run in a single Tomcat instance, in order to maximize performance and optimize memory usage etc. Let me know if I'm on the right track so that we can dig a little deeper.

Regards,

Paolo

1. PRICE LISTS
Can I define different price lists for a catalogue?
In particular can I have different prices for the same SKU (ad example for customers from different countries)
How can I manage a price list switch? I mean: how can I change the SKUs prices in the catalogues all together?
I'd like to have in my eCommerce system two (or more) price lists simultaneously configured, one active and one inactive, and to switch from one to another in a configured date.

Our next release will cover this functionality. You will be able to define customer groups that will be able to use different prices. We have a limited release version for anyone that would like to try this out. Please contact support at konakart dot com.

2. MULTI LANGUAGES SUPPORT IN ADMIN
How can I add other languages (for example Italian, in addition to en, de and es) in the admin tool?
In the admin tool, every language dependent item has three fields (en, de and es), can I add the other language field I need? I tried to add a new language in the menu Localization/languages but no fields were added (ad exmples for categories and products description)

When you add a new language the new description fields etc. should appear automatically. Could you double check that the language was saved correctly ?

3. SKUs
Can I add images or description for each product sku (for example to show t-shirt different colors)?

That is one feature that is missing at the moment. So far, customers have worked around the problem just by naming their images with names similar to the SKU. In that way they can be easily picked up. If you have more than one image for SKU then you can call them sku_1.jpg, sku_2.jpg etc.

Hi,

I'm not sure that I completely understand your approach, but here goes :

(Q1) Are there any existing efforts to use the KonaKart UI and a WCM component for "product data"?

The KonaKart JSPs call struts actions which in turn make API calls to the KonaKart engines. You have the source code of the struts actions and so could do your intercepting there.

(Q2) Is there a "intercept hook" for pushing order data to 3rd party components?

The saving of an order is normally initiated from a Struts action so you could use the same approach as above. However we also have callbacks for when an order is saved or changes state. Take a look at http://www.konakart.com/configurationfaq.php#how_can_i_make_something_happen_when_an

Hope this helps,

Paolo

Hi Eugene,

Is there any documentation for building Konakart cluster?

We don't publish information on our web site since it is something that we normally do as a consultancy exercise. However, it is relatively simple to set up. Here's a link to an annotated diagram which should give you an idea: http://www.konakart.com/images/kkArchitecture.jpg

How many catalog page views per hour(day?) could be reached

I haven't got a number handy for this statistic.

How many orders per hour could be placed

We have done a load testing exercise as follows where our load tester was sending SOAP messages to the KonaKart engines.

Configuration:  41 separate KonaKarts; each with their own MySQL database user
Hardware platform:  2 dual core AMD Opterons running about 2.2GHz per core with 8GB of RAM.

Over a long performance test that lasted 4 hours:

Transaction mix was 1 registration for every 3 orders
The total number of registrations processed was 98400
The total number of orders processed was 295200 which turns out to be 20.5 orders / sec.

The above test was aimed at testing performance for running multiple shops with different KonaKart instances but you can take the figures as an indication of performance.

Regards,

Paolo

Hi Nicolas,

We do sell the source code for the Admin App which was developed using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) although we prefer to do it connected with a maintenance agreement so that we can give you some support and update you with the latest code drops. Please note that the source code is for the sole use of the acquiring company and cannot be used to create a product to sell or make available in any form outside the acquiring company's organisation.

If you would like further information please contact us at sales at konakart dot com.

Regards,

Paolo

Hi David,

If it works that is great !

Another way of doing it could have been for you modify EditCartForm to accept a list of MyCartItem objects where MyCartItem extends CartItem adding the extra attribute(s) that you need. Then in ShowCartItemsAction.java you would have needed to populate MyCartItem in a similar way that it works at the moment with CartItem.

Regards,

Paolo

My problem now are the prices on the EditCartBody.jsp, I can't get the custom1 field from the product and I need it to calculate my price. ¿Any idea?

I don't understand why you can't get it. Do you get an error ? Do you get null ? What does your code look like ?

-Paolo

Hi Joel,

We've actually got eBay integration on our TodDo list although I'm not sure of the timing of this yet.

If you wanted to do something like this you'd basically have to implement your own subsystem that works alongside KonaKart. You could add new database tables which you manage and you could use our API to manage the functionality that is already there. If you went down this route, maybe we could think of a way of calling your application from within the KonaKart Admin App to at least have some integration from the UI.

Regards,

Paolo