Using web services for catalog delta changes in Websphere Commerce

Question

We are managing product information outside of Websphere commerce (V7, FP6, FEP5) and need to be able to update the catalog with changes. Without doing direct database manipulation (bad!) it looks like our options are Data Load Utility and Web Services. We have a consultant helping us but he insists that we not use web services. The best reason I could get for not using web services is that he "doesn't know a single company that uses web services for catalog maintance" and he will not "sign off on a design" that updates the catalog that way.

We are talking a small volume of updates... maybe a couple of updates each day with a really big day being a couple of hundred. We would like to automate this process so that we don't need to do this manually each evening. So does anybody use web services for delta updates? Is there a reason to avoid the CatEntry webservice?

Answer 1

The services were not designed for bulk updates. I have tried this before and it gets pretty messy. The BOD for catalog is designed to be used by CMC, and usually supports single operations, so you can't do transactional updates, which can leave you in some messy states. I'm inclined to agree with your consultant. I would recommend the data load utility or the mass load utility if you are disinclined to use data load.