September 21, 2002 - The IBuySpy Cornerstone Technologies
IBuySpy is a set of two applications written in ASP.NET: IBuySpy Store and IBuySpy Portal. Use them to learn how to build and deploy ASP.NET applications. IBuySpy Store is an e-commerce storefront selling fictional spy equipment. The store demonstrates how to implement online shopping tasks such as a product catalog, user authentication and personalization, shopping carts, and order checkout. IBuySpy Store, as any other data-oriented ASP.NET application, is based on three basic technologies:
- ASP.NET Pages. These pages determine the look of the store. They include Web forms and ASP.NET controls through which visitors to the store conduct their business with the store: browsing through the product catalog, collecting items in the shopping cart, and finally checking them out and paying for them.
- Business logic code. This is the code that does the processing behind the scenes, in the store's back room. The .NET framework supports several scripting languages to write this business logic code: C#, VB, and, of course, JScript .NET.
- Microsoft SQL database. IBuySpy Store uses the MSSQL database technology to store the data about the spy equipment, customers, and orders. The .NET framework provides a set of classes (ADO.NET) to interface with the MSSQL database, from the above scripting languages.
Here is what a personalized IBuySpy storefront looks like:
Microsoft promotes IBuySpy in their site, www.asp.net. Current versions limited to C# and VB. We wrote a JScript version, and you can read about it in Columns 119 and 120.
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