Phonebook / Phone directory solution investigation

Question

Hello,
I'm currently trying to find a solution in the perspective of editing a professional phonebook (+50000 entries in total) wich deals with mixed visual ads and text entries {name addresses and phones}.
My phone book key points are the following :
1) 3 columns layout.
Conditional master selection on a cyclic basis (to cycle trough 4 header and footer advertisement)
2) Text entries are :
Letter categorized (A|B|C|D|...for users pages, and pro categories on pro pages)
Conditionally formatted : 3 styles for handling 3 different type of text entries (normal lines, textad->black lines, textad->redlines)
plus handling of letter spacing in case the lenght of the entry is too long to fit the column.
3) Graphics entries :
12 differents graphics ads sizes to detect and import, Conditional Positionning/Anchoring of image blocks upon their size. 300dpi CMYK.
4) and for sure phone book style header management (eg. aa-ac)
5) At production time, I project to process data as chunks of 3000 entries at a time, thus representing 30pages or so.
I want minimal hand job once the file automatically processed.
As form what I read so far Indesign and counterperts plugins offer the possibility of automating it.
What I want to know is to wich point ?
Does someone in here did ever worked on something similar, would like to share toughts ?
As I investigate further I'll post my experience in here.
INVESTIGATION AREA WILL COVERS THE FOLLOWING:
DATAMERGE
I forgot about DataMerge wich seems too slow to perform huge amount of data.
EMSOFTAWARE INDATA
CACIDI
My very best regards.
Please also have a look at the electronic version of our phone directory we produced with our team : www.annuaireopt.pf

Answer 1

********EMSOFTWARE INDATA INVESTIGATION********
I'm using the demo version of Indata 5.1.4.0 along with Indesign CS3 v5.0.4. Indata allows to easily build conditions and process data.
My following prototype does not handle yet : Conditional master, header management, & letter spacing.
Prototype :
«fields nom, prenom, adresse, phone, cat, lgn, lgr, pix, pixsize
«set pictureposition to framefit»«set picturefolders to .\images\»
«if cat is not prev cat»«cat»«endif»
«--different block style and anchoring applied according to the pics sizes»
«if pixsize = 56x09--C2»«set filename of picture 1 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 56x15--C3»«set filename of picture 2 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 56x23--C4»«set filename of picture 3 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 56x30--C5»«set filename of picture 4 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 56x40--C6»«set filename of picture 5 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 56x85--C7»«set filename of picture 6 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 56x265--C8»«set filename of picture 7 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 180x85--L1»«set filename of picture 8 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 118x265--L2» «set filename of picture 9 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 180x130--L3»«set filename of picture 10 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 180x175--L4»«set filename of picture 11 to pix»«endif»
«if pixsize = 180x265--CL»«set filename of picture 1 to pix»«endif»
«if phone --if the phone exist then its not an image entry»
«if lgn --lgn font style»«nom» «prenom»«if adresse is not empty»«adresse»«endif»......«phone»┐«endif»
«if lgr --lgr font style»«nom» «prenom» «if adresse is not empty»«adresse»«endif»......«phone»┐«endif»
«else --normal font style»«nom» «prenom» «if adresse is not empty»«adresse»«endif»......«phone»┐
«endif»
«else»┐«endif --if phone»
With this little piece of "code" I'm already almost to it.
Normal text entries, Texads and GraphicAds are processed nicely into my layout.
The only thing is that I have to manage the biggest GraphicsAds (like full page) by hand because they do not fit when inserted in the middle of a page. And if I anchor the full page Ad to page border, the Ad overlaps all of the text that is before its entry point...This is also true for some of the smaller GraphicsAds but in general all the smaller GraphicsAds (anchored at entry point) wich will represent 75% of the total are quite nicely distributed.
By the way, I found that Indesign itself seems to be quite limited when graphics are anchored inside of text blocks.
It's abylity to flow the text around it seems to me too much limited...
My problem is that sometimes image blocks overlaps either over text either over another image block(s) on the next column.
The real problem is that the image blocks are inserted inside the text block as if it was a text entry, and thus the text entered before the entry point of the image block cannot flow under it...
I guess the problem here is my Indesign layout. Or maybe just a limitation of Indesign...
Either way I guess I'll have to position manually some of the elements once the static file is generated (thing I would like to avoid).
Anybody : Any toughts on the subject ?