Web Application

Ok now for the sizzle, the web interface that everyone sees and is wowed over.

After a little html/java script programming I decided very quickly I had very little patience for learning a new learning a new programming language. When I made the change from a DOS (Clipper) programmer to a Windows programmer I just about quit programming. Most programmers egos are way to fragile and mine is no different. So using the excuse of staying true to our business model and focusing on the database and the catalog I started looking for partners who would be willing to handle just the presentation layer, no database access. Now I’m the first to admit, we struck gold the first time out with Mark Lincoln from www.CycleConsulting.com. Mark has forgotten more about programming than most people will ever know. Mark wrote an interesting article that was to be published by EXT-JS, his development tool of choice. So instead of me writing something up, here is a link to the article: http://www.showmetheparts.com/Html/SmtpImplementationSpotlight.pdf

ShowMeConnect - Data Access

ShowMeConnect is the most important piece of software in our application tool set. Our goal was to separate the database from the presentation layer because we really only wanted to focus on the catalog and not development of another shop management or warehouse system. There already were lots of companies doing that and our mission was to help suppliers get data into the market place faster than the other options available. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for others to access our catalog and add their own business logic. ShowMeConnect is a rich set of API (application programming interface) for accessing any information in the database and return a well structured XML document. The beauty of this strategy is that others don’t have to use all of the data in our catalog, they can cherry pick what they need. For example if a web site needed a group of images for a part number, instead of waiting for the supplier to send him images, they could make a call with a API and we would return a XML file with the URL’s, Height and Width of all the images we have for that part number. This helps everyone in the supply change. Instead of the supplier having to spend time ($) trying to make sure everyone had their current images, they could tell their customers to found them in one place. The customer benefits because they will always have access to the latest images. One of the really cool things we built in was to take advantage of PIES digital assets. The supplier doesn’t even need to send us the actual images; they can send us the URL where to find the image on their servers, saving the industry the time and money spent trying to send images to everyone.

With this strategy of decoupling the data and the presentation it should make it easy for some smart mobile application developers to create iPhone or Droid applications without having to build the database. They can focus on what they do best.

Next up: ShowMeTheParts.com.

Lets Get Started

I came across an interesting web site http://www.hubspot.com/ that will evaluate your web site. You just need to supply your email address and your web address. They will run a free evaluation of your web site and provide some really cool results. Here are our results. http://websitegrader/com/site/www.showmetheparts.com. We found a couple very simple things that we could do to improve our site right away. One thing missing was a blog. Now we already have a Facebook page and Tweet all the time, what could we possibility blog about. I thought maybe people would be interested in the some of the inner workings of how ShowMeTheParts is being developed and extended. So this blog was born. We have done a lot of really cool things with our technology over the last 3 years and not a lot of great communication on what we have done. So this blog will serve as a log of ShowMeTheParts.

Let’s provide a little history first. ShowMeTheParts was created out of frustration we would hear from our catalog customers about how long it would take for their catalog content to make it into the hands (or eyes) of their customers. Vertical Development’s main business has always been providing software solution to aftermarket suppliers that help them maintain their catalogs and produce the printed books and electronic files. www.VerticalDev.com So their pain was our pain. Since we know a little about automotive catalog database, we thought we could build something that could be of value to their customers and so ShowMeTheParts was created.

Our technology actually consists of 3 pieces of software besides the database.

ShowMeBuilder is our content management tool that our product managers use every day to load data we receive from our data providers. One of our goals was to turn data around in 24 hours, so we needed a tool that could easily replace a data set with a new version. Depending on the source file, it takes 3 steps to replace data set. Read the file, Remove old file and load new one. It’s really that simple. We also needed to follow industry standards, so we adopted the VCDB as our application catalog. One of the biggest road blocks other aftermarket catalogs encounter is the conversion from the industry standard tables into their own propriety vehicle table. This process takes time and could cause mistakes if not handled properly. So the ShowMeBuilder takes data from our data providers and quickly loads it with little conversion, that how we achieve that 24 hour turn around.

Ok that is enough for now. I need to get back to programming. Next time I'll take about ShowMeTheParts.com