Convertproducts.asp

Convertproducts reads the products table and tries to synchronize the prodcategories table. To overcome time limitations on very large databases, you can specify ranges of product catalogids.

The normal VP-ASP product record only holds a categoryid and possibly a subcategory id. If you have products in multiple subcategories, you can create a list of these in an unused fdield such as level3. When you load the products table, level 3 may have a list such as 5,6,99,5. These are the subcategoryids for the product. Convertproducts can use this to update the prodcategories table. To change the field being used edit prodcategories.asp and change this line to a different field name

const subcatfield="level3" ' fieldname holding subcategories

    

Data Entry

The normal VP-ASP data entry is through the VP-ASP administration. This allows full add, update, delete facilities using a browser based facility. The alternatives to using this are the following:

•  Use the VP-ASP Administration interface. This is the preferred method.

•  Use VP-ASP import facility. This is part of the VP-ASP Option Package. It allows you to maintain your database offline and then to create a file that can add/update products on your running shop. See the VP-ASP Option Package Design Guide for details.

•  You may prefer your own method of data entry such as using Microsoft Access. The information below will give you some hints on doing this.     

Using Microsoft Access to Update Products

To use Microsoft Access to do product data entry, you must be aware how VP-ASP handles categories. VP-ASP uses two tables to display products. Products table and the prodcategories table. The prodcategories table tells VP-ASP which categories a product falls into, since a product can be in any number of categories or subcategories.

When you are doing data entry for products using Access, the prodcategories table is not updated. We supply a utility called convertproducts.asp . This will update the prodcategories table based on two fields of the products table, ccategory (categoryid) and subcategory. It does not support products in more than one category or one subcategory. You must run convertproducts.asp on your running VP-ASP system after updating the products table using Access.     

Simple Category Mode

If you have no need to have products in multiple categories at all and you simply want a product to be in at most one category and at most one subcategory, you can tell VP-ASP to totally ignore the prodcategories table.

xproductsimplecategories

Yes Do not use the prodcategories table