Sameer Borate has a new post to his site that shares how he converted a RETS database to MySQL with the help of a PHP library, PHPRETS.

A recent project of mine entailed replicating a RETS database on a local MySQL database server. The client had a new real-estate mobile search app in development and wanted to have a local copy of the RETS database for search queries instead of a remote RETS server. [...] Replicating RETS data rather than using the live version is slightly complex, however. In order to replicate the RETS data into your own local database, a series of processes are needed in order to make sure the data you have is both updated and in sync with the server.

He breaks it down into three main steps with some sample code for each:

• Grabbing the complete database once
• Keeping the data in sync
• Ensuring the cron job is executed on regular intervals