We've just spent our £2,000th on having someone sit and click, sit and click, sit and click their way one by one through the products, adding the attributes one at a time, one at a time, one at a time. Moving the products, one at a time, one at a time, one at a time. We can't justify this any more, it's taking ALL our margin, and now that it's been made clear that rewite of the admin is going to be about 2008, we're going to get some custom programming done for a windows front end to try and make the process a little less costly. (we seem to be the only store with more than a handful of products with attributes that is bothered by this).

So, what do we tell a programmer? I'm assuming they'll do something in VB, but the big sticking point is this: What is it about the way the DB works, that means that no more than one product can be moved, at one time? Or that no more than one attribute can be added at one time? Or to put it another way, can someone remind me why we have the "M" symbol, rather than a tickbox and "with selected, do <whatever>" at the bottom of a page? Like phpmyadmin, for example.
I know it can't be done easily (otherwise, it would have been!), and I remember reading why about 2 years ago, but I can't find that thread.

Or, to put it another way, is enough of the schema available here and in the wiki, so that someone with the right expertise could come and write what we want? And most importantly, something that was entirely seperate from the Zen admin itself, so far as product admin goes? Other aspects (orders, postage etc) are fine, but product admin is sapping every single penny and the will to live from everyone who touches it!