Fairly new to Magento and still learning the inner workings. I've been given the task of importing Best Buy's large array of product catalog into our existing magento installation. However i dont know where to begin. Just looking for a roadmap of some sort.
Not sure if it'll be easier to import their data into our database or show products on the fly. Any advice or guidance or code sample will help.
Thanks
Here is my opinion.
You shouldn't show "on the fly" products in the catalog. It can screw up the listing, the sorting and much more.
You will not be able to apply price rules either on the products.
The best approach is to import the products in you Magento instance.
Take a look at system->import/export->import menu. Basically you have to build a csv file in a specific format and Magento will import the products.
To get an idea on how the import file should look like, just go ty system->import/export->export and export a file sample.
There are also tools that allow you to import products faster like Magmi. I haven't used it but I heard only good words about it.
