AirDelights.com wrote:
anyone currently or ever use Mas 90/200 with Interchange cart? Is there a better system for importing orders and processing credit cards than Mas 90?
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Steve,I worked with an older (perhaps 3 years behind) version of MAS90, which had some degree of integration with a custom-built SQL-Server/Paradox publication sales system. We put up a new website (http://www.nbp.org) using Interchange, with an online bookstore and ability to accept online donations; the Interchange-based site replaced the old SQL Server/Paradox system (which was one of the goals in pursuing the project). We were able to pretty easily take the same integration tools developed for the MAS90/pub-sales system and, with a little tweaking, use them in the same fashion for the Interchange system.
However, I would not say it was pleasant to use MAS90 in this fashion, by any means. I don't have much familiarity with more recent versions of MAS90/MAS200, so it may be that the possibilities for systems integration have improved in the last few years. For the project described above, an import tool had been built using MAS90's Visual Integrator module, with which we could import customer and invoice data from CSV files generated by the publication sales system; thus, I just needed to understand the workflow rules involved for what data was included in those CSV files at what time, and design a facility to get that information out of our website database. In fact, I didn't use Interchange to do it; instead, I modified the Paradox reports previously used to generate the files to pull the information out of the website database (PostgreSQL) in the proper format. Having substantially more experience with Interchange now, I don't think it would be difficult tois design a custom tool for generating the files in the Interchange Administration facility.
In any case, the complexity of working with MAS90/200 and Interchange depends on a number of things. Where do you keep your products information, inventory information, etc.? If you do not need MAS90/200 to keep products/inventory, and just need to get the sales data to the A/R module for accounting purposes, then it's not terribly complicated (but the data exchange process needs, at least in my experience, manual operation rather than automatic; that may be different in newer versions, and certainly MAS200 would be better than MAS90 since it uses SQL Server rather than MAS90's unreliable, awkward flat-file database system). If you want MAS90/200 to have all the inventory/products information and serve as the master database for such data, it will take more work to get that information out of MAS90 on a periodic basis to update the database behind Interchange. It is possible to access Mas90/200 database via ODBC, so you could have the server running Interchange refresh its information in some fashion on a scheduled basis, conceivably, though I suspect the data model for Mas90/200 is nightmarish for the uninitiated.
Finally, if you want to have some sort of online sales offering and you need Mas90/200 to have all the information, you're going to need a bunch of requirements analysis and systems analysis to figure out the best solution, regardless of what you choose to handle the online store component (be it Interchange, osCommerce, or some expensive service like ProCart or Kurant StoreSense).
Hope this helps. -- Ethan Rowe End Point Corporation suppressed _______________________________________________ interchange-users mailing list suppressed http://www.icdevgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/interchange-users
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