Web services (WS below) are dedicated software that lets two internet resources exchange data. At least one end is a resource computer (server); the other end can be a server or a client computer. One of the most common uses of WS today is data exchange for internet applications.
Here, though, we want to touch another kind of data exchange — handing a product catalogue to other traders or comparison platforms (for example salidzini.lv). In the “normal” situation an operator enters a product with descriptions and photographs by hand — that is what the product-catalogue module is for, and an operator can add a new product or edit an existing one quite quickly. But what if an online shop with no product base, warehouse or transport of its own wants to sell thousands of products?
Then you connect an external data source. Usually every large trader that works with business partners has a business-to-business, or B2B, system whose main purpose is to give partners live data and a way to place orders without going through a website, using their own solutions — for example SYS7.
Thanks to many years of experience with the largest Russian tour operators, European wholesalers and banks, we have built a unique system that works with XML, JSON, CSV, XLS and text files, analyses structure, can determine hierarchical nesting and depth, and lets you pick the right data from the right arrays in SYS7.
No, nobody promises that once you install this system you will have nothing to do and it will do everything for you. It is a tool that makes it easier to connect external WS services and link them to the product catalogue.
Process
How is this external data source added? First you request access to the WS from your partner. The partner sends you a link, which you put into our SYS7 WS module.
When a new web service is saved, SYS7 immediately tries to fetch data from it. If data arrives and matches an accepted format, a settings page opens with all identified data fields arranged in a hierarchy. In fact it is a visual interpretation of the partner’s data as the system might understand it. Each interpreted field can be mapped to the corresponding SYS7 data type — for example product name or product manufacturer. We have defined many data types, even a photo gallery with several images.
When all data is identified, after you save the settings a data-identification test page opens — so you can check that the data is identified correctly and then start linking products. If the table matches what you expect, confirm that the data is correct and the page for the main work with the system opens.
Linking products
If your online shop will sell a product that comes from several suppliers, you can either sell, for example, two products with the same name belonging to two different suppliers, or attach one product in your shop to two different suppliers and sell it even if some stock must come from one wholesaler and some from another. Logically, one product with one name looks much better than, as on salidzini.lv, a hundred products with the same name, half of which are no longer available…
The system performs two operations:
- adds the product from the WS, with all images, into the specified product category, adding manufacturer, descriptions and other parameters (for example incoming and outgoing price) if it is not already in the system,
- links the product from the WS to the same product already in the system database.
What happens if you have several suppliers for the same product? Only the quantity of external stock changes. Other parameters (for example the site price) are not changed. Why? We have discussed this with our clients and among ourselves and have not reached a single conclusion — there is a risk that one customer is sold a product from several suppliers who supply at different prices, and the total incoming cost exceeds the total sales amount. So we leave that either to a programmer or to the operator’s manual work.
What is the plus of linking products this way? If the WS owner changes a price, the system can change it in your online shop too. If the seller is out of stock, you should also stop selling it. Linking provides all of that.
What makes our web-services system better than others?
There are not many ways to stand out in this field, but there are some. For example, speed. We process giant spare-parts wholesaler web services with databases of millions of products in a couple of minutes. Not counting file download, of course. We have experience with very slow server operators who return a database of a couple of thousand names in five minutes, and with fast ones who return a 20 MB file in two seconds. All of this happens in real time; the online shop’s operation is not interrupted or otherwise affected.
Can we provide a data feed to other retailers?
Of course. Both in real time and in pre-prepared files — in whatever format you want. All questions, feed formats, data volume and feed algorithms are agreed in advance.
Please use the contact form to ask any questions.