unallocated external products - v7.06

[completerookie]

Hi all,
I'm running v7.06 (just upgraded from 7.04) perhaps this is the problem? and I have external links to my own database - AFAIK, these were displaying correctly, its certainly the first time I've noticed them as faulty

when I look at the Content tree from within actinic itself, I see a new section at the bottom called "Unallocated external products" - in there is a whole group of products that I clearly recognise as being real products, but they are NOT in the correct place.

When I click on ANY of these products, the Product Details pane is completely empty - no details whatsoever.

I've opened up the "Product" table from the database, and looked (and compared) a known good product (one that does display) and a known bad one (doesn't display) and cannot see ANY difference other that the title.

I've also opened up the external file (linked) and again compared, - NO DIFFERENCE other than the title. - both products were very similar apart from the RefNumber and the ProductTitle.

so the question is
what do I look for thats faulty
in what table (I assume the actinic database)

I do see a couple of entries with the prefix "[No reference]" and I'm going to simply delete those.

I am a very experienced ms-access programmer, and would happily write a quick update query if I knew what field(s) would be causing the problem. (I would of course take all backup precautions etc)

anyone got any ideas please

[Jan]

Ignore the no-reference ones, with the others, did you say that the reference numbers were different, if so then this is the problem, you need to update either Actinic or the external database to make them the same - check for trailing spaces as well.

Cheers,

[completerookie]

the no-reference ones are not a problem, I'll delete them from the database and that will be that) - its the others thats the problems,

I've already checked for the trailing spaces etc

the numbers are identical on both the externally linked database and within the catalog database - and thats whats so confusing

If I write a simple query in my external database, linking the two tables (correctly keyed on the reference number) - the information finds each other. so I don't think its that but . . .

many thanks Jan

[Jan]

What options do you have set up on the Actinic external links page (the three in the top left hand corner) and also if you look at the products that are refusing to link, do they have the use external data ticked, if not, tick it.

Regards,

[completerookie]

sorry, been working away all day.
All three items are ticked, and many, many of the items are correctly linked. when I click on ANY of the problematical ones, there is ABSOLUTELY NO data showing ! and thats the prob. I can't see any data, but when I look in the db's I can't see anything obviously wrong

[Jan]

You need to click on the matching product in the database, not the external products, what is the use external data set to in the products in your Actinic database.

Regards,

[completerookie]

I have 2-3000 items that are successfuly linked in the database, and all show up the linked data EXCEPT a few that sit in this special category,

They were ALL linked, and happily showing the external data, the problem is that now, they are not showing the external data and they have moved into the special category.

surely if actinic is "moving them to this sepcial category", then actinic (perhaps one of the moderators) could tell me what causes them to go into that category - afterall, the programme successfully?? detected that something was wrong, perhaps they (actinic) could enlighten me as to what that have detected is wrong !

[Jan]

Ok. I'll leave it to one of the moderators to reply ... don't expect you know this but I was the programmer that was reponsible for external linking at Actinic for several years.

Regards,

[completerookie]

you learn something new every day.

99.9% of the time the external linking works fine, but when it goes wrong, its not easy to resolve - perhaps one of the improvements to v8 would be a more useful message - I've tried doing a backup and that doesn't generate any useful error messages about the apparant mismatch in data.

Lets wait for a moderator.

kev

[cdicken]

both products were very similar apart from the RefNumber and the ProductTitle

OK - you say now that the field you are using for the product reference is identical within Actinic and in your external data? That's good then. All you need to do is select 'Use External Data' on the products within your Actinic sections that should be using external data - but aren't.

then actinic (perhaps one of the moderators) could tell me what causes them to go into that category

It's not a proper section - hence you cannot see the product data in that section. It's just where Actinic stores records that are in your external data, but there is no corresponding record within your Actinic data. The way you create a corresponding record is to drag and drop the products in 'Unallocated External Products' into your tree, wherever you want them to appear.

[completerookie]

Many thanks for the update, I need to try to see what went wrong

It's not a proper section - hence you cannot see the product data in that section.

Can you just confirm the field [Product].[nParentSectionID] is the pointer to the actual section details and that that links to [Catalog section].[nSectionID] to find the details of the actual section.

I've checked the settings and there does'nt apear to be any external links that should be affecting it - but clearly something has gone wrong.

I made a backup copy over the weekend and dragged one of the invalid entries to the correct section and the information is now correctly displayed, but I need to look inside the tables to see if I can see what went wrong.

regards

Kev

[cdicken]

The only thing I can suggest is that a batch of product reference numbers got changed (maybe by an import?) and then changed back, and this broke the link between the external database and Actinic for those products.