"Ghost Warehouse" Question for experienced developers to create an aggregator of data from multiple vendors on Elixir

Questions / Help
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Hello! I really need your advice, dear developers :pray: :blush:

I have a task in front of me, which I call “Ghost Warehouse” for myself :slight_smile: I need to implement minimum viable functionality, which is as follows: In the warehouse accounting system that we use (Saas + open API), I need to display the data on the availability of goods at my suppliers. So that we don’t have them in stock, but the availability data is displayed in our warehouse. For 1 product, there can be multiple suppliers with their own prices.

Here’s how it works (How I think it works):

  1. When an order is received, from my inventory system, a manufacturing order is sent to the supplier in his system. Among the data sent will be a vector image, barcode, package label, package requirements, delivery address data + some other data. Also at this stage, on our part, payment for the manufacture of this product.

  2. We have to exchange statuses throughout the entire process of manufacturing the product: After the supplier changes the status to “in assembly”, then “on packaging” and “product ready for shipment”, we should have these statuses change automatically when our supplier changes them.

It’s worth considering that I have zero programming experience. Absolutely no experience :slight_smile: So here is how I see what needs to be done.

It seems we have to implement this aggregation of data from multiple vendors (They have different systems and different formats) by API query method. Then, as I understand it, we need to aggregate this data into a database and there somehow convert this data into common formats and set it to be sent to our inventory system (We use saas with open API, their library is in Java). And then this data will be sent via API integration to e-commerce marketplaces.

My questions are:

  1. is Elixir a good language choice to solve this functionality? I know similar solutions, but they are implemented with php. Interested in choosing a technology to grow into a marketplace model, integrating with e-commerce platforms.

  2. Since I have zero programming experience, would I be able to implement these functions myself? I would be interested in doing it. But how much time could it take for one product and how difficult is it for a beginner? Maybe it would be easier to involve an experienced developer?

    May be you can suggest lessons, libraries, any information that will help us in this task.

Please share your experiences and opinions, but please answer as if you are answering a child who has no experience in programming at all. I would appreciate it if you could divide the answer by paragraphs of questions, so as not to get confused. I don’t really understand where to start, what algorithms to use and what difficulties I am not yet aware of.

P.S. This library is designed for convenient work with API version 1.2 at our warehouse management service provider. GitHub - moysklad/java-remap-1.2-sdk: SDK for REMAP 1.2 (maybe this information will come in handy)

Very grateful that you share your experiences :pray:

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The place to start is to begin to learn programming. If you do not know programming, this task is not possible, and nobody can walk you through it. They will simply be giving you the answer.

You don’t really want this, because you won’t understand the answer, meaning it won’t develop your skills and you’ll run into frustrations when you want to make changes.

Being interested in programming is great! Having problems you want to solve with programming is even better. But stitching together several different APIs, and storing information about them is all intermediate stuff. If you are a beginner, you need to start with beginner tasks.

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  1. Elixir is a good choice for the problem you are describing. (My understanding is you need to get a bunch of data, store it in a database, then send it out to different systems, and have a display)

  2. This is very difficult for a beginner, you need an experienced developer.

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This sounds much more like you’d be better off looking to pay a programmer to make your idea happen. If you are a complete beginner then something like this might be beyond your reach – and setting such a goal for yourself at the very beginning will only give you frustration and impatience if you want to learn through it.

I am afraid there’s no shortcut unless you pay somebody to do it for you and/or use them as a mentor at the same time.

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Thank you, I will do as you said. :pray:

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Thank you :pray:

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Thank you, :pray: I will look for a developer for this task, and I myself will solve problems for beginners.