Frequently Asked Questions - Ricardo

Index

The Shop

Back to the Retail Index. Clicking on headings below returns to the above index.

Introduction to Retail

The current version of Ricardo, V2, does not as yet include a retail component. This documentation covers V1 only.

The SOX Shop

Architecture

A web shop, in the Systemics system, includes the following key components:

An Internet-connected Unix machine.

A CGI script on the machine that responds to special URLs that contain embedded payments. See Using SOX payments in CGI Scripts for more explanation.

A backend shop server process on the machine that receives payments, deposits them, issues payment acceptance instructions, and keeps records of the payments deposited.

It should be noted that there is a second form of shop, known as the SOX-compliant shop. This form implements an add-on variant of the SOX protocol, and conducts more sophisticated operations than are possible with a web shop. Currently, the only example of this is the Systemics Exchange. We do not discuss this further here, as it requires significant levels of programming.

What are the system requirements?

The platform needs to be a secure Unix machine on the Internet. Living behind a firewall is fine, as long as it can receive and send over the normal HTTP ports. It should be available continuously (more for client benefit).

Practically, it should be stated that current shops all run on the FreeBSD version of Unix. Other platforms might require lesser or greater porting efforts.

All shop software is currently written in Perl 5, which is expected to be fairly portable.

How easy is it to set up a shop?

A lot depends on the individual skill level of the shop installer. Here, we currently budget about a day to set up a *new* shop backend, and about a day to add a facade (web page) to an existing shop backend.

Probably the major complication is that most of the work is setting up the HTML page for your shop. This of course depends more on your artistic desires. For complete instructions, see Installing SOX Shop on Web Servers

What purchasing models are supported?

The following models can be used to build shops:

Pay Per View (PPV). This allows a single deliveable to be sent immediately on reception of an appropriate payment. The deliverable could be a photo, or a report, or a query response.

Catalogue. CGI scripts have been written to manage catalogue pages that minimise the amount of work that is required to add new products or sets of products, at the expense of artistic creativity. Whilst not strictly a part of SOX, it is a distinct model for web-based commerce.

AVI. Movie segments can be delivered as a variant of the PPV method.

Atomic orders. An order can be placed and accepted in one operation. Here, atomic is taken to indicate that the committment is received and reciprocated immediately, or not at all.
It is possible to add manual intervention onto this, such as email addresses, etc. That is more an issue for the shop owner.

Other demonstration models such as pay/return exist. For example, if the return payment is larger than the forward payment, this can represent a gaming transaction.

Micropayments can be added with relatively little work, but we are waiting until there is an identified demand. For the moment, currencies can easily represent a small value (i.e., 0.1 of a cent is used in some currencies).

Known Bugs

What happens if a PPV fails after payment

In the current version of software, there is no capability to manage a retry or a refund.