Before You Start Developing with the Catalog System
This topic introduces broad concepts about the Commerce Server Catalog System and provides a context for the detailed information in other topics within this section. A catalog is a way of organizing the products you want to sell. You use catalogs to organize and manage the product data in your database for display on your site, and to target products to users.
A catalog consists of a group of categories and products. It contains descriptions and pricing information for products and services. By using the Commerce Server Catalog System API you can create products, categories, base catalogs, and virtual catalogs.
The topics in this section describe these terms and concepts and provide instructions on how to create and use these objects.
The Catalog System provides management of the inventory of items in your catalogs. It lets you update the inventory for all items and monitors depletion. It allows you to import and export inventory from and to external systems.
You create an inventory catalog and populate it with inventory information for all products from your product catalogs. The Catalog System uses the same properties as the Catalog System. When a product catalog is contained in an inventory catalog, it is said to be mapped to the inventory catalog. Each inventory catalog can contain multiple product catalogs, but each product catalog can map to only one inventory catalog.
An item in your inventory catalog is referred to as a stock-keeping unit (SKU). When you create a SKU, you provide information about the properties of the SKU. The Catalog System uses these properties to manage and monitor the inventory levels of each SKU. The Catalog System computes and monitors several properties and settings, including the OnHand Quantity, In Stock, Stock-Out Threshold, and Preordered Quantity.
You can retrieve inventory information by using the catalog and inventory methods and properties. Any method that returns information about products or variants includes inventory information.
Why Use the Commerce Server Catalog System?
By using the Catalog System, you can obtain several important benefits without implementing custom code. The Catalog System provides the following benefits:
Aggregation. You can combine one or more categories or catalogs into a virtual catalog. For example, if you are selling content from multiple suppliers, each of which sends you one or more catalogs, you can combine the content into one aggregated catalog.
Categorization and recategorization. You can categorize the items in your catalogs and then recategorize the items in a virtual catalog.
Virtual catalogs. You can create a virtual catalog from one or more base catalogs. You can also create a virtual catalog from another virtual catalog.
Product families. You can associate products that are similar or closely related. A product family is not a sellable unit. It is a logical container for product variants.
Inventory integration. The Catalog System is fully integrated with the Catalog System, which allows you to create and maintain inventory information.
Multilingual catalogs. You can display category and product text in more than one language. For example, you might want to display product information in English, French, and Japanese.
Multiple currencies in the catalogs. Catalogs can contain pricing information in multiple currencies.
Associations and relationships. You can add products and categories as children of a category in a catalog. You can create relationships between products and categories in one or more catalogs. You can relate a product or a category in one catalog to a product or category in the same catalog or in a different catalog.
Search capability. The Catalog System provides three methods for searching catalogs. You can search using specifications, which is known as a guided search. You can search using an SQL clause. You can also perform a free-text search.
Data import and export. If you want to exchange catalog information with trading partners, you can import the contents of a catalog from an XML file. You can export your catalogs to an XML file to share with partners.
BizTalk Server integration. The Catalog System is fully integrated with BizTalk Server by using adapters.
Staging. You can format your product data for publication.
.NET Framework access. The Catalog System provides native .NET Framework access to the design-time and run-time APIs through a Web service/Agent architectural model.
Security. You can provide catalog security through the implementation of security roles and authorization.
Extensible schema. You can customize the schema to fit your business needs.
Product ranking. You can prioritize your products and determine the order in which they appear in the catalog.
Bulk updates. You can update and delete entire catalogs or categories with one action.
Inventory control functions. The Catalog System provides inventory information for products, including current quantities on hand, an out-of-stock threshold, and whether the item can be back-ordered and to what quantity.
Integration with the Orders System. The Catalog System provides pipeline components to check and update inventory during purchases.
Integration with the Catalog System. The Catalog System provides the same features and functionality as the Catalog System. For example, you can search inventory catalogs, import inventory catalogs, and export inventory catalogs.