Both FTP and Web Service data packages allow you to access reliable data that can be used on your external website or within your internal POS system. Perhaps the biggest difference between these two options lies in where the data itself is stored.
The Web Service provides you with on-demand data. Though you are allowed to do some caching of data, the bulk of the data remains on Ingram's server, and you send queries to retrieve the most current data to display on your site. Web Service data is updated every 2 hours.
Subscribing to the FTP Service means that you will need to download files from our server, ingest the data into your system, and then house and update that data. The bibliographic data files for our FTP data are updated on a weekly basis, and the inventory files are updated multiple times a day.
It is not uncommon for our customers to subscribe to a combination of FTP and Web Service. The weekly files can be downloaded to your database, and then you can use the Web Service to update any titles that may get released/updated between the weekly files. The Web Service can also perform on-demand stock checks during the customer checkout process.
Please see our sections about FTP and Web Service for more detailed information. We also invite you to contact us directly with specific questions you may have: data.services@ingramcontent.com.