Database help. aggghh

VirtualNemesis

Hi everyone,

i would love if someone would be abole to help me and point me in the right direction.

we are in the proccess of developing a price comparison website. we have the script and the site is being made as we speak. the only issue i have is that for the life of me i dont know how to begin with the database for this. can some one help me on this. i would be greatful for any help.

Sparks

Pretty much any book, podcast or webpage on "data-driven websites" should have what you need, and in a lot more detail than here could provide easily. Perhaps start with this?

http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/ddws/index.html

VirtualNemesis

thanks for the speedy reply Sparks.

thanks for that. i will give it a good look over.

VN

amen

why are you using a database ?

Dr.Silly

amen wrote: »

why are you using a database ?

what else is he going to use ??!!

kayos

Is it just me or does it seem like if he can have the "script" and the "site" already being built the db doesnt come into it. Well that or the cart is in front of the ass.

amen

what else is he going to use ??!!

its a price comparison website?

of course maybe it is a limited domain maybe bank savings rates but the way most comparison websites work is that your select what you( the end user) are trying to compare and they get a real time quote from the various suppliers and display the results.

if you then purchase the item you are normally redirected to the supplied using a particular url that allows the price comparison website to get their commision.

if in this case a database is being used to store the items/prices where is the data coming from ? how upto date is it going to be?

Dr.Silly

amen wrote: »

its a price comparison website?

of course maybe it is a limited domain maybe bank savings rates but the way most comparison websites work is that your select what you( the end user) are trying to compare and they get a real time quote from the various suppliers and display the results.

if you then purchase the item you are normally redirected to the supplied using a particular url that allows the price comparison website to get their commision.

if in this case a database is being used to store the items/prices where is the data coming from ? how upto date is it going to be?

two ways of doing it
a) store the data in the database, this will require a feed from all the various third party companies, be it, FTP, XML, blah blah, on an hourly, or daily basis to be imported into your own database
b) using web services to get real-time information and display it to the end user.


don't forget, it's not what only you can develop,
alot of the times you'll be dealing with companies that don't have a big IT deptarment or don't have the resources to put new interfaces into place, hence sometimes, a simple extract to text or cv from these companies suits them

Dr.Silly

P.S, the way Google do their shopping comparison price checker, is not real time.
Companies upload their text or cvs files every two hours to them.