RSS Overview

RSS feeds have become a common method for sites to share their articles with other web-sites. This exchange of data works by providing the information in a pre-agreed format. RSS was primarily developed for sharing news articles and similar data. Since it is based upon XML it may be extended through the use of custom elements within their own namespace, effectively allowing all the information that needs to be stored to be added without breaking the original RSS specification.

An issue that has arisen whilst speaking to about estate agencies about how they may go about entering information onto UK Business Property is that they don't wish to be entering the same information twice. If they've established practices for storing property data they wish for this to remain in tact as the only method. This is understandable and thus why RSS has been chosen as a method to enable agencies to provide data to UK Business Properties automatically.

RSS relies upon have a web-server setup that will provide the relevant property feed. This system will also need access to the database in which all property information is stored in order to provide the feed. The primary step in development is creating a system that can query the database to obtain the latest updates and then format the information according to the provided specification.

The specification provided is styled to model the way in which UK Business Property stores information about properties. All elements of it are optional except for providing properties a unique identification. Therefore in providing the feed it will be necessary to map elements from the database to their RSS equivalents.

It may be that the specification does not appropriately represent the data you may wish to provide; in this case it may be necessary to make changes to the schema to support these requirements which is a matter that can be discussed.

There a many ways in which to implement an RSS feed and it is not necessary to meet the specification entirely as implementations may differ. Providing that no updates are missed from the feeds then the system should function as expected.

In providing the feeds this leads onto further possibilities such as creation of a customised and hosted web-site detailing your properties.

Ultimately any difficulties or queries in creating your feed can be met and supported by our I.T. staff who will assist in the creation of the feed and deal with any requirements.

Aaron Parker
aaron@ukbusinessproperty.co.uk
0845 00406620845 868 7879