The needs of every e-commerce application can vary widely when it comes to reports, metrics, and data exports. Some businesses will want to capture detailed profiles of their customers and what they are purchasing in order to optimize promotions and marketing activities for their particular needs. Others will be interested in making data available internally, to provide the boss updates on how many jars of cranberry preserves sold in December last year versus this year.
In this chapter, we will discuss a toolbox of Python libraries and Django applications to assist with whatever reporting needs that may arise. These topics include:
Serializing and exposing data
Tracking and improving search engine rank using sitemaps
Generating charts and graph-based reports
Exporting information via RSS and Atom feeds
Salesforce integration
We will be using a variety of tools, many builtin to Django. As in other chapters, however, we will discuss some third-party libraries...