Quoting "Christopher M. Jones" cjones@partialflow.com:
Very helpful. Thank you. In view of the fact that precisely what we're looking to avoid is the cost of creating a new engine, what about other solutions? We like Drupal. And if the tweaks we need were simple we'd love to contribute. But if that's just not realistic, then what about eCommerce? I steered clear of it, because reviews of it seemed a bit luke warm. And then there's Zen Cart, which I can't really get a good feeling for, since they seem to have removed their documentation so you have to buy their book. That doesn't give me a lot of confidence.
Suggestions?
If it were me, I would create a Drupal DB engine for mssql for the version you wish to use. I would use Ubercart with changes for the product data you need. It is possible to have multiple DB within the settings.php file so the missing parts are the mssql support within the Drupal DB engines. Edison Wong has a SF project[1] where he is working on supporting more DB engines with Drupal and perhaps you can use his work for the mssql Drupal DB engine.
[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/siren/
Earnie -- http://for-my-kids.com/ -- http://give-me-an-offer.com/