[Zope] Zope and Sage?

[Philip Kilner]

Hi Matt,

In article <D11D0F8B-39C1-11D7-ABA6-000A95669874@studiolift.com>, Matt 
Carey wrote:
> i have no idea about Sage and the Sage website talks about its own 
> solutions. anyone got any ideas/helpful hints?
>

I have some experience with Sage - but it may be out of date. Here are 
some pointers for direction...

First of all, there are zillions of versions of Sage - you need to know 
which one they are using, as they have very different levels of 
capability. There are two routes which I think would bear 
investigating, and one caution you may wish to bear in mind...

ODBC - Some versions of Sage have ODBC access. This is primarily useful 
for getting data /out/ of Sage, but may have the capability to let you 
write the invoice straight into Sage. The way accounts s/w uses 
postings often makes it inadvisable / fiddly / unsupportable to write 
directly to the system.

Import - When I was addressing a similar problem (This was with an 
ancient version of Financial Controller) we fond that the system could 
import a batch of transactions from a delimitted ascii file. Writing 
this file out from the POS application was trivial, and the import and 
processing was adequately (Hey, I don't like 'em!) supported by Sage.

The caution is just about how "direct" such a link can be. Assuming 
Zope is running out on the net somewhere and their copy of Sage is in 
house, this is going to be a batch process. In the past I have met 
restistance to this, although eventually the idea that "better a batch 
process that works than a live process that doesn't" sinks in. There 
are approaches to stock control and display of qty. on hand to 
purchasers etc. that do not rely on "live" connections, and I would 
advocate a conservative approach to this stuff unless these guys are 
operating out of their own NOC...<g>

Oh, Sage do have some sort of e-Commerce offering - but I wouldn't go 
there myself...

Regards,

PhilK

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 11:13 GMT  @ Vaio

Email: phil@xfr.co.uk / Voicemail & Facsimile: 07092 070518

Tell me and I forget.
Show me and I remember.
Involve me and I understand.
 - Chinese saying