User Management In Ecommerce based on external user database

Question

We have the scenario that requires that people in our membership database be charged based on a separate discounted price list.
For this we need to periodically sync the membership database into the web tools database. 
In addition we are using a consolidate business partner on the B1 to receive all orders from the ecommerce net point system.
Question is:
1.  Is there a technique to create users automatically and update their price list profile via SQL or something
2.  What is the best method of allowing someone to see a different price list based on perhaps the theme or catalog or domain name.
Mike

Answer 1

Hi Mike,
Sounds like you are in for some development.  There is no magic bullet here.
1.  I can think of a couple ways to approach this, both will probably be about the same amount of work.  If the schema of your membership db is not to far off from Webtools (for instance, if you don't have to turn a "name" field into "first name", "middle name", "last name"), then it might be easiest to approach the problem using SQL.
However, if you are comfortable with .NET, you can whip up a little app to synch the data.  In this case you would need to familiarize yourself with the netpoint.api, specifically the netpoint.api.account namespace, and use this to update the Webtools database.  If you plan on make a lot of customizations like this, I would suggest this route, since you will eventually need to learn the webtools api.
2.  This is a difficult question.  The simple answer is, you specifiy the pricelist for an account (business partner).  This is very simple, just set the UsersAccount.PriceListCode; refering to step one, this can be done in SQL or by using the netpoint.api.account.NPAccount object.  However, I am not sure this is going to work for you.  If all users on the account will have the same pricelist, you are OK.  But if the users on the same account required different pricelists, then there is a problem.
Last, you can NOT set a pricelist by theme.  (it would be a nice feature).  So if the users needed something like this, you would need to devise a workaround.
There are ways to do it by messing with the cookie....