CGC Service Needed

[sterlingcomics]

I called CGC the other day--and I am looking for the following service. It's actually a web based service that will allow me to barcode the CGC book and then return the information (Title, Issue, grade, etc) to me in a format I can use in a web application.

 

Right now I know that when you sign on to the society and get this information, but you can't use it in an application. For instance, I'd like it to help collectors key in their inventory information in a program. It could also help when buyers want to sell their stuff. Except for the price, you'd be set?

 

Any dealers out there lobbying CGC to get this? Would anyone use this service if it was available?

[towards2112]

Doubt if you'll ever see this available. Business app is moderately

expensive if I'm not mistaken. The AS 400 system we use at my

day job is archaic, unintelligable, azz-backwards, primitive 1970's

technology, BUT, in the hands of a knowledgeable and creative

mind, it is extremely scaleable. Our sysreps add in several

thousand sku's a month and even though they have absolutely no

idea what the product is, or what is is used for, it works almost

flawlessly. The POP hardware is relatively inexpensive, but it

is the software that's always the killer. Tends to be leased, not

sold. And at $600 a month, trust me when I tell you that I push

for accurate and timely data.

[stynxno]

this actually wouldn't be hard to implement from cgc's standpoint, however, i'm not sure if cgc would like their servers hammered everytime someone uses your program.

 

you might try and see if you could get cgc to send you the information, and then you could set up the information on your own servers. cgc could send the data to you in an xml format whenever they update their census.

 

however, this would take time and effort on cgc's part and it might not be worthwile to them. i believe if they have their IT system set up properely, it wouldn't take them long to develop this application but it's still time that they would have to spend. you would need to show them what benefit they would receive from this.

 

also, the fact that cgc is also using coldfusion is a sign that their IT system isn't as great as it could be.

[sterlingcomics]

I assume they are using IIS since they are using ASP (although I understand ASP can run on other platforms with a port). From a traffic standpoint, the web service could be load balanced on just a few cheap Intel boxes to be effective. I wouldn't even mind a modest subscription fee for the service.

 

BTW, CGC says they ARE looking into it--they wanted me to call back in a month or so.

[fantastic_four]

I doubt this web service would be used enough to even warrant a little web farm. It should be so lightweight and such a simple one-table lookup that I doubt it would cause much of a hiccup on one server even if 10 to 20 people hit it at once, which really shouldn't happen.

 

The tought part about web services is figuring out how to limit people's access to them. If you let clients access them freely, then some insufficiently_thoughtful_person could write a page that queries your service repeatedly in loops...perhaps by iterating through every single bar code number combination to scrape all of your data out once an hour (or something unreasonable like that).

 

I'd be shocked, yet highly pleased, if CGC were to create such a web service!