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About Product Classes


Product classes provide a way to organize and administer product attributes. When you assign a product to a product class, it automatically inherits all the attributes defined for that product class. Product classes let you define what attributes are maintained for products, assign those attributes to the products, and maintain those attributes in a consistent fashion.

When you define an attribute for a product class, you specify both the attribute name and the range of values that the attribute can have. This range of values is called the attribute domain. For example, for a product class called blanket, you define an attribute called color and define its domain to be green, red, and blue. Every blanket you assign to this product class inherits the attribute color and its possible values.

Subclasses are product classes that have a parent product class. Subclasses have the following characteristics:

  • Subclasses can be nested as deeply as needed. This forms the product class hierarchy.
  • Subclasses inherit the attributes of their parent product class. As you nest downward, each subclass inherits the entire set of attributes from the product classes above it.
  • You can modify the definitions of inherited attributes. If you do so, this breaks inheritance from the parent product class. Changes to attribute definitions in the parent product class are not inherited by modified attributes in subclasses.
  • You can define additional attributes for the subclass, beyond the attributes of the parent product class.

You can define attributes at the product class or subclass level. You cannot define an attribute at the product level. At the product level, users can only select the attribute's value.

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