[thelist] db-driven ordering system??

> I've used the Merchant Order Form system from RGA
> <http://www.io.com/%7Erga/scripts/cgiorder.html>
> to good effect in the past, but one of my current clients wants to put
> 150-200 items online for people to
> chose from.

How odd. I'm doing a 190-product ecommerce site as we speak...

> The RGA system is designed for a dozen or so items, but I need a little
> more this time.

Really? A dozen? I suppose that's a good niche to be in. Any more products,
and people would probably go ahead and get them custom-built.

> I'm going to be running this on an HP UN*X system
> <http://www.clearlight.com/> and am thinking of using
> something along the lines of a Perl flatfile db to hold the item list,
> since the load on this site is likely to be
> very light, at least for the first year, and the number of items isn't
> likely to rise sharply.

I have never used the reasons you stated to NOT use a relational database. I
have this terrible allergic reaction to un-normalized data stores... and
flatfiles almost kill me.

Flatfile data stores just can't do much... I was given my product list in an
Excel sheet. There was a WHOLE BUNCH of repeated information... it was so
bad that I ended up writing WSH script in VBScript to port all the
information (it was only 190 records) from Excel to a little Access
database. I'll tell you, I only have 190 products (and they are replacement
parts, at that) and I have over 15 tables. Most of it's overkill so that the
client can move to a more robust ordering system when they start bringing in
dough. But, if you decide to use a flatfile and Perl, you will have to
re-write the entire system if you want to upsize to a database, won't you?

> Can anyone advise something a step up in power from RGA, but not a lot
more
> complex?  I don't think this
> really calls for a complete shopping cart system, but maybe...

I would write it yourself. There really isn't much to it. Generally, you
have:
1. ProductCategory display page (initial navigation)
2. List Of All Products In One ProductCategory
3. Single-product display page
4. Cart display page
5. Order info page
6. Order confirmation page
7. Thank you page

The last three involve very little coding... mostly HTML. Your call, though.




--
mattwarden
mattwarden.com