Review of the “Pro Episerver commerce” book

A while ago I wanted to learn more about Episerver Commerce. I started by buying Quan Mai’s book “Pro Episerver commerce“. Here are my thoughts on that book.

I have long experience with Episerver CMS, but very little experience with Episerver Commerce, or any other commerce solution for that matter. For me, this book was a great resource when starting to learn Commerce. It complements Episerver´s official documentation very well. If you are only using the official documentation you kind of need to already know what you want to do, and can get info on how to do it. The book tells you more about what you need to do when implementing a commerce solution. The book  will learn you all basic concepts, and the lingo used in the commerce world.

The book is constantly being updated, which is a good thing. But unfortunately not updated in the same pace as Commerce is updated. Make sure to double check the official documentation (one example is the legacy OrderContext, without mentioning the new IOrderRepositoryCallback). The book seems to have been written over a long time, it covers some areas that are not really valid anymore, and that confused me a bit.

I think the language in the book could be improved, because at least I had trouble following some sentences, and there are quite a few misspelled words. You still understand everything, but you know, developers are being anal about things 🙂 .

Would I recommend this book to someone who want’s to learn Episerver Commerce? Definitely. But at the same time I think it’s possible to make this book better. My suggestion is that the author should focus more on the latest version of Commerce, and make it very clear when older version is discussed (and skip everything about versions before 7.5?). There are also parts that are more like reference material, things that you really don’t care about when starting to learn, but might need later on. Those parts could be moved to an appendix, or just reference the official documentation (if available). And frankly, sentences like this:
“My wife, like almost every other women, becomes crazy when she sees a good discount[…]” is something we need less of in the developer community 🙂

Quan Mai is truly a commerce guru, and very helpful in the developer community. I understand it’s been a tremendous effort writing the book, and I hope he will continue and keep the book updated. If the time or energy isn’t there, it would be so great if the book was “open sourced” and it was possible to contribute, and suggest changes.

This review covers the version released 2017-08-04

3 thoughts on “Review of the “Pro Episerver commerce” book

  1. I update the content, fix any typos and grammatically errors once in a while, but Commerce is moving fast and I will not able to keep it up forever – so I’ll say the book will be Commerce 11 – compatible, and the changes after that will require a newer version (which might take some time to appear).

    Yes I want all of the customers to be on the latest version, but that’s not always the case, so I added some “legacy” parts to help customers which are still on slower lanes. I tried to clarify which parts have changed, but I might miss some – if you can spend some time to point them out, I’ll be happy updating them.

    The frank sentence you mentioned will be removed in the next update.

  2. The legacy stuff are important to understand the big picture and why it is build like it is. Even more important if you have an old legacy commerce solution that you have upgraded during the years. Understanding helps troubleshooting.

    I also hopes the content will be updated and live long!

    It should also include more content related to the questions from the certification exam, it would be a good selling point.

    And yes I do also recommend it, to all who´s working with Epi commerce.

    Regards Luc Gosso EMVP

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