title: Building app to Classify / Describe Products - Overwhelmed somewhere between planning & execution
body: <p>Greetings!</p>
  
  <p>I recently started working for a company that carries a line of 20,000 Surgical Instruments. Our data on all items is currently spotty and chaotic at best. I intend to fix this.</p>
  
  <p>I have been tasked with redesigning the web site. As part of the project, I'm building an app to classify and describe all products. We don't do any direct sales on the site, but have a network of sales reps and distributors that will utilize this info.</p>
  
  <p>A picture says a thousand words, so here's a link to a diagram I made showing what I'm trying to accomplish: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/gUuxB.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://i.imgur.com/gUuxB.png</a></p>
  
  <p>I'm currently trying to achieve this with CakePHP / MySQL. I'm not too heavily invested in these, and am open to suggestions for alternatives. Perhaps a CMS already has this functionality? Some sort of Open-Source gizmo? Python / Django?</p>
  
  <p>I'm having difficulties determining proper database structure and code logistics. I'm headed in to this project a novice, hoping to emerge as an intermediate.</p>
  
  <p>Any advice on how to tackle this enormous task would be helpful. I've spent almost 4 weeks in the planning phase, and can no longer see the forest for the trees. My head's about to explode.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>