Have I outgrown Actinic?

[Stuart Morley]

I have been using Actinic since version 3 and have always had the problem of getting new products / sections into actinic without doing it manually.

I create a Hierarchical file that contains the section(s) to be imported, however importing an existing section with fewer items (as some may have been deleted) leaves the old products in place (as you would expect)

So,

Before I import the product into actinic, I run a routine that marks that sections that will be imported (and it's products) for deletion.

Then go into Actinic and do a purge.

Then Import the file (which can take some time)

Then Upload.

This is all fine, except it has to be done either manually or with some software written especially to do this. The manual way is time consuming, especially when only one product needs updating 8-(

The software sometimes hangs, as Actinic may take a while to respond or windows is just being it's usual pain in the a**e.

I have asked Actinic for many years for command line switches to:
1) purge the catalog
2) do a "standard Hierarchical import" with a fixed filename (all I do manually each time is keep clicking next!)

I know they are not on most peoples wish list, but they must be simplicity itself to code.

I've seen lots of good utilities for uploads, invoice processing etc but nothing that does what I need.

So, the questions are:

1) Is there an easier way?
2) Have I outgrown Actinic?
3) Am I missing something?

I'm a bit loathed to use another product as I find actinic support superb and the product very good, but I need to solve this problem.

[Duncan Rounding]

It is a pain to fiddle with the hierarchical importing formats. I find that I can no longer use excel to do this any more because the code in my description fields is longer than excel can handle in a cell and so gets truncated.

Have you thought about using Access and using external linking in Actinic. I keep meaning to look into this to solve my problem. That could simplify things I would assume.

[Stuart Morley]

I have a program that creates the Import File, that's not the problem. It has created correct import files for the last 3 years. It's the process that is involved.

AFAIK the access link only updates the data and doesn't add products to a section. When I last looked at this I was told that it would slow things down a lot! - Coupled with not adding/deleting products from a section it would be a waste of time for me IMHO

[wjcampbe]

Another suggestion.

Create a copy of the Actinic tables you need to change in an external database. Make your changes in this external database. When you are ready for a change, open the Actinic database, import the tables from your external system, delete the actinic tables and rename the imported ones to take their place.

[Stuart Morley]

A good idea, but seems a bit major. I didn't link "tinkering" with the deleted flag on the products /section tables though.

If I deal at that level then I lose the error checking that actinic gives me (athough it's never usually a problem) and risk the blowing up the actinic database (orders and all) if I muck it up.

I know I can create copies of the database, but you know how "corruption" sneaks into databases over time.

It just seems that If I have to go to all that trouble then I might as well migrate to something else?

[NormanRouxel]

Have a look a the size of your ActinicCatalog.mdb. Repeated Imports can make this file much bigger on disk than it needs to be, slowing the aplication down considerably. Occassional Compacting may help.

[Stuart Morley]

I do occasionally compact the dbase but speed is not the issue. The issue is getting a reliable way of get whole new updated sections / products in seamlessly.

I can create the import file easily (and automatically), but it's the rest that is a pain.

[Bruce]

Stuart,

How do you usually do the import? Do you use the update or replace option? if for example all you need to update is a single product or specific areas of certain products, then all you would neeed to do is an update. It is not necessary to purge the catalog every time you do an import. If you want to replace the existing site with the contents of the import file, then all you would need to do is to select replace and all contents will be replaced with the contents of the import file.

The request to have a switch to do this is still on the wish list. I will add another vote for you.

Kind regards,

[NormanRouxel]

What Bruce is describing (Replace Import) is exactly how my Norcat program passes it's product and section data into Actinic. It creates the entire Hierarchical product import containing all current products and used Update / Replace to daily build a section structure containing only those current products.

This doesn't mean that the subsequent site Update reloads every page, as Actinic is clever enough to realise that if a completely replaced page is identical to it's prior version, then no update of that page is needed.

This system has been running on a daily basis for about 4 years for a dozen sites.

The only problem this seems to produce (and why I mentioned it in my earlier post) is that continual Update / Replaces seem to make the ActinicCatalog.mdb overlarge, which an occassional Compact quickly fixes.

[Stuart Morley]

Thanks for the comments, however the issue is NOT can I import the file, I can & I do, but the method is not automatic as it requires user intervention every time.

- If I imported the whole site (replace) each time would take ages! To do this for one price change would be madness

- Importing (using update) does not handle the section contents correctly e.g. If the original section contained 8 products and the same section (in the import file) contains only 7 products there will still be 8 products after the import, this is because actinic does not delete the section contents before importing (using an update)

This is why I must mark the sections (in the import file) for deletion then get actinic to purge the catalog, THEN do the import, then the upload.

If actinic handled the command line switches as requested then the automation would be seamless (which is my problem), they have't since ver 5 so I can't imagine they will in ver 8.

Hope that all makes sense.

[NormanRouxel]

- If I imported the whole site (replace) each time would take ages! To do this for one price change would be madness

Well that's what all my Norcat users do every day for sites with many thousand products. I just checked on the site I know best and they tell me that the import phase takes under 2 minutes and they sometimes do some other end of day jobs while they wait. They have 4000 live products, each with colours and sizes, many with lots of combinitaions of colours and sizes. They're using a 2 year old bottom of the range Dell to do the job.

Another things springs to mind. It is also possible to mark a product for deletion in the Import. That way you can get rid of unwanted products by just importing the appropriate records.

PS My Norcat users would love that auto-import-switch as they do just the same as you, hitting Yes/OK about 12 times every day. Indeed if it had an extra option to do the Import, then run an Update that would be perfect. I'm patiently waiting too.

[Stuart Morley]

Import:That's one hell of a fast import! - I'll try that

Product Deletion in Import: How do you do this then? (not needed in replace of course!)

Command Switch: I cant believe why actinic still haven't done this simple command line switch, it should take minutes to code.

I have a slight problem with a complete import and that is that some of the catalog is manually done (the top sections). I guess I could export the whole lot, chop out the beginning stuff and append that to any generated pages before a replaced import.

However it still means that it's a manual operation - everything else is automated apart from this - it's crazy.

So I still have the initial problem

[NormanRouxel]

From the Actinic Help, re valid fields in the Hierarchical Import

IsDeleted

Is this product to be marked for a purge?

If you import in 'update' mode and the import file contains a deleted product, the matching product in the content tree will be marked for deletion

[NormanRouxel]

PS. I just tested a real-world Hierarchical / Import / Replace here using a 150 Section, 2,500 product import file of 1.8Mb containing 22,000 lines of text. This took just 15 seconds on my (very fast) system.

[Stuart Morley]

I have tried the complete import and you're correct it's VERY fast, much much much faster than the update import (which I suppose makes sense)

The only problem with the deleted sections in the update import is that the product has been deleted in the source database, so doesn't exist in the import file! - Hence the need for a routine that runs before actinic loads that purges the sections and products.

Despite all of this it's still not automatic! Just amazes me wit all these sage links and automation programs etc we still can't do an import using a command line switch.