Downloading REIL Data myself!
So, this is where I have ended up, writing the REIL data download from scratch. I am using Perl and imagine it would be difficult using something else. I want to be able to have one set of routines to download the data in whatever format I choose, and transfer the data to a MySQL database. Next I will need to download the images. I will need the data for all of the REIL property classes. Finally, I will need to have a routine that updates the data.
MRIS Conduit
MRIS Conduit is another free client for downloading data. In contrast to every other client I tried, MRIS Conduit was super simple, intuitive and worked the first time and every time. It downloads data to text/xml files and will also run updates using a built-in scheduler. It also allows you to define individual dataset queries, and combine them into sets that can be scheduled to run as needed. The drawback is that it lacks a direct-to-database import.
Using VieleRETS to download data
I spent a long time messing with VieleRETS to try and download data from REIL. The short answer is that I failed to get it to work. I tried to debug the PHP code but was unable to identify why it was failing. Had I needed to get this to work I would have joined the mail-list group and tried to get some help from there, but I never got that far.