Keep in mind that before you set up your custom catalogs for the first time, you should run the Catalog Maintenance Service as described in Running the Custom Catalog Maintenance System.
Catalogs consist of rootCategories and rootSubCatalogs. A catalog’s rootCategories combine with the rootCategories of its rootSubCatalogs to make up the list of the catalog’s allRootCategories. For example:
Catalog A:rootCategories = category1, category2
Catalog B:rootCategories = category3, category4
rootSubCatalogs = CatalogA
When a user of Catalog B views the allRootCategories, they see all of the root categories of Catalog B (category3 and category4) as well as the root categories of the subcatalogs (category1 and category2) meaning there appear to be four root categories.
For the most part, custom catalogs can be used exactly as regular catalogs are. However, the repository structure is somewhat different; see below for details. The custom repository component is located at /atg/commerce/catalog/ProductCatalog.
A given user can only have permission to view one catalog. This catalog can be assigned in the catalog property of the user’s profile, or derived from the user’s parentOrganization.
