Forum OpenACS Q&A: Looking for online SKU database (is there a web/db forum?)

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1: Looking for online SKU database (is there a web/db forum?)
Posted by Jerry Asher on 11/14/02 02:54 AM
A day or three ago, either on the radio, a blog, or in some article somewhere, I heard of an individual talking about googling product SKUs.  I've done this.  It's informative.  Who sells what, who as had a bad/good experience with something, etc.

But what this guy said was that there was a freely accessible online dictionary/database of all product SKUs, just point your browser/internet app and go.

Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ fail me.

I don't know about SKUs.  I don't know if there is some national/international registry of the things, so I don't know if there even could be an online db of them.

But I'd like to find out more about them.

Does anyone hear know of any online db of SKU information, or any information at all about how one gets them assigned, or how they might be categorized, or what not?

(Also, this is the sort of post that used to be interested to web/db, but I am not so sure about posting it in this forum.  Where's the best web/db all things web forum these days?  Is that here?)

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2: Re: Looking for online SKU database (is there a web/db forum?) (response to 1)
Posted by Jon Griffin on 11/14/02 04:55 AM
SKU's are probably not what you are looking for, as there is no reference that everyone uses AFAIK. Each retailer can make up there own or use the vendors.

UPC is a standard that covers (in the US upc codes) and they are unique. EAN is the equivalent in Europe and I think Japan has another. These only cover original makers.

I have an SKU # assigned to my record label and all my CD's start with the same (six I think, but I am not home) numbers. These identify me as the vendor (and theoretically some other traits i.e. entertainment/CD's).

These don't hold true for Books as they use ISBN and its derivatives. I think you are failing in your search because this DB doesn't exist. I hope I am wrong as I would love to get at that data also.

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3: Re: Looking for online SKU database (is there a web/db forum?) (response to 1)
Posted by Jerry Asher on 11/14/02 02:16 PM
Thanks Jon,

What I know is that what I heard/read/... was SKU. However, that author may have meant UPC and indeed, with your hint, google reveals many UPC resources.

There's one at http://www.upcdatabase.com, and there's a good chance it was what the original article was referring to. If you wander around that site you can find links to a sourceforge project to deal with UPCs and a snapshot of this project's UPC database. But that database makes no claim to be comprehensive or up to date.

I am curious about your SKU. How did you go about obtaining some sort of SKU thingie? (Reminds me of CIDR?) How much was that? How unique do you think your SKU numbers are? ???

Thanks,

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4: Re: Looking for online SKU database (is there a web/db forum?) (response to 1)
Posted by Jon Griffin on 11/18/02 04:52 PM
Sorry for the late reply, I was out of town.

My UPC code was from http://uc-council.org/, which is the only place you can get one in the US (Europe, etc have other agencies).

If I remember the price was about $550 and is good for life. It is a globally unique number and is 6 digits (they will be going to 8 in 2005). This allows me 100,000 unique products.

If you have any questions let me know, I wrote a whole accounting system for another record company a few years ago and learned more about bar codes than anyone should ;)