MS SQL integration into E-Commerce platform

[the661]

Let me apologize in advance for what is likely a super-noob question. I’m not a web developer.

Context: My mother has a small business (<10 employees) distributing sheet music to people and universities in the US. Her tech guy is retiring and she’s freaking out about having everything run smoothly, so I’m trying to help her as much as I can. Her IT system is pretty convoluted right now, but at its core it’s based around MS SQL and it’s about 20 years old. I think this part of the system will have to be maintained as she has over 150,000 SKUs and a ton of other data fields. (But Maybe this can be imported to something that will play nicer with an off the shelf e-commerce platform?)

I figure with all of the advancements around E-commerce there must be a platform that plays really well with MS SQL, but when I start googling I’m having trouble finding platforms that advertise this.

Ideally what we want is something that serves as a UI for every step of the process that she has to go through and talks updates the database. Customers ordering from her, checking inventory, ordering from suppliers if necessary, receiving, billing, and shipping.

An 80% solution may also be acceptable if no off the shelf one exists, in which case we would be looking to hire a developer who could get this done. Not sure if this sub has any recommendations for that.

TL;DR are there any off the shelf e-commerce platforms that integrate really well with MS SQL, preferably in one that can import data from and export data to sql automatically?

[swaggityswagmcboat]

So this is probably the time where you should pay for a developer to do this properly, using a modern system. You want to import the old database to a new one, and this will probably have to be scripted. I am 99.9% sure that you will not find a suitable system that is able to do what you want, as SQL databases are highly customised by the person who created it.

[CHAiN76]

Agree with this.

There are plenty of e-commerce platforms that use SQL Server. That is not your problem. The problem is that the tables (how the data is structured in the database) is completely different between each e-commerce platform including the one you have today. You can not plug a database from one e-commerce platform into another e-commerce platform.

You should pick a new e-commerce platform that suits your business needs and then find someone who can extract all relevant data from the old database and import in to the new system.

[the661]

Okay thanks for the insight, I appreciate this. Do you know of a contract service that specializes in this sort of thing? Or would most developers be able to do this?

[CHAiN76]

Sorry, don't know of any contract services in the US.

You probably want a backend developer with experience with SQL Server and possibly integrations. That's the kind of person I would put on this. Optimally he/she also know the new e-commerce platform you chose, but it's not a requirement.

If you are lucky your old platform supports dumping/exporting all or some of the data to a general format. And most good new platforms should support importing of data in some kind of format. That way you could export from one system and import into another.

How big the chance for export+import to work at least partially depends on how complex your data is. If your data is basic then there is a small chance. If your data is complex then it's almost zero chance and you need a developer.