Using XML imported from a proprietary database.

[sleepypinguin]

My experience level with PHP is n00bie and we are trying to get our business online to sale over the web. After we have found osCommerce with easy populate to be a great help in this matter but want to be able to update the website from our office accounting system to avoid creating each item from the /admin (whereas we have thousands of items. We are using a proprietary accounting/inventory system running off of Linux www.abcsinc.com for the office. We have been offered to have a system set up to for us that will do this, using ?asp? on a windows server for 15k,(ouch) www.builderwire.com .This proprietary system has the capability to import export xml if a script is passed with an argument i.e.. to get a file of all the inventory in xml format, at the command line pass the command in the right directory $user@localhost: :dbrslexe -s bwinvlvl.app > /tmp/out.xml will send an xml formatted file of the inventory called out.xml in /tmp. I am trying to learn how to call a script or pass a command from a web server running apache, php and mysql on the Linux server with proprietary account/inventory system, grabbing the xml formatted file and then use it in a useful way on a webpage. My problem is that I do not know how to approach this issue. Not asking for a babysitting, just looking for a suggestion or point in the right direction.

[Guest]

do you know how to program xml? how well do you know the structure of your accounting system? this is along the lines of odbc . ..

final thing, is you get what you pay for, if you trust the guys to do the work and they will do it in a time frame which is acceptable, else they start paying you for each day it does not work . . i did something similar and it does take quite a bit of time.

[sleepypinguin]

Thanks for you reply, as far as my knowledge is on xml, I have taken the tutorials on xml from w3m site, but have not put to practice. My knowledge of the accounting system is very extensive (front-end and Back-end). And as far as, getting what you pay for, I totally agree with you, the thing is I have builderwire.com xml code from one of their customers, case you want to see http://www.sleepypinguin.net/home/xml/ ,and its not 15k worth of code, and for the record, there customers end up paying 20k some how. I?m not on a deadline, I?m just curious on how to work this, and if I can get it to work with osCommerce. This is how they set my buddy up, he bought a Linux server the call a ?web connector?, the web connector calls scripts from the accounting server (also Linux) grabbing the xml formatted information, and serving it to web. Mibble I would be interested in your similar scenario.