Now that we have products on the website, we need to think about inventory data, specifically, which products are in stock and can be purchased by customers of the website. Again, let's detail the key points of the scenario we have to deal with:
Inventory data can come from the same three sources as our product data: the retailer's ERP system, Fabric Fashions, and Runway Collections.
The three systems present their data in the following formats: ERP presents in XML; Fabric Fashions presents in a delimited file; Runway Collections presents in a delimited file.
Inventory data can be presented to the website system many times per day from these sources. All files will be date/time-stamped so that we know the order in which they arrived.
The website system, however, only processes inventory data once per day (at midnight). It requires a file in the XML format.
As the inventory data references the product catalog data, we will face the same issue about uniqueness of SKU IDs...