Hi all [was tempted to say skunks [?]] Im in sort of dilemma here and I need advice/input on this. Im working on this application, there is a product list with over 200 items currently. This list is reviewed every few months, every review will introduce quite a number of new products or drop certain products. Good things is, the product coding is progressive, however with the frequent reviews adding the new items and marking others as deactivated becomes quite a task. Things to consider 1. The list is submitted as a ms spreadsheet with all products new, existing or otherwise deactivated. 2. The application is php/mysql hosted on a linux server 3. Deactivated products cannot be deleted as they are used with the app for trend monitoring 4. There is the possibility of having this list shared with other external applications[read websites] Currently the list is in a database, as indicated earlier maintaining it is becoming hectic, your thoughts?
What is the question exactly? On 13 October 2010 16:25, Nd'wex Common <flexycat@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all [was tempted to say skunks [?]]
Im in sort of dilemma here and I need advice/input on this. Im working on this application, there is a product list with over 200 items currently. This list is reviewed every few months, every review will introduce quite a number of new products or drop certain products. Good things is, the product coding is progressive, however with the frequent reviews adding the new items and marking others as deactivated becomes quite a task.
Things to consider
1. The list is submitted as a ms spreadsheet with all products new, existing or otherwise deactivated. 2. The application is php/mysql hosted on a linux server 3. Deactivated products cannot be deleted as they are used with the app for trend monitoring 4. There is the possibility of having this list shared with other external applications[read websites]
Currently the list is in a database, as indicated earlier maintaining it is becoming hectic, your thoughts?
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Would it it be better to maintain the list as an xml file or retain it in the database as is the case bearing in mind the factors as listed?
You could write a couple of scripts that would extract the data from the excel sheet/document, format it and update the database. You could use xls2csv to extract the data from excel to csv and write another bash script to update. On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Nd'wex Common <flexycat@gmail.com> wrote:
Would it it be better to maintain the list as an xml file or retain it in the database as is the case bearing in mind the factors as listed?
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-- Regards Brian Ngure
Thanks for the input On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Brian Ngure <brian@pixie.co.ke> wrote:
You could write a couple of scripts that would extract the data from the excel sheet/document, format it and update the database. You could use xls2csv to extract the data from excel to csv and write another bash script to update.
On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Nd'wex Common <flexycat@gmail.com> wrote:
Would it it be better to maintain the list as an xml file or retain it in the database as is the case bearing in mind the factors as listed?
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-- Regards
Brian Ngure
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I would rather the database. Its also important to sit down and do good database design to avoid been tangled up in your Relations
.... yeah, it shouldn't become hectic.Keeo them in the DB; using the DB will allow you to make complex queries on the data you have [... such as in the case where you want to retrieve a list of only those products that were dropped between to different dates]... as you can imagine, using xml to do that kind of work can be quite taxing on both u the programmer ans system resources... and as stated above, if you design your stuff well enuf, it will be far from hectic. On 10/14/10, Dennis Kioko <dmbuvi@gmail.com> wrote:
I would rather the database. Its also important to sit down and do good database design to avoid been tangled up in your Relations
Thank you all for the input. One thing I should indicate, design is not the issue, the conversion and synchronization of the product list with the database is what is becoming hectic bearing in mind the product reviews are done every 6months. On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 1:02 AM, SkunkWorks KU Followers < skunkworks.ku@gmail.com> wrote:
.... yeah, it shouldn't become hectic.Keeo them in the DB; using the DB will allow you to make complex queries on the data you have [... such as in the case where you want to retrieve a list of only those products that were dropped between to different dates]... as you can imagine, using xml to do that kind of work can be quite taxing on both u the programmer ans system resources...
and as stated above, if you design your stuff well enuf, it will be far from hectic.
On 10/14/10, Dennis Kioko <dmbuvi@gmail.com> wrote:
I would rather the database. Its also important to sit down and do good database design to avoid been tangled up in your Relations
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Then that is something to do with your script. If you have good programming skills, you should be in a position to tackle the associated logic. Also try http://stackoverflow.com , they can assist in developing relevant application logic
Make a nice webapp that allows the users to add and deactivate items any time they want, and convince them to use the new system. Then you can make the list available to other sites via http, like this: http://www.blaaah.net/get_list.php?unique_key=WER1233SFRETGDG456757 where the unique_key is a simple identification string (an SHA hash of something) of the requester so not just anything on the net can get the list.
participants (6)
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Brian Ngure -
Dennis Kioko -
Geoffrey Mimano -
Nd'wex Common -
SkunkWorks KU Followers -
Timothy Makobu