New Project, over 1 million products

None Taken.

I understand. I did my research, and have been looking at different forums to find someone/something similar to what is ahead. Nothing thus far. Maybe it was a mistake to ask the question here.

We have used OSCommerce, Zencart and Magento. We do typically re-write most of the code for better control and most client thus far have had less than 1000 product. From what we have seen, it would be very difficult to maintain it using the mentioned scripts.

Thanks

 

None of the scripts mentioned would handle it very well. I doubt any type of open source is going to work well.
Even on a robust server they are not optimized enough to handle the large queries correctly.
And then when searching a product.........well, doing a broad search on that many items may require a lunch break waiting for the returns.
Without spending a ton of cash on a solution you may have to think about creating a good caching system.

What type of equipment are you going to be running this site on? I believe lots of memory will be your biggest asset in this. The more you can cache the better.

 

you need to write a script

 

i think MYSQL US BETTER........Go FOr it...

 

Just the size of the database alone is ~1TB assuming you'd have 1mb of data for each product... need to think how to cluster/distribute it. Amazon just came out with their cloud Amazon RDS based on MySQL which can be an option i guess.

 

How much can you make with all your products?

 

Judging by the size of my cart db with only 15K records, I'd bet the total db size wouldn't exceed a few GB, depending on the level of detail in it.

Having worked on a few multi-million record databases in the past (mostly Oracle), I don't see what everyone is so worried about. Sure, you may need to denormalize the data a bit so that you trade a minor hit on inserts in exchange for less joins on your selects, and hence much improved performance.

Query optimisation, um yeah. Caching, hello. Basic 101 tweaks that any framework is going to need before throwing that much data at it.

Still, for a project of this size, I probably would plug in something a little beefier. For example the engine downloadbuyer dot com are using. I've had a look under the hood, and would be comfortable throwing about anything at it.

Good luck with the project!

 

"Have never" you missed the never from da guy post bro. btw 1m iz not impossible. Yall never heard of drop shipping?

 

I'm glad i don't have that many products, imagine updating the product descriptions :-s

 

copy that. I think this client is not for real because anyone who can truely offer 1million+ products obviously has resourses or, at least, a 50% business plan. It sounds like some dropshipper adding what he can.

You got that right too but Walmart carries an average of 3 million different barcoded products. The difference between an internet shop and a regular retail store is that a store will only count in the products physically in the store as opposed to the internet guys who will add in everything their wholesalers have to offer even though they do not actually carry the item. On top of that typically a wholesaler will have a list of discountinued products at around 30% of all of their products even though they cannot offer a restock it makes the company look larger than life.

 

Magento will be perfect for your project, Good Luck with it .

 

I think magento is best for these much item quentity. I don't think other shopping carts can handle this much.

 

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/28275/

"We were working with 22k products and everuthing goes fine."

 

This is a huge project and I doubt you will be satisfied with typical off the shelf shopping carts.

I think the biggest questions once you have a million products into a database.

How do you manage content?
How do you manage availability?
How do you manage pricing?

Even if you are able to control these (which you'll need a large staff for), do realize that a simple price change script can take hours to update across that many SKUS.

 

make it easy to add so many products?

 

You mention that off the shelf carts will not work. You might consider that building a PCI capable cart from scratch will require a massive investment. Please look into scaling with hardware, it will save you time and money.

As for pre-built carts - Magento and X-Cart. Optimize, optimize, optimize.

 

Google Checkout. You can use it to create an online store using a Google Docs spreadsheet.

https://storegadgetwizard.appspot.com/storegadgetwizard/index.html

 

You'll need an elegant solution.

Enterprise Magento ~9k/yr may do the job, but you'll certainly need a dedicated server with any software you choose which will cost a pretty penny too.