CactuShop is the only ASP shopping cart vendor that provides a free tool to automate upgrading your store to the latest version in a quick and (relatively) simple process.
For more information on using the Data Tool, see the CactuShop Data Tool User Manual, a PDF on our web site downloads page.
3.4.1 What the Data Tool does
3.4.1.1 Copies data to a newer database
The Data Tool lets you upsize unmodified CactuShops from v5 onwards to more recent versions. It can also transition data between MS Access, MS SQL and vice versa. The way it works is to copy data from a ‘source’ database (the
old one you want to upgrade) to a new ‘destination’ database (the newest database file). The Data Tool will overwrite most existing data on the new database, so should not be used to add new products to your store once it is up and running. The Data Tool will automatically detect the versions of the database you are copying from and copying to and run the correct upgrade process.
3.4.1.2 Runs .sql scripts
The Data Tool allows you to run .SQL scripts which you can download from the CactuShop web site. This allows you to create MS SQL and MySQL databases.
3.4.1.3 Imports from spreadsheet
The Data Tool can import data from a suitably formatted
3.4.1.4 Provides a backup option
The Data Tool ability to copy data between different databases can be used to back up your live MS SQL or MySQL database to a local MS Access copy. As all experienced IT people will tell you – you can never have too many backups.
3.4.2 What the Data Tool can’t do
3.4.2.1 Customized CactuShops
If your CactuShop database has been customized and has had extra fields or tables added to it, the Data Tool will not be able to transition these
customizations to the new database. These changes may also prevent the Data Tool from operating properly. Remember also that any script
modifications you may have cannot be upgraded to newer versions of CactuShop automatically. Most such modifications and customizations will be lost during the upgrade process and need to be redone manually.
3.4.2.2 My CactuShop is a version prior to v5
If your CactuShop is v4.5 – v4.7, there is an older data tool that can convert your data to v5.1 format, which can then be upsized using the current data tool. If your CactuShop is a version older than v4.5, upgrading the data will likely be a complex manual task. It may be easier to start with a clean database unless you have a vast number of products.
3.4.3 Preparing to upgrade
Before upgrading or doing any work on your database, always remember to take a back up and to keep this in a safe place.
Compatibility with CactuShop v6.1
The Data Tool is fully compatible with CactuShop v6.1, since that uses the same database structure as v6. All you need to do is ensure the destination database you upsize your data to is a v6.1, then the extra records this contains will be present in your upgraded store.
3.4.4 Using the Data Tool
3.4.4.1 Installing the Data Tool
The data tool will come as a zipped package, either with an installer or as a free-standing .exe file. If the latter, you may need to install the VB6 run time on your computer first.
3.4.4.2 Running the Data Tool
Double click the Data Tool. You should get two options; ‘data copy’ or ‘run SQL’. If you are using MySQL or MS SQL, you will need to first create the new database using the second option. Once you have a v6 database setup, you can run the data tool and select the first option to copy data from your old database (or from a text file or Excel spreadsheet) to the new v6 database.
3.4.4.3 Selecting the databases to copy between
The ‘source’ database should be selected first. There are some additional fields including one labelled ‘table prefix’. This is a new feature in v6
databases – for more information see 1.3. If selecting a pre-v6 database, the table prefix should be blank.
Next you select the ‘destination’ database in a similar fashion. For a v6 database, the table prefix must be entered. This will be ‘1’ as default.
This new ‘table prefix’ feature is useful if you wish to upgrade an MS SQL or MySQL databases in particular. You can create the new tables on the same database (because the table names will not clash) and then upsize your data from the old tables to the new. You don’t have to copy data to a local database and don’t need to delete or overwrite your old CactuShop tables.
The old tables can be removed once your new store is up and running perfectly and you’re confident they’re no longer needed.
3.4.5 Other upgrading issues
3.4.5.1 Affiliates
As part of the v6 user account system overhaul, there is no longer a separate affiliates table. Instead, affiliate records are in the tblCactuShop1Customers
table, with certain fields set to flag this user as an affiliate.
The data tool will attempt to merge affiliate data with customers if possible based on the email address. So customers who are also affiliates should end up with a single login they can use for everything.
However, this change means that affiliate IDs will *not* be maintained. You should therefore ask your affiliates to update the affiliate links they use to connect to your site. They can get this information by logging into the ‘my account’ section. The link should look something like this:
http://www.demo.xyz/?af=123
One of the advantages of the new system is that the affiliate code works from any page, so you no longer need to pass everything to a single ‘affiliate handler’ script that plants cookies and then redirects. Instead, your affiliates can link directly to any page, and simply add the ‘af=[ID]’ as a parameter in
the URL. Remember that the [ID] part is now the customer ID which will almost certainly be different from the affiliate ID they used previously.
If wish to handle legacy incoming links, you can modify the aftrack.asp script (which is a place-holder in v6 without active code).
For example:
numID = request("ID")
If numID = 999 response.redirect(“default.asp?af=123")
The above code looks for links coming in for the affiliate who had the affiliate ID of 999 (in v5) and then maps these to the same affiliate in v6, who now has a customer (and affiliate) ID of 123. You can add as many of these ‘if’
lines as you need to handle incoming legacy affiliate links.
3.4.6 Test with CactuShop Trial first
CactuShop Trial has an identical database format to CactuShop Standard and CactuShop Pro. If you are thinking of upgrading your store to version 6, we advise you download the Data Tool and upsize your data to the v6 database within CactuShop Trial. That way, you can satisfy yourself that the upgrade process works with your actual data before parting with any money for the new version.
4 Back End - Further Setup
Once you have gone through the installation and setup of CactuShop in section 2, and the upgrade process in section 3 (if required), you should have a functioning site running CactuShop v6. Now you will need to do some further configuration to get things ready to go live.
This section should walk you through the kind of decisions you will need to make and, where necessary, direct you to further information elsewhere in the manual.