Pim

Rewriting software is good. Code katas are good. Painful but good. Implementing the PIM on one platform and reimplementing it on a different one is especially painful. Implementing API instead of direct database connection feels nice though. As well as having an established framework like Symfony2. I had no real problem with the other one but when I will have to support it longer than the support will be available for the framework, sounds like a good idea to just switch – and learn everything again.

In the past few weeks I have been working on the PIM (Product Management System) for my Magento instance. With the current setup we can work on the products without having to touch Magento admin. Product data is versioned and synchronised both ways on every PIM product list display – this is not optimal but works well, I will probably create a cron job. Attributes and attribute sets are also synchronised, CRUD is ready but I don’t want to show it on the frontend.

Product Information Management systems help you to manage product information centrally. In a sense Magento is a PIM. Magento doesn’t allow you to have versioned product data. In most cases this is not a problem, because you want to sell based on the latest information and you have a reliable content management team. But what if this is not the case, you have computer illiterate shop assistants or old people trying to manage the site?