Transition from another system

Hi --

I currently use a very simple form of paypal recurring payments (IPN) to manage my subscriptions. So, I am wondering how difficult it would be to transition to aMember.

My subscription database (MySQL) right now is very simple, with the following fields: username, password, subscription name, subscription status (ie, Active, Ended, etc.). As you can imagine, paypal currently contacts a php file on my server which updates the database whenever a subscription is cancelled, ended, etc..

So, is it possible to easily add 900 subscribers to aMember if I format the import file correctly? I was looking at the documents on 'importing' and it did not mention a field for the type of payment processor being used. Of course, I would want to import all of these as "paypal IPN"

Hopefully this all makes sense ..heh. I'd rather just buy aMember than screwing around with the trial version, but I wanted to verify all of this first.

Also -- another question entirely.

I actually use my subscription based service for validiating software rather than webpages. Ie, my software actually contacts a .php file on the server and it checks the database and then responds.

Does aMember use MySQL for the membership directory and have a field for status such as "active, cancelled, etc.." so that I can do things like this? I really need to be able to easily query the aMember database to determine IF a person is subscribed, whether their subscription is Active/Cancelled/Ended/etc.. and for WHAT they are subscribed.

It would be useful if the demo page here had a link to a myphpadmin of a sample aMember database (if it is MySQL of course, which I assume it is.)

Thanks for the info. I just looked at the demo and it's very impressive -- I am pretty much sold on trying to make it work.

I had one more question. With the full product, will I have access to .php examples that will show me how to pick out the information that I need from the "data" field of the members table? (ie, "a:3:{s:6:"status";a:1:{i:1;i:1;}s:9:"is_active";i:1;s:17:"signup_email_sent";i:1;}")

I really need to be able to make a standalone php script that can check the member's table for a valid subscription and be able to get the 'status' as well as the 'product name' from the database ...which, with amember, means picking information out of that "data" field. Make sense what I'm saying?