I am new to the forum and not an experienced .net developer, but I am evaluating this product to see if it will do what we need and how difficult our customizations will be.

Some of our products have multiple custom attributes, such as a vehicle VIN, that need to be entered on the product page, and validated by checking an external system to ensure that the VIN is available. If it is, then the "add to cart" should be enabled, but if not, the customer should not be allowed to add the product to the cart until an acceptable VIN is entered. When the order is complete, I need to have the customer entered values displayed on the confirmation page/e-mail, so the data needs to be accessible on other pages, like a session variable. Don't necessarily need to add it to the database if that means major customization that will be broken on the next version rollout.

If this question has been asked and answered before, I would appreciate anyone who could point me if the correct direction to find the thread. I have downloaded and installed the trial version of Multistore and I have played a bit with the XMLPackages. They are a little overwhelming based upon my level of expertise, and I will have a developer eventually doing all the coding, but I need to get an appreciation of how to do what we need done and how large an effort it will be.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.