Real estate database interaction - anyone got tips?

[maxxd]

Ok, I'm working with a real estate company that uses the Ambiance program to pull MLS listings for their internal real estate stuff, and they want to be able to show listed homes online - without having to transfer the data from the daily Ambience download dump to another online database. Obviously, I've never used the software in question and have no idea how it does what it does...

Has anyone ever worked with a real estate office and succeeded in getting php to talk to this mythical MLS database/Ambiance software? I've run a search on these boards and found one specific thread that suggested looking in the Code Snippets and Articles sections - I couldn't find anything applicable. It's possible I was looking in the wrong place, or the referenced files have been removed, or I'm just really tired. But I would sincerely appreciate any tips/tricks from anyone that's done this before. Or has found a way to do it. Or whatever.

Thanks in advance for any/all help!

[lazzerous]

I'm in a similar stuuation here - trying to interface with a 20 year old MADIC system on an old IBM Universe DB

Write an XML interface for the two 🙂

sounds easier than it is, but it's a fun project

-=Lazz=-

[sneakyimp]

I'm not familiar with either of these databases, but I suspect that you could learn a great deal by inspecting any html forms that interact with them.

for instance, you can look at the <FORM> element and see what the ACTION is, what the names of the various FIELDS are, etc. If there are some that you don't recognize (like passwords or ids or something) then you might use those fields' names in a search at the other place you were looking (or even google).