Python & XML

Connecting Web Sites

Let’s take a trip back to 1999. An imaginary beverage distributor sees value in allowing supermarkets to order beverage cases online. They hope this will replace the process of accepting a fax and manually keying in order details. The beverage company envisions a situation in which purchasing agents at the supermarkets could use their web browsers to quickly key in current needs and submit orders to the beverage company’s system.

At this same time, the supermarkets are getting more and more interested in automating their inventory control. Instead of having people pour over stock statistics and sales numbers as they attempt to forecast demand, companies are installing sophisticated point-of-sale software at registers that perform these calculations for them. Once a week the system spits out printouts of the purchasers’ needs based on buying patterns. The purchasing agent is then supposed to send out purchase orders as needed.

Continuing Improvement

Now let’s go into the present. You are asked to take the information that is being automatically generated by the supermarket’s inventory and sales forecasting system and plug it into the beverage company’s order system without the involvement of a human. Ideally, this process should allow for supermarket computers to automatically send out purchase orders to suppliers when stock is low and demand dictates.

In order to perform this new task, you need to know how to interrogate the supermarket’s inventory and forecasting ...