Attributes or Components

[chris ashdown]

I have a web site with aprox 510 products each with say 5 sizes and 6 colours so 15,300-20,000 individual attributes (some have a lot more colours and room for growth)

If I changed the site over to componants rather than attributes, what would be the effects of the change, Slower, the same, Faster

The logic is to use stock control and wondering if such a large upheaval would kill actinic

Using windows XP Pro, Actinic V10.0.3 business plus with 7 users

[TraceyHand]

Just to clarify, you currently use
Product > Attribute > Choice and no stock control

and are looking to switch to

Product > Component > Attribute > Choice so you can stock control the permutations?

Aside from the mammoth task of setting up the products initially (although this is eased in latter versions if you use the "product options" tab to set up and create your permutation products) the main issue would be the increase in size of the actual database as it'd be accommodating all those extra hidden "permutation" products.

Going from 510 products to approx 20,000 products is always going to have some effect on speed, I'd have thought, even if the majority of those products aren't actually on site.

I guess the question is "does Actinic still work through these hidden products when preparing uploads?"
My best guess would be "probably"

As to whether it'd kill it, I'd hate to say!

[leehack]

I think you'd be OK Chris as you have relative low numbers on products. The slowness is exponential, so do 500 hundred and notice the difference, multiply that difference by 40 to give you an idea on performance hit.

[chris ashdown]

Thank you both for your thoughts

I think I will have to have a play with a hundred or so and see what difference it makes, It will be time consuming but far quicker with the Product options and also allows me to make a bit more dosh on the very large items we have traditionaly absorbed the extra cost for simplicity.

I do like normans Dynamic images though so that probably adds quite a lot to the overheads and large pages dont help but feelyou need all simular items in same page, could try a page splitter using tabs to open next page I guess, anyone know any good ones

Thanks again