Charlie, and Dave: Thanks for your replies.
I am intrigued that you guys eluded to the possibility of using an ASP results file to data scrape. The real question is what is the easiest and most reasonable way to: List Part numbers and their availability, where: PN = Yes/no I wish I could do the following: Give a page of code to them. Know how to scrape it once it was pulled. Have it automated twice a day to update the status in our DB. This would do 2 things. Keep the DB in Sync with the distributor Post to me when new part numbers are available. They should have about 2-4k items. Is having them post it on HTML reasonable? Could a CSV be generated on their end? Ideas? The end result needs to be an automated solution to keep in sync. Robert P. Reil Managing Director, Motorcyclecarbs.com, Inc. 4292 Country Garden Walk NW Kennesaw, Ga. 30152 Office 770-974-8851 Fax 770-974-8852 www.motorcyclecarbs.com --------------------------- Dave Bellevue also replied with the thought of: --------- If your vendor is hesitant to give you access to their servers, ask them to provide a daily file to you to update your inventory, giving them access to your server. --------- -----Original Message----- From: Charlie Arehart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 12:37 PM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: RE: [ACFUG Discuss] Vendor Data Problem (funny) Robert, if I understand, you're asking them to expose some data to you in a form that some current web page doesn't suffice, right? And you're asking them to either create a new web page for you to scrape, or grant you security to be able to have a local DSN that points at their remote database. I can see why they may be reluctant on the latter. As for the former, this is a good case for using web services instead. You could instead ask them to expose some data as a web service, where you pass in your product ID and get back its availability. It's just much cleaner than you scraping a web page that they expose. Places like Amazon and many others do it, to solve these very problems. Still, if they're not familiar with it (and I sense they aren't), then it may be an uphill battle. And if you aren't either, then it may also be too much to chew on. That said, yes, if they just would expose a page that takes in a stock number and reports if it's available, that would solve your problem, right? Just have them return the barest HTML, like "true" or "false". That will simplify things on both ends. There was a lot to digest there, so I may have missed something. I think we will officially call Friday's "Roberts Day" from now on. :-) For those who miss the joke, Robert has tended to bring up topics that have led to significant interchange. I noticed that they tended to be on Thurs and Fri, and he said at the last meeting that it's because those are the days he gets freed up from running the business to consider the technical challenges. /charlie http://www.carehart.org/blog/ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Reil Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 11:45 AM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: [ACFUG Discuss] Vendor Data Problem (funny) For a good laugh on how not to run a business read this. Read from the bottom up for a laugh, and please advise me if I am correct in my assumptions that my proposal would work... Respectfully... Robert P. Reil Managing Director, Motorcyclecarbs.com, Inc. 4292 Country Garden Walk NW Kennesaw, Ga. 30152 Office 770-974-8851 Fax 770-974-8852 www.motorcyclecarbs.com ---------------------------------------------------- Thanks Martin: Both ways is how I meant it. There are securities that can be set up as described below that Svetlana may not be considering. You would own and hold the page secure and Svetlana would authorize the page. Once the page is built and authorized we just call the page. Is it possible for me to email her to further discuss the technicalities of doing such? I think the 2 of us talking tech for a couple letters would yield a secure win-win solution. You can forward the following for her to better understand where we are coming from and our end goal. ------------- Svetlana: We are using a ColdFusion driven JAVA cart named AbleCommerce. AbleCommerce is able to HOST many stores. But we only use one store, as we are not a Store Hosting Company. Using this feature we have had to assign unavailable products to a store with a different ID than our store. This results in the ability to toggle on and off the unavailable products. What we would like to be able to do is to do a stored procedure in our MySQL server to go to Martin's Database. You set up the securities so that all the customer (we) can do is run a SELECT statement. (Martin: Select means view only) You would give us an account and password and that is all we have to even get the results of the SELECT privilege. You would further only be giving us access to SELECT PARTNO (of that table) INVENTORY STATUS (of that table). I am positive you can secure this info in the User Security portion of your DB program. You see you have the ability to say what username and password can get in. And once in that user can only view the above mentioned items. With the DB location, name, username, and password we should be able to have our Stored Procedure call the PartNumber, and its status (in stock, not in stock) Theory is that if we can run this SP say twice a day then we will know what Martin has in stock. And have that logic toggle that item in our store to being in or out of inventory in our store. This is basically all I need. However some less sophisticated companies may want to have something similar based on an ASP that you generate to have in their site. Alternatively if you can not or will not we could create a page on our site with a snippet of code that calls your ASP content as a frame or cell content if possible. But it would not allow the items to be listed in our cart or searchable on our site, and many sales opportunities would be lost. ----------- Thanks for listening Martin... I hope that you can see the win-win in this and that Svetlana can understand the simplicity and security functions of Database Applications. Robert P. Reil ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Martin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 8:53 PM To: Robert Reil Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: I beg you. Please dont read this till you have a clear mind. Hi Robert...I will agree to the second paragraph Hi Martin, Not sure I understand what he is talking about. To give access to the database to other companies could not be save, because they can delete all data or change prices or something else. I would strongly recommend NOT give access to the database to others. On opposite side if they need to create some asp page with specific information, or have already created asp page and they want to put it to our server and that page will access our database - it could be done. But that page will be on our server and they will not have access to the code on that page after implementing on our server. Thanks, Svetlana ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Reil To: Martin Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 6:55 PM Subject: RE: I beg you. Please dont read this till you have a clear mind. Thanks so much Martin. This is more than fair. Finally some forward progress. I look forward to hearing what is said by Svetlana. Thank you. Robert P. Reil ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Martin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 6:44 PM To: Robert Reil Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: I beg you. Please dont read this till you have a clear mind. Robert I am not blowing you off to Harry, I pay Harry almost 100k/ year to run things, Harry does most of the web updates and I have forwarded your e-mail to my web girl...believe me I want nothing more than NOT to be out of stock of kits.....Harry hears about it from me daily....I will wait to here back from what Svetlana says and Harry about it. ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Reil To: Martin Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 5:47 PM Subject: I beg you. Please dont read this till you have a clear mind. Martin: Please read this dialogue in its entirety from beginning to end. I beg you to have an open mind and realize that not only is my proposed solution ULTRA simple but it would also allow ANY or your DEALER customers to use this tool safely to be able to represent your products on line without your company name being listed. This solution would take a maximum of one hour to set up and if I could have just 10 minutes time of who ever set up your website and database we could figure out an easy way to make this work. I could get all technical but basically if I had a copy of one file on your web server I would be able to rename it, remove some of the parts.asp file contents to remove your navigation name, etc, etc and know what data to call. (Note this file is not the same one seen on your site, as the ASP file is a bit different on your server than what internet customers have access to.) Then once the parts.asp file is renamed and skinned down you would just put the file back right next to the parts.asp file and we customers would make a link to that copied file to show our customers what is available in your inventory and the retail customer on your dealer customer's web site would NEVER know that it was being purchased from you. The Dealer wins, you win, everyone wins. Please, Please, Please help me help you help me... I know I am becoming a pest to some of you, and I don't want that at all. But I am desparate to find a way for our relationship work. Can I at least have the webmaster's phone number? That person will tell you how simple, easy and secure this is... Lets do it this way: Cons of pursuing this: Will take time to read this letter in it's entirety Will take time to contact the webmaster or give me their number Will take the webmaster up to one hour of labor. Pros of pursuing this Will allow EVERY Dealer customer the ability to provide better customer service. Will give KEYSTER a better name as more dealers will sell it. Will minimize email questions. Will make me a very happy Dealer as our sales will increase when it comes to your product. You will never hear from me again about problems from how I see it. Please read the history of our and Harry's conversation. And think about it for a while. Don't respond to this immediately but do think about it and let me know. As I said below to Harry I am forced to stop representing your products in our cart due to the costs and difficulty in doing so. But I also explain why there is an amazingly simple work around which would make this a wonder full win-win situation for both of us. PS. Please do me the decency to reply personally and not blow me off to Harry. He doesn't seem to have time to give me a well thought out answer. Robert P. Reil ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 4:17 PM To: Robert Reil Subject: Re: Phone call Sorry sir not sure what your question means, however we do not wished to be involved in your order processing or inventory system sir. You will have to work with what you have. Thanks Harry ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Reil To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 1:31 PM Subject: RE: Phone call Harry I know you are busy, but what does.... "Sounds good" mean? Is this something that you will pursue? Or deny? Im confused at your reply. Robert P. Reil ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 1:23 PM To: Robert Reil Subject: Re: Phone call Ok sir sounds good Thanks Harry ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Reil To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 12:40 PM Subject: RE: Phone call I thank you for this real answer and your info on the CB650 79/80. This morning we have removed your product line from our shopping cart. But please be aware that we desperately wish to fix that. It would seem that the problems with back orders and availability are literally adding about 20 hours a week to my work load and the expense of the refunds brings us to a financial break even point. In a work around I am developing a web page that would be able to pull data from your server and tell me what is and is not in stock. However when testing this page your server returned a complete page with all your contact info. Is it possible to work with your Database Administrator in order to have a tool that will check this? If not our potential sales of your product will decrease drastically as that is really the only way I can sell them. I understand your situation, and I am sure you can understand mine. But based on the tools we have we either have to be able to access your inventory status, or stop supporting your product in our cart which pains us deeply. One added note: Our shopping cart has the following functions. We can tell it to email a vendor (YOU) a purchase order upon having a customer place an order. We can make a piece of logic that can have our Database server to check your server every "x" increment so to check inventory. We can toggle items on and off in the cart with ease and have all this happen behind the scenes. If you can support the DB request this will make this work perfectly from now on as here is what will happen. Our cart will only list available items based on the last report your server returned. The order we get will be emailed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The order will come, and we will never need to talk again! Every one wins! What do you think? Robert P. Reil ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:08 PM To: Robert Reil Subject: Re: Phone call Ok robert this is the best method to order from us. Check our website for in stock status. Kits that are sold out with a picture we normally stock. Order the product through [EMAIL PROTECTED] email If out we'll let you know, please check back in time frame mention in our reply If a non stock item we can order in if Keyster will manufacture - minimum 20 kit order - 3 moths lead time We will not be watching your back orders or P.O.'s, but we will email you when kits you were looking for arrive. You decide what is needed to do to sell based on this system. Thanks Harry ----- Original Message ----- From: Martin To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 5:06 PM Subject: Fw: Phone call <!-- Side note(Notice Martin (business owner) forwards this to his #1 guy who historically doesn't give good info...) --> ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Reil To: Martin Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 1:42 PM Subject: Phone call Martin: I tried to call you on the phone today but could not reach you. Any how, I need to discuss with you the problems we are having with selling your items. Here is my dilemma. -------------------- The below orders I took in our cart. Granted we have not yet removed your unsupported items from our cart yet but we are today as my data manager is back from time away. As you know the credit card company takes money from the sale on the way in, and when the customer is alerted that the item is B/O for 90 days chances are they will want a refund and the credit card company will take money out on the way back as well. Including s/h charges billed to the customer on the sale, the total came to about $280 in sales. Say roughly 7% of the sale is taken for card fees on the way in and out combined this would be a total of almost $20 for a weekends worth of automated sales and our volume is increasing. I am understanding that these kits are items that are supposed to be stocked based on the KH spreadsheet Harry sent a month ago and the KK, KS, KY email he sent last week. Note that "*" denotes not in the list of available products. KH-0526N- out until early November * KH-0128- instock KH-0581N- out until early November KH-0527N- out until early November KH-0229N- out until early November KH-0116- out until early November KH-0025N - out until early November KK-0044 - in stock KH-1095- out until early November * Based on the above, five out of seven products (that I was told were inventory items) are back ordered till November. I have to ask myself... What is the norm here? Are these fluke anomalies? Is the spread sheet of items that are supposed to be stocked incorrect? Are the items that are not in the spread sheet supposed to be stocked? (if so why are the not in the spreadsheet, or if not then why are they on back order to be sold later? Did Harry possibly send me a list of what just happened to be in inventory at the time with no regard to what you TRY TO KEEP IN STOCK? Martin, I'm really confused... All I need to know is: What you TRY to stock. (I assume the data that was sent to me is correct and I will attach it for your review) I hope you can see that I have reason to believe that the data given to us is less than correct. And that we are really struggling trying to sell you products and it is costing us more than we have margin to cover. I really want to be able to support your product line but I am afraid that I am realistically considering if it is cost effective to keep your product line in our cart. Can you please call me on the phone or give me a number and time to call you so that we can further discuss these issues? ---------------- Robert P. 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