Cybercruising - AutomallUSA car-shopping service on Internet - Company Business and Marketing - Brief Article

Software Magazine, Dec, 1997 by Daniela Cimino

A year after previewing its automallusa.com online car shopping service at a national car dealer show in Utah, AutomallUSA is poised to become a driving force on the Web. The firm recently retooled its Web site to provide more powerful search capabilities to cybershoppers who wish to locate new and used cars, sell their car, check Kelley Blue Book values, and apply for credit.

According to Brent Taylor, VP of product development, the firm abandoned the flat file format on which it built its prototype and opted instead for a nested relational database from Unidata Inc. In addition, AutomallUSA rewrote its search engine and Web applications with Unidata's Redback toolkit. Currently, the database manages and stores information on cars from 100 North American dealers and 200 franchises. Prior to Redback, AutomallUSA relied on CGI programming. The process of running Web apps in a flat file format was "realty cumbersome because we collected data in a flat file format and converted it to a relational database [Advanced Pick], and then we had to convert it back to a flat file format to be posted on our Web site," says Taylor. "Now I collect that information and it goes directly into my relational database. The biggest thing that [Redback's] allowing us to do is access the relational database over the Web with no different coding."