SEM Development

Session management made it’s appearance for the first time in Overture’s AWS DTC-XML v1.2.1 specification. It allows you to generate a snapshot of your account and keep it on Overture’s servers. There are two ways to create a session:

CreateSessionGetListings
This command creates a session containing all of your listings. It’s lifetime is 72 hours and this operation can be performed 4 times in a 24 hour period.

CreateSessionGetListingsUpdated
With this command you create a session only of listings that have been updated within an allotted timeframe. As with CreateSessionGetListings, this session’s lifetime is 72 hours. Happily, this operation can be performed up to 10 times in a 24 hour period.

After the session is created you can retrieve the listings by invoking the GetListingsBySession command. This command can be invoked up to 1200 times in a 24 hour period so it’s unlikely you’ll top your quota. You can choose one, some or all of the following fields:

• searchTerm
• url
• online
• title
• description
• categoryId
• clickIndex
• minBid
• advancedOptIn
• advancedClickIndex
• contentBid
• contentOnline
• contentOptIn
• bid
• market
• lastUpdated

Last, and definitely least, is the GetSessionInfo command. It just returns the time your session was created along with how many records are in it.

These session methods have been a lifesaver for me. It’s better than GetListings because I can assemble a session of listings that have been updated and operate on those, rather than downloading every listing and then figuring out which ones have changed. It also allows double the quota of GetListings which is fantastic for large campaigns.

Now, if they would just up the quota on AddListings…