Gun shy about Apsona, need some advice

[SilverHD]

Glenn:

Thank you for the constructive and very good advice. You said "Zen Cart has certain field names for its product data" Glenn, where do I find that information so I can begin matching things up?

Thanks again,

Silver

[RixStix]

I thought Apsona EXPORTED certain, specific data FROM a zencart database TO a CSV file for use somewhere else (and was written for V1.3.8).

It sounds like you are wanting to Export from somewhere else TO IMPORT to zencart database.

If that is the case, it doesn't sound like Apsona is intended to do what you want to do.

[SilverHD]

Rick:

Thanks for the input but it was my understanding that it did the same thing as EP4, only was easier to operate. At least that's what I have read. I know that they have updated it to work with 1.5.1. Take a look: http://apsona.com/pages/ec/sa.html

Silver

[RixStix]

That's different. I was looking at what is available from the plugins area. No mention of having to download it from a 3rd party website, so they don't offer any support via the zencart forum. I'd expect them (apsona) to support it directly from their website in that case but the last support date is at least a couple years old or even abandoned.

Sorry I couldn't help.

[lankeeyankee]

Nothing wrong with easy populate, been using it for years. Am about to start checking out pentaho since it sounds like it will save a lot of time. I was always leery of apsona since the server files are hosted on their server. Why do that? It makes 0 sense to me and I am always really hesitant about giving full access to scripts that run on a 3rd party server. There's really no need to do it so it makes me suspicious. I don't know why they don't just have a package where everything is hosted on your server under your control.

I don't believe you can automatically map fields from your vendor to fields that match the zc db in apsona. Although from what Steve said it sounds like Pentaho is exactly the right tool for the job. I have customized easy populate to add custom fields from the db, the table you use is products so any field in products can be used in easy populate including fields from add-ons like MAP or MSRP etc. There is a newer version of ep that allows you to specify the custom fields in the admin configuration so the ep file doesn't need to be hacked like I did.