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MySQL project: CSV file to MySQL
Posted by: Doug Stewart
Date: December 11, 2005 05:54AM

Quotation Required:

I have a job which consists of several related activities. I’m looking for a quote either for the entire job, or any part of it (I’m willing to hire different people for different parts). Following is a description of the job and a specification.

Please note: This specification is written by a non-technical person. Consequently, parts of it may not make sense or may request that things be done in one way, when another approach would be much easier and logical. Consequently, please feel free to disagree with the specification and specify an alternative approach.

Objective:

I have a MySQL database which is used to store property descriptions. In other words, each “record” would describe one property (type of house, price, house details, etc.). A colleague has a similar database, but stores slightly different information for each house. My objective is to take the properties on his database and move them onto my database. As he updates his database daily, I will need to copy his properties onto my database on a daily basis.

I do not have direct access to his database. However, he will put the property details into files which I have FTP access to. He has 8 agents working for him, and for each agent there will be:
• One CSV (Comma Separated Value??) file which has all the properties for that agent. There is one record per property (each record having 50 fields).
• For most properties there will be a number of JPG photos. Each property with photos will have one file, with between 1 and 6 photos.

Required work

For each agent, I need to:
1. FTP the property file and photos onto my internet site directory
2. Copy the property file details into my SQL database. This involves not only a copy, but a certain amount of reformatting as my database has slightly different fields than his. For example, in my SQL field PROPERY-TYPE I have either “House” or “Apartment”. He has either “H” or “A”. I’ve written the Algorithm for the conversions required, but this needs to be converted to the appropriate language. To avoid duplicate property descriptions, the software will need to check the PROPERY-ID field of the record to determine if the property is already in the database (if so, it should overwrite the existing description rather than add a new one).
3. Extract the photos from each photo file, assign them appropriate names, and then copy them to my photo directory. Each file can contain between 1 and 6 photos
4. The SQL database will then need to have the corresponding property record updated to contain the names of the corresponding photos.

This needs to be automated as much as possible.

Quotation

Ideally I would like to have an approximate quote for points 1 to 4 above. However, I would accept quotes for individual items.

I believe that step 1 above can be done with a few simple commands which effectively copy an entire directory from my colleague’s site to mine. I have not yet confirmed this.

I believe that step 2 above is relatively straight-forward coding. I’ve written a detailed specification which states exactly what must be done for each field, so little or no design work is required. Just coding.

As I haven’t provided a detailed specification, I do not expect an exact quote. However, I’m looking for a rough indication and comments on what approach (e.g. what language/application and why) would be used to do the above. Any quote provided is non-binding (after all, I can’t ask for a firm quote until I’ve provided the detailed specification.

For some of this work there may be existing applications, which merely need to be configured. I’m quite willing to accept a quotation which involves purchase of an off-the-shelf application and configuration thereof (for one or more parts of the above job, this may be a more economical approach).

The response to this job description (both price and suggested approach) will be used to choose the programmer, who will then be provided a more detailed description.

Regards,
Doug Stewart (dougstewart@astraconsultants.com)

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MySQL project: CSV file to MySQL
December 11, 2005 05:54AM


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