.. image:: gestishop.png
   :align: right

This is a case study discussing the use of eZ Components for the integration
between GestiShop_ and Magento_. 
Magento_ is a feature-rich eCommerce platform built on open-source
technology.

GestiShop_ started out as a point of sales management
solution in 2005 which has evolved a lot. Besides a point of sales management
solution it now also provides functionality for maintaining multiple points of
sales. The software makes it possible to automate businesses at an affordable
cost.

Some functions of Gestishop_ include:

- product management
- sales management
- barcode printing
- barcode reading sales workflows ?????
- daily cash sheets
- customer relations management
- voucher, accounts and returns management
- one-click client client emails extraction for mailings

The new version of GestiShop_ was initially planned to support Magento_ as an
e-commerce front-end. The goal of the bridge between GestiShop_ and Magento_
is to be a new source of income for GestiShop's clients to increase their market share.
The new bridge between Magento and GestiShop, called Magesti_, opens up new
possibilities for employment, sales and marketing.

Built on `eZ Components`_, Magesti_ follows three design principles: security,
performance and maintenance reduction.

??? Need more info about those three things ???

Outline and goals
-----------------

.. image:: magesti.png
   :align: right

Work on Magesti_ began in early April, with just 4 weeks in order to meet the
deadline. Measurable objectives included:

??? How come there was a deadline?

- Less time to market for selling products on the Internet.
- Being resilient against fast changing stock ???AMOUNTS???
- The development of a centralized configuration repository ??? What is this
- Support for easy recovering and resynchronisation between databases and
  inventories.

Another goal is to bring Magento_ to a larger audience, eventually with the
loosely coupled Magento_ Model component; allowing to make efficient remote
back-ends with `eZ Components`_. 
??? What is the Magento Model component 
??? How do this backends work?

Technical details
-----------------

Many of the features in Magesti_ and GestiShop_ are facilitated by the
comprehensiveness of the `eZ Components`_ framework.

Magesti_ follows pragmatic development best practices. With `eZ Components`_,
the components were able to take advantage of Base, ConsoleTools and
Configuration. ??? What are you trying to say here?

The Base component provides an powerful way to organise classes auto-loading
with multiple repositories and allowing to keep naming conform to strict
coding standards.

The Base component also ships a set of exceptions that decrease development
and debugging costs.

For the import, synchronisation and recovery scripts (of what???),
ConsoleTools provides multimedia display a real-time estimate of the remaining
tasks time. (Which things does it use???)

The Configuration component allowed to decouple settings from code and reduce
costs of deployment for our clients. (need more info here too???)

Results and eZ Components advantages
------------------------------------

`eZ Components`_ for growth: it will be affordable to upgrade our `eZ
Components`_ setups to use future features because of backward compatibility
respect. ??? Could you clarify please?

GestiShop_ is significantly more configurable.

The structure of Magesti_ has been a success regarding the exchange of
information.  Also, `eZ Components`_ stability facilitated development of the
bridge to be done before the deadline. ??? Need some extra info here too

Regarding Magento_, `eZ Components`_ integrate perfectly in the checkout
process. In fine, sales can be made in any of the point of sales and any of
the sites transparently for the user.

.. _Magesti: http://magesti.fr
.. _GestiShop: http://actif2i.com/gestishop-gestion-point-de-vente.php
.. _Magento: http://magentocommerce.com
.. _eZ Components: http://ezcomponents.org