OsCommerce provides a basic set of functionality that meets the common needs of online businesses. Beyond the basic functionality, osCommerce is able to be augmented, via either community-supplied add-ons or custom code, meaning that it can be customized to meet the specific needs of any business.
The following is a list of key features of osCommerce MS2.2 as stated on the osCommerce site:
* Compatible with PHP 4 and MySQL - easily portable to version 5.
* Compatible with all major browsers.
* Multi-lingual English, German and Spanish by default.
* Automatic web-based installation.
* Unlimited number of products and categories.
* Automatic setup of e-commerce payment systems: Authorize.net, Netbilling.com, 2Checkout.com, iPayment.de, PayPal.com, PsiGate.com, SECPay.com, and TrustCommerce.com; Many other add-on ecommerce payment systems, off-line (manual) credit card payments, and on-line payment processing.
* Multi-currency support via manual update from exchange rate server.
* Support for dynamic images (one image per product).
* Supports physical products as well as product downloads.
* Web-based administration module.
* Database backup and restore.
* Temporary and permanent shopping carts.
* Secure transactions with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) support.
* Many shipping options including by weight, price, or destination.
* Real-time shipping quote integration with UPS, USPS.
* Zone-based shipping options as well as a free shipping option as part of Order Totals Module.
* Full tax functionality, included compounded taxes, different zones for different products.
In implementing an osCommerce-based site one key decision is how to integrate the design. Unlike its forks, osCommerce MS2.2 does not come with a template system, though third party osCommerce templates are available. This has been seen as a negative for some. However it does mean that designs can be hand-coded or a template system installed. There are several well-known template systems, including STS, BTS and SMARTY.
Flex:
Adobe Flex is the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Flex applications can be written using Adobe Flash Builder or by using the freely available Flex compiler from Adobe.
The initial release in March 2004 by Macromedia included an SDK, an IDE, and a Java EE integration application known as Flex Data Services. Since Adobe purchased Macromedia in 2005, subsequent releases of Flex no longer require a license for Flex Data Services, which has become a separate product rebranded as LiveCycle Data Services. An alternative to Adobe LiveCycle Data Services is BlazeDS, an open-source project that started with code contributed in 2007 by Adobe.
