Max number of products in Actinic?

[rolygate]

I believe I saw somewhere the max number of products Actinic can handle is currently 20,000.

I have a client who is starting a site which will approach 100,000, and is keen to use Actinic as it is a delight to use compared to the fallback choice of Miva.

Is there any chance the product number capability will increase in the future?

[BigRedKeith]

I spoke to Support about this very thing and in the short term for me they have come up with a suggestion. have multiple catalogs linked through a common domain so different product groups with different product ref leaders so no prod ref conflicts. Still trying to get my head around how best to impliment it but it sounds feasible, i think?
Keith

[Duncan Rounding]

Having multiple stores on one domain is possible but how could the checkout be managed? I'd be interested to hear how that could work.

[rolygate]

I don't know enough about Actinic to even contemplate dev workarounds.

Firstly, what database does it use? I would have thought that mySQL, for instance, would handle many more products than this. If not, then it's postgreSQL, and then Oracle. Those two are harder to support, though.

Would need to know more about the ins and outs first.

[Duncan Rounding]

Actinic is managed off-line locally and then uploaded as static pages. The local database is Access - there is no online database.

[BigRedKeith]

Actinic is managed off-line locally and then uploaded as static pages. The local database is Access - there is no online database.

I think that is why it may be able to manage the multiple catalogue situation, no database simply means 30, 40 or 50,000 HTML files. As for the checkout, the only solution i can come up with is pushing the checkout process outside Actinic to an external cart that can take multiple site checkout.

Or maybe, simply splitting your products into matching product mumbers with different text leaders so you can have 5 products with the same 4 digit end eg. (1234) and 4 different text leaders eg. (ABCD1234, EFGH1234 ect). if its just the number of digits in the product code that is the limiting factor, change the tect leader.

Would that work?
Keith

[rolygate]

Ah, that explains all.

Unusual but not unique - there are some CMS that use that method, notably OpenCMS6, as one option at any rate. That's a big, powerful CMS; but it loses its user interaction when deployed that way.

Don't know how to get around that. There are two factors to consider, I suppose: the DB and the upload time for a bunch of pages. If you start at the beginning, with the DB, then I guess the answer is to run a server locally like XAMPP, using a mySQL DB. You can do that on the local machine (your PC), it doesn't have to be on a separate server. Then, you would have the capability to handle a lot more products. All you'd have to worry about then would be a monster FTP job...

[NormanRouxel]

I'm not sure that there is built-in limit on the number of products. I recall posts from way back in the past regarding this. This http://community.actinic.com/showthr...er+of+products thread (post #3) comes from one of the lead Actinic programmers.

Try it and see. Actinic can build a product database from a simple textfile import. You could write something that would generate such a textfile containing 20000, 50000, 100000 products, import it, and see.

[pnagames]

norman

Table size 2 gigabyte minus the space needed for the system objects (from access help)

so the amount of products you can have in the database could be more than the 10K

however if you reach that level prepare for the database to be extremelly slow

the only thing i can suggest as an idea but i do not know now whether it will work is create a mirror database in sql server and then go in to the actinic database and link those tables instead of the existing ones (remember to have the same names)

the sql server db will hold many more products (i have used a database in similar style which was slow but it had a few million records on most of its tables)

[BigRedKeith]

Is the problem here at the programmers end on the PC or is it at the server end?, my understanding is that, with no DB on the server, just the code that points to the HTML pages, the theretical product number is as big as you can store in your available web space.

managing the Access DB with that number of records in could well be very slow, but with a dedicated PC for managing the DB and nothing else, it should be OK?

Keith

[rolygate]

I think that you will find somewhere on the site that Actinic clearly state the max product number is 20k - or so I have been told by someone searching for this info.

It would be preferable to employ a different database before considering any expansion of this number. If mySQL were used, the number (for practical use) is not really limited by the database, other factors would tend to intrude first.

For instance, a site with 100k pages needing a navigation link change or something similar would have to employ some sort of sectioning strategy for re-uploading by FTP, as you couldn't really do that in one hit. You are limited to a max of around 5,000 pages per hour upload by FTP.

Alternatively, sections could be gzipped and uploaded, which would be many times faster, if a remote decompress option is available. Gzip is incredibly efficient, 1MB of text files compresses to under 30KB.

[Jan]

There is a new version of Actinic that runs on SQL server (Actinic Enterprise), you should be looking at this version really, as although the product will allow you to enter that number of products it will probably be rather slow. I would suggest contacting the Actinic Enterprise sales team to talk about this option.

Regards,

[rolygate]

Thanks - yes, that looks like an excellent option. MS's GUI was always brilliant compared to others, though the apps often let them down.

The GUI for database users with a client-side set-up is the big obstacle, I don't see many users being happy with phpMyAdmin, that isn't for the masses; but MS SQL Server is no doubt the answer. Also, I don't know of any realistic OSS option here so it looks like they will do better and better with this.

[gabrielcrowe]

i dont wish to lose any friends here, but i have to tell you that you're looking into the wrong solution.

40k products, isnt for actinic.

the problems you'll encounter outweigh the cost for a more complex solution.

and thats, dear sir... is my honest opinion, sorry actinic.

[BigRedKeith]

i dont wish to lose any friends here, but i have to tell you that you're looking into the wrong solution.

40k products, isnt for actinic.

the problems you'll encounter outweigh the cost for a more complex solution.

and thats, dear sir... is my honest opinion, sorry actinic.

Gabe, in the spirit of honesty, what would you say is the practical limit to Actinic? Before it starts getting difficult to manage?

Keith