03.11.2006 : Boardworx sign on to use Integral server

We are pleased to announce that we have just signed a deal with board-worx to build a new web site using the XML Infinity Integral server and to incorporate a bespoke e-commerce engine and backoffice integration.

Board-worx is a rebranding of a leading watersports retailer in the UK who have an online presence already but need to shift their business in a more national direction rather than regionally based as it is now.

Looking at the work we did for suspect packages the team at board-worx were intigued with the non-database approach which will make their site faster, more searchable, more flexible and cost a lot less than traditional product based development. Further they were excited about the possibility of not having to use an "off the shelf" system like Actinic or OsCommerce which are more difficult to configure.

Andrew Fisher, Chief Architect explains further, "Board-worx have an interesting product catalogue. The traditional view of building a site like this is to make one big database table with fields for all the common information across the products. Any additional information then gets lumped in a catch all 'description' field or something and then thrown on the page for the user to decipher. Inevetiably some HTML hacks creep in to make the page more responsive to the information which throws out any reusability later on.

"This is fine when you have an occasional product that needs some extra information, but what happens when you have entire classes of product that don't conform? At this stage you get into multiple tables or creating references between add-on tables and all kinds of mess. The performance of the database goes down dramatically as a result as well.

"With the XML Infinity server though we can 'sub-class' objects. This means we can set up a 'product' class that contains all of the base information and then create say a sub class called 'windsurf-boards' which takes the basic info and adds to it. This would then be distinct from say 'windsurf-sails' which have different information again. Obviously we only do this for large classes of product but it makes a huge difference to the end user who can now do better comparisons between products of a certain type. "

The board-worx site is due to be released in early 2007 and should provide an excellent example of how the XML Infinity server's flexibility can be used to tailor a solution for your content.

Contact: info@xmlinfinity.com

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