Disconnect from External Data Source

Can anyone suggest the best method to disconnect a catalog from its external data source.

To hopefully better explain the requirements:

The current catalog uses an external datasource to maintain product prices, codes, names & descriptions, by simply dropping the link to the external datasource Actinic uses its local copy of data which is incorrect. So what needs to happen is that Actinic somehow needs to update its local copy of this data before the external link is removed.

Hope this makes sense and any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Jan]

Try this :

1) Export your catalog to file.
2) Switch off external linking
3) Import the file you created in 1)

Regards,

[CreativeNRG]

I did File > Export but when I use your method all of the prices are reset to 0.00

[Jan]

Did you import the file you exported?

Regards,

[Mike Hughes]

I'm not sure I really follow this discussion so apologies in advance if I'm going off at a tangent.

If you're linking to an external database then going to the catalog view and pressing F5 will update the data.

Mike

[Jan]

The problem is that Actinic loads the external data on the fly, the original database fields are not changed, so if you unlink, you data goes back to how if was before you linked in the first place.

Regards,

[Mike Hughes]

Thanks Jan, now I understand. I can see that this would be a problem. Shouldn't actinic overwrite the local database or is there a good reason for not doing this?

Mike

[Jan]

It think it would be quite slow to do that - currently the data is read which takes time, but to read it and copy it over would be much slower. Also I think some people rely on it working this way, although I can't think of an example just at the moment.

Regards,

[CreativeNRG]

Did you import the file you exported?

Regards,

Yes I imported it which is when I saw all prices reset to zero.

[Jan]

Hi Steve,

This looks like a bug, the prices exported are the original prices rather than your linked prices, same goes for the froogle feed.

All I can think of now if to switch linking back on and use my froogle export to create an import file to reset the prices, there is a free trial here :

http://www.mole-end.biz/acatalog/Product_Mash.html

or to use a SQL statement on the database to pull the details into the catalog from the external source. My froogle export is here :

It would also be worth contacting Actinic support directly about this as they might be able to help.

Regards,