What is Magento and what are the different features of magento.?

Magento is the type of CMS (content management system ) or open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP employs the MySQL/MariaDB relational database management system, the PHP programming language, and elements of the Zend Framework and available under both open-source and commercial licenses. It is written in an advanced object-oriented idiom that uses the MVC pattern and xml configuration files.

Magento is available at three different platforms Magento Community Edition, Magento Enterprise Edition & Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition. The First community edition is available free while Enterprise edition build to handle large websites and Cloud edition is one complete scalable architecture full of backend & front-end management services.

Core fundamental feature of Magento is based on templating and extension system, OOPs inheritance and composition principles configured by XML files. Magento also offers plugin API which allows developers to modify almost any feature of Magento by working within the abstraction layers provided by the framework. Several subsystems (Layout, DataFlow) employ meta-programming facilities via XML, and the MVC pattern is supported by factory methods for installation of helper classes (Models, Helpers, Blocks).

Magento is a heavily abstracted software system. Most of Magento’s core is placed inside modules and the functionality of modules can be altered by custom changes programmatically. Modules can be enabled or disabled individually, easing integration into existing stores. Magento is preferred with  MySQL, and its data about a store’s products is based on  the Entity-Attribute-Value model.

With Magento 2 being released in July 2015 offers complete change from original Magento Platform. Higher Performance, responsive web design and easier checkout process are some of the advantage of using new powerful Magento 2 version. Both are simultaneously working with upgrades and community support as well.

What are the different features of Magento:

• User Management
• Customer Management
• Order Management
• Payment Management
• Google Content API for shopping
• Mobile E-Commerce
• Site Management
• Search engine optimization
• Meta-information for products, categories and content pages
• International Support
• 100% search engine friendly
• Web Analytics and site report management