Syncronizing item lists

imurphy · 2008-04-04

I have a requirement to syncronize items betwen two companies. Just the list of items and their configurations. The idea is that company B will purchase everything from Company A but they will share the same list of products which Company A will purchase and warehouse.

I've seen various approaches to this mentioned. One is to share the table - something which doesn't seem to come highly recommended. Another is to write code to do the job.

Anyone care to comment? Does a commercial addon exist to do this type of thing?

No point in reinventing the wheel.

Regards
Ian Murphy

Yaroslav_Gaponov · 2008-04-04

Hi

Just look for DataPerCompany property of the tables

imurphy · 2008-04-04

Do you what sort of side effects this would cause. I've read postings from MVPs who have warned away from doing this due to problems with secondary tables.
Certainly replicating a table is less risky than sharing since you are always working against a copy.

Has anyone reading ever actually done this sort of thing. Can't imagine its something unusual.

Ian

imurphy · 2008-04-04

'Do you what sort of side effects this would cause.'
should of course read

'Do you know what sort of side effects this would cause?'

DenSter · 2008-04-04

Yaroslav Gaponov wrote:

Just look for DataPerCompany property of the tables

You NEVER want to set any master tables to global tables, that will only give you problems. Anybody who suggests this does not know about these problems. It seems like an easy solution but it comes with a lot of issues. I am not saying it cannot be done, I am saying that it will involve MUCH MORE than just setting the DataPerCompany property.

In my opinion there are two valid approaches:
1 - you create a separate global table that is a copy of the master table from which each company draw records from
2 - you write code to synchronize records between companies using CHANGECOMPANY logic

DaveT · 2008-04-04

Hi Ian,

A solution from a different angle is to use the responsibility centre functionality to acheive your goal. You can then filter the chart of accounts / statement by responsibility centre. It's a trade off the amount of Dev you need to do on sync'ing verses splitting reporting/form. I have been involved in implementations with multiple trading companies on one database company and use the responsibility centre split for addresses / logo.

It depends how indepentant the companies are and the overlap of customers (your other post) - e.g. two statements or grouping on one.

girish.joshi · 2008-04-04

There is an add on to do this sort of thing. LS Retail Data Director.

The data director was designed for a retail environment in which separate databases (the store and the headquarters) had to share master data (in particular items).

For replicating Items between the two databases, it would work really well.

It has a number of advantages over SQL Server replication - but the best one is that with this method, you can change the schema (add fields) of the table relatively easily without having to rebuild your replication (unless you want the fields to come across). This situation makes standard SQL replication just fall down.

imurphy · 2008-04-15

Thanks for the info. I have spoke with LS but their product is just slightly over the top of this particular problem. It would cost 16k eur just for the base product which would then require changes since it doesn't have this functionality.

girish.joshi · 2008-04-15

Yes, it can be quite expensive. But, as you described your problem, it would not require any modification.

In fact, your problem is part of any standard LS implementation.

Typically, in LS, you create Template company in the Head Office that contains all of the master data. It is updated automatically with the Data Director whenever master information is entered in the Head Office. This would satisfy your requirement.

The purpose of the template company is to more easily deploy databases at the Stores, but otherwise it functions quite well simple as its own company.

SobyOne · 2008-04-15

I'll do it for $900 (USD).

It's simple enough to solve using the proper code. I can finish it by the end of day Friday if you're interested.

imurphy · 2008-04-17

Thanks for the offer. At the moment this comes down to whether or not the client wants to maintain the articles manually - something I don't see as being particularly onerous as they don't exactly have a lot of articles.

You never know we may take you up on the offer - but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Savatage · 2008-04-17

FYI Take a look at

Data transfer wizard
http://www.mibuso.com/dlinfo.asp?FileID=751

Or perhaps Sql Syncro
http://www.mibuso.com/dlinfo.asp?FileID=883

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