workspaces for web application process
Book: Drupal E-commerce with Ubercart 2.x
Link from drupal.org: https://www.packtpub.com/drupal-e-commerce-with-ubercart-2-x/book?utm_source=drupal.org&utm_medium=link&utm_content=pod&utm_campaign=mdb_002765
I am in the middle of several ecommerce website applications right now, so I need all the help I can get. So reviewing this book not only helped me but also served as an excellent acid test for its real world contributions to the hard working ecommerce site builder.
In order to comply with what website application end users really need, we often need all the benefits of the proven specialized tools (for example, Alfresco for document management, Magento for ecommerce, WordPress for blogs, Gallery for photo galleries, Moodle for education), but without having to sacrifice the power, community, flexibility and excellence of Drupal.
Several clients need to integrate ecommerce functionality into their website application right now. And to be honest, what I need is the great usability of a good specialized framework without giving up Drupal. As a developer and not an experienced store manager, how can I be sure to offer those using my services the most advanced usability for their ecommerce needs? I need Drupal for most of their requirements, but I need, say, Magento too. To be honest, the question I need to answer is: Ubercart is the best Drupal based ecommerce solution; but this time is that going to be good enough for the end users?
As a website application developer, I need to place reusability at the core of my kit of best practices. But reusability isn’t always about code, or modules, themes, or even whole frameworks; it’s often about tried and proven industry-wide well-trodden paths, a set of patterns upon which to build no matter what tools you use. Just as usability most often isn’t really about flashy widgets, it’s about an architecture that won’t paint you into a corner.
So I hit upon what I think is a novel idea: I decided to prototype the development with a best-of-breed specialized ecommerce framework in parrallel with Ubercart/Drupal, in order to gain insight into the kind of usability and architecture required. Then I could decide between integrating Drupal with Magento on the one hand (a la Promiscuous Drupal), or using Ubercart directly with Drupal to attain the same level of functionality.
During one of the many non-trivial Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 upgrade tasks we seem to have been working on recently (pretty good success rate there I am happy to say), a client wanted to change from the e-Commerce module they had been using in Drupal 5 to the Ubercart module in Drupal 6. The constraint called for maintaining product creation dates, that is, re-cycling the product content type created by e-Commerce (v3 by the way) into a fully fledged Ubercart-integrated product node. After a few dry runs we succeeded (see script below). Could it really be so easy (comments welcome)?
As in all non-trivial Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 upgrades, we based ourselves on an in-house Gap Analysis form which leads to a customized checklist of tasks. And the first task was to replicate the legacy site on our own test server. Then, the upgrade is run on a second test instance, and each successfully completed milestone is committed to a version control system (the snapshot includes the database dump) in order to always have a solid base to fall back upon should problems develop (when problems develop). A second very useful benefit of using a version control system for each step completed is that the log serves as an admirable guide for upgrading similar sites, or should it become necessary to re-do the process.
(rough notes… read at your own risk 
)
For beginners who want to start an E-commerce site.
Reference: http://drupal.org/project/ubercart
http://www.ecopaper.com/
(case study)
Magento too new, buggy, too slow, without framework like Drupal
Drupal E-commerce… API strong, but not very good out of the box, buggy…
Started with alpha release, very easy to upgrade so far, fantastic community (Aaron has no affiliation with them).
Secure code, robust taxonomy. upsell, secure pages (https), coupon, checkout enhancement
Not available for Drupal 6 until end of year, but someone pointed out that there is a not for production development version.