Call for Suggestions

This is a call for suggestions really. I'm wondering whether anyone has a[n] (better) idea of how to do the following (aside from what I thought of already): Our company keeps the entire price list online, and I'm in charge of maintaining the website containing all of those prices. The problem I have is, whenever prices change, it's a hassle having to go through certain pages to change it every dang time. What's even more problematic, is when they completely drop certain services, and/or add new ones to the list. So, the idea I came up with was to put these prices in a database (probably mySQL), and have the website/pages query the DB every time to get the prices for a specific product, whatever that may be. Problems: - If the mySQL server is down, so are all of the prices. This means I have to build some sort of redundancy for the DB. Maybe multiple mySQL servers (different machines) where the web server will just poll, and see which one is operational before querying? This may also be helpful for load balancing? - It may take a while to fetch these prices, on products that have a long list of prices. (Then again, we all know that Netscape takes a loooooooong time to display a large table.) - What happens when a service is completely removed from the price book? I have to update the DB as well. - And what about when they ADD a new service? Or rename it? And to add another twist to this whole idea: if I'm going to a DB setup, how can I make it so that I don't have to personally change the prices every time, but instead, have them (them being upper management) change the prices themselves, and the website gets updated as they do it (this also avoids me making mistakes on the prices, and/or services). Also keeping in mind that all of our web servers are unix based, and all of the machines these people work on, are Win32 based (Windows 95/98/NT) -- Description of what I had in mind: Have tables that contain the product name/description, and the different pricing structure. Have the web page generate a dynamic list of all the services in the DB (as a drop down list). Have that list be specific queries to whatever the product is in the DB to get the pricing structure for that product, then generate the page for it. This way, when a product gets changed/deleted/added, the list gets dynamically updated without me having to do anything. Makes sense? Maybe.... -- I'm open to suggestions. Right now, I'm redesigning the whole site and stuff, so I figured, this is as good a time as ever. AMK4 -- W | | I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on tape somewhere. |____________________________________________________________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ashley M. Kirchner <mailto:ashley@pcraft.com> . 303.442.6410 x130 SysAdmin / Websmith . 800.441.3873 x130 Photo Craft Laboratories, Inc. . eFax 248.671.0909 http://www.pcraft.com . 3550 Arapahoe Ave #6 .................. . . . . Boulder, CO 80303, USA