LocalLens is an online business directory built around the concept of building communities and focusing on offering a multitude of features to businesses. Enough on the plug, lets talk about the technology…

It might look like just another business directory. However, what’s under the hood what really makes it tick for me.

I have been contributing to this project for just over 6 months now. My main role is to build the architecture and the framework to be as flexible, robust and functional as possible, yet still maintain best coding practises and use well defined development patterns.

So, what under the hood?

Database Server: MS SQL 2008 as data storage
Language and frameworks: c#, .Net 3.5, Linq, Web Services, JSON
ORM: LLBLGEN as our database abstraction layer 
Logging: log4net as our logging platform
UI & Reporting Tools: Telerik AJAX .Net Controls
Search Tool: linq to lucene, lucene.net
Patterns Used: Singleton, Provider, DDD, TDD

locallens is built using 4 tires that work together to bring the website to life, allowing for further growth and integration with other systems.

An example would be to extend the businesses and events to an iPhone application that would serve the data straight out of the website to the iphone app, without any further development.

I will spend more time in another post talking about some techniques that I have useful in using LLBLGEN as our ORM platform in multi-tired web applications.

for now, if you like to have a look at the website and give me a feedback that would be great.

locallens.com.au (keep in mind, its currently in RC1 and not all the content there yet)

Why is it so hard to find a .net open source ecommerce platform?

I am not really sure, after doing a lot of searching all I could really find worth mentions is dash commerce and MVC store front but yet finding a php ecommerce platforms it so easy.

I came across this post 9 kick ass Open source E-commerce platforms reviewed that lists top open source ecommerce projects but only one that is a .net project.

Where are the .Net coders, don't we (.net developers) have a contributing community that could rival the phpers.

In the next few months, I will be diving in a conversation about ecommerce platforms and attempt to review the open source project (.net) and try to highlight the positives and the missing features. What I would really like is to draw a conclusions on how far is the gap between PHP and .Net as product maturity and why the .net community is really lacking behind the rest of the open source movements.

I will be reporting back here, on my finding of the projects "out there" and try to catalogue them.

any help from you would not go a stray, so don't be shy, let me know here and I will do my best to follow it up.