Archive: data

Some times you might have a legacy system that is built around csv or similar and you need to import an XML data source into this system. Of course one possibility is to build full XML handling capabilities into the system. Perhaps a more sane solution is to simply convert the XML to CSV so [...]

So now that everyone uses Google Shopping, Google are making life difficult for the merchants and they all have to jump through hoops. The current push from Google is enforcing some things that are very difficult for small companies to conform with :- * EAN Numbers - This is the BIG one, Google are making [...]

MySQL has a nice feature that you may well not have used called Triggers. These are little SQL statements that are tied to events on table and then perform some extra work. The idea being that you will check the values for a row and if they meet some conditions you will take some further [...]

The new Government led by David Cameron has recently made clear its intentions to open up public data as part of the ongoing campaign to make public data public. You can read the full letter here: http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/statements-and-articles/2010/05/letter-to-government-departments-on-opening-up-data-51204 More Reading:Generic XML to CSV ConverterGoogle Merchant Centre/Froogle/Google Shopping/Base Changes, Problems and SolutionsMySQL Triggers – A Quick GuideChecking [...]

If you want to check coverage against ICEcat, the best thing to do is to import their dump file available here into a MySQL database. The file format is a bit unusual, but here is a nice command you can run. You need to have created a database in it with a table called prodid_d [...]