looking for better solution other than xml

Question

I have currently 100 stores each with separate database. I want to develop a web portal which will display all 100 stores and if someone wants to search he will get the products from 100 stores on this portal rather going to different store's website. i was using xml for this purpose but it taking too long to parse xml file and filter the records of each store according to search keyword. i was generating xml when any store add new or edit product record. And on the portal website i was just parsing these generated xml (using PHP) files.

Please guide me if there is any better solution other than xml parsing. Let me clear one thing that all these stores and portal are hosted on same server and using subdomain for each store.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I think sphinxsearch fits to your requirement.

Sphinx is an open source full text search server which accepts input from various sources like mysql & xml.

IN your case you can use xml/mysql as input source for indexes.

Key point with sphinx is once your indexer is ready you search response will be very quick. You can update your indexes in real time (for new product added in system).

Hope this help.

~K

Answer 2

My first piece of advice to you is this: HIRE SOMEONE! If you have 100 stores, you certainly have the cashflow to devote to some sort of development project that is managed and planned by a professional.

Secondly, you are looking for someone with extensive database skill and experience. Please take the time to hire the right person, then get out of their way and let them do the job. If there is one thing I have learned in my time in the business world, it's that the single greatest hindrance to a job well done by IT, is a "boss" that doesn't recognize when he needs to hand over the reins to someone else who knows better.

The best way to think of it is this... if you know nothing about databases, and you were to start TODAY to learn everything you'd need to learn to do it RIGHT, you could expend the equivalent of a few working years in doing that. Is it worth the loss of productivity for your business? Probably not. So pay a guy $60,000 to $80,000 depending on his capabilities, and have him do it for you. You get a final product that's far more certain to be done right and work well, and you get it sooner, so you can get a faster ROI.

As far as what technology to use? I'm not even going to try answering that... it's not really for you to know or decide. Hire the right person, and let them tell you what you need.

Answer 3

Use a single database. Distinguish between stores with a store table that you reference with a foreign key column in any table where it is relevant (which is likely only going to be the stock table).