Need to pull live content and place into tables

Hey all...I hope someone can help me out here...I will also post a link to a site which does what I am trying to do. I need to be able to pull live content from the web and place it into tables on my site. For example, on the website pointspread.com,

http://www.pointspread.com/cgi-bin/live ... ?Sport=nhl

he has different sportsbooks lines pulled from the web and placed in these tables. Is this difficult...please help!!!

Well, how is this "live content" stored?

Are they pulling it from a MySQL database? A simply CSV or other text file? from a HTML file and parsing it?

Are you actually looking to pull the info from the URL you put in your message? Or do you have another source for that information? What is that source?

How hard or easy it is depends on the format of the data and how/where it's stored.

This is what the guy told me he does...I am not really understanding what it means...I could use some help...

Lines are pulled by odds spiders in background on a
timely basis (say, every 5 min or so). Spiders parse
HTML or XML pages and produce refined odds (refined
first time, because they can be refined once more
later, when comparing with odds from other books).
They (odds) are stored then in simple text files
similar to CSV files. I do not use any real database,
say, MySql or any other, because of the following
simple reasons.
1. these lines are kept only for short time
2. structure of the data is very simple
3. the data is written relatively seldom (every N min)
and read entirely and relatively rather often, so
total reading is main procedure and must be as
efficient as possible. The most efficient way to keep
data only for total reading is to keep them in simple
plain text file.
4. I have several clients and dealing with MySql is
too hard burden for this relatively simple (as far as
keeping data is concerned) task
5. at any moment I can move all data to any database
client needs
6. if client needs the data to be stored in a database
I could do it, but it will cost him more than now - so
it makes my Live Lines cheaper
7. If I select a definite database I loose clients
that do not want to have it or must support several
versions
AND SO ON.
So you see text files are optimal solution for me.
Data (odds) from text files is used by another,
'builder' program to build real custom odds tables
that are then simply shown when clicked on a
appropriate link.

php has some options you may want to research. Havent tried this yet but was thinking of doing something simlat to cbs.sportsline.com to grab realtime scores of my UofAZ bb games. When I get ready to do this, this is where I will be starting:

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/features.remote-files.php

Hmmm... funny, I always find MySQL much easier & quicker to work with than plain text files, and speeds up development time greatly.

MySQL will work fine with a simply structured database, as well as a complex one.

But, I guess that's your own personal choice.

How would you lose clients if you choose to use MySQL to store the database? Given that MANY MANY scripts these days require MySQL to store data?

Hey all...The previous posting is from a guy who does this, that is what he emailed me. I am just not really understanding it...do u? I could use some advice on how to achieve this...u reccomend a mySQL database?