Chapter 1: About NetStores

What is NetStores?

"NetStores" is an Internet catalog ordering and quoting system. You can use it to create your own online shopping mall with any number of stores. Customers can browse through or search the stores and add items to their "shopping cart". They can purchase their selections using credit cards, CyberCash, or other payment options you provide.

NetStores makes it easy to set up and maintain your shopping mall:

• NetStores is the only complete Internet merchant system driven entirely by text (ASCII) files. That means you don't need to buy a fancy database package. And, you can easily create these files from most existing databases.
• NetStores is easy to install, configure, and administer.
• You can run NetStores with almost any Web server software. For security reasons, you will probably want to use a Web server that supports SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) for encryption of private information.

Though NetStores is easy to use, it also has many powerful, and sophisticated features. NetStores generates HTML pages on the fly using text files you provide, HTML objects, and user input.

• A variety of interfaces to support ordering from a range of catalog sizes.
• Sales order quoting, quote retrieval, and order retrieval.
• Powerful catalog searching capabilities &emdash; just like you would expect from an expensive database package.
• Flexible enough to let you sell services and information in addition to products.
• Secure SSL encryption for safe credit card transactions.
• Instant credit verification
• EDI Purchase Order generation
• Lets you accept payment by CyberCash wallet (http://www.cybercash.com/)
• Order notification by email or FAX.

NetStores components

NetStores is a group of five modular components that make it easy for you to publish your product catalog, generate product quotes, and process sales orders on the World Wide Web.

• NetStores Ordering System

  This is the basic catalog ordering system, including the NetStores Search Engine and many capabilities that allow your customers to access the product information they need in seconds. It is flexible, fast, and efficient.
  

• NetStores Quoting System

  This component lets customers generate detailed quotes and store them for future retrieval. The NetStores Quoting System module is included in the trial software distribution. (See the License Agreement for details on use of this module.)

  
  
• NetStores Instant Credit

  This is a real-time credit card authorization system that allows your customers to make fast, secure credit card purchases from your Web site. You get credit authorization from a payment server whether your customer wants to pay using a credit card or a CyberCash wallet. The NetStores Instant Credit module is included in the trial software distribution. (See the License Agreement for details on use of this module.)

  
  
• NetStores EDI Link

  Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a standard for the transfer of business documents&emdash;such as purchase orders&emdash;between computers. With this component, you get bidirectional, seamlessly integrated electronic transfer of a variety of business documents. For example, you can accept EDI purchase orders from customers and send an EDI purchase order acknowledgment. NetStores EDI Link can be ordered separately from NetStores.

  
  
• NetStores Secure Server

  We provide this Secure server with SSL encryption to protect your transaction data from unauthorized access. This server is available for a variety of UNIX platforms (included Linux and FreeBSD). It can be used alone or with NetStores. This server is based on the Apache/SSL source which is provided with the distribution. For details about this server, see http://www.us.apache-ssl.com/. NetStores Secure Server can be ordered separately from NetStores.

  
  

NetStores Administrator's Guide
1: About NetStores 2: Installing and Using NetStores	3: Troubleshooting 4: Technical Reference
Copyright © 1996 NetStores