ATG Merchandising introduces several terms in addition to terms used in the ATG Content Administration and ATG Commerce products.
To review the terminology defined for those products, see:
ATG Commerce Catalog Administration chapter of the ATG Commerce Guide to Setting Up a Store
ATG Content Administration Overview chapter of the ATG Content Administration Guide for Business Users
The following table contains terms that are unique to ATG Merchandising or have a definition that is unique to ATG Merchandising.
Term | Definition |
|---|---|
Catalog or Subcatalog | A catalog organizes your commerce assets in a hierarchy that reflects the way users will navigate to them on your live site. If your site uses standard catalogs, meaning the site displays the same catalog to all users, the catalog itself is not a commerce asset, but an organizing concept. If your site uses custom catalogs and can display one of several catalogs depending on the user, a catalog is a commerce asset that you can create, modify, and delete in ATG Merchandising. A catalog existing in another catalog is sometimes called a subcatalog, although it is technically identical to a catalog. |
Commerce Asset | A commerce asset is any versioned item that you use to build a commerce Web site. Commerce assets include: — catalogs Some commerce assets, such as products, SKUs, and promotions, display on your live Web site, while others, such as catalog folders and media folders, are used to organize assets in your development environment. In technical terms, commerce assets are repository items provided by ATG Commerce and managed in the versioning environment provided by ATG Content Administration. Unlike assets in ATG Content Administration, all commerce assets are repository assets, meaning they reside in a versioned database, even though some assets, such as categories, products, and SKUs, live in a SQL repository while other assets, such as media assets, live in a content repository. |
Content Administration Database | The content administration database, also called the versioned database, is the database that stores merchandising content under development. This database can contain multiple versions of an asset and differs from the production database, which supports the live site and contains only the deployed version of an asset. A content administration database configured for ATG Merchandising contains additional tables to a database configured for ATG Content Administration alone. For more information about configuring a content administration database for ATG Merchandising, see Installing ATG Merchandising. |
Folder | A folder is a type of commerce asset used to organize other commerce assets in ATG Merchandising. Folders aren’t published to your Web site. Unlike other commerce assets, folders can exist anywhere in the hierarchy, including at the top level (also called the root level) of the hierarchy. Folders that contain media assets are called media folders. Customers who use custom catalogs must keep catalogs in catalog folders. |
Linking and Unlinking | When you add a commerce asset to a catalog, you create a link between the asset and another asset, called a parent, that will contain it. Linking allows a single commerce asset to appear in multiple parts of the catalog so that a change to the asset in one location is reflected everywhere that asset is used. You add an asset to a new location by creating a link, and you can remove an asset from a location by unlinking it. Removing all of an asset’s links or parents turns it into an unlinked catalog item and removes it from the catalog structure. The link and unlink operations do not apply to media assets because they always require a parent. |
Media Asset | A media asset is a type of commerce asset that includes an external file, content from an external file, or a pointer to an external file. The types of media assets are: — Media-internal-binary, which are binary files, such as images — Media-internal-text, which are blocks of text, such as text from a JSP — Media-external, which are links to an image or a text file Although media assets are organized into media folders that are not part of the product catalog, media assets are typically associated with assets in a catalog. For example, the image of a SKU on the Web site is a media-internal asset associated with the SKU. Unlike other commerce assets, media assets must always have one and only one parent. |
Parent | A parent is any commerce asset that contains nested assets. Catalog folders, catalogs, categories, products, and media folders can be parents to other assets. A commerce asset can have multiple parents. You can think of an asset’s parent as the place in the catalog structure where the asset is located. For example, a blender product is in the Kitchen Electronics category so Kitchen Electronics is a parent to the blender. That same blender may also have other parents, such as the Wedding Gifts category. An asset without a parent is an unlinked catalog item. |
Price List | A price list is an asset that refers to a set of prices assigned to products or SKUs that are visible to a set of users. Price lists support the following pricing options: — a single price applied to all items — a group of prices and quantities, so the price used for all items is based on the quantity purchased — a group of prices and a quantity range so that one price is used for some items and another is used for others One price list can inherit prices from another price list, so when you create a price list, you often select a base price list, then override inherited prices as needed. |
Unlinked Catalog Item | Also known as an orphan, an unlinked catalog item is an asset that hasn’t been added to the catalog hierarchy. An asset becomes an unlinked catalog item when you create it without specifying a location for it or when you remove it, or unlink it, from the catalog hierarchy. Any asset can be an unlinked catalog item except those that require a parent at all times, such as media assets, or those that never require a parent, such as catalog folders and media folders. You must incorporate unlinked catalog items into your catalog before you deploy them if you want them to be visible to site users in your catalog hierarchy. |
Workflow | A workflow defines a list of tasks and task actions and organizes them into a sequence. Each type of project is associated with a workflow. ATG Merchandising comes with two commerce workflows. For more information on ATG Merchandising workflows, see Configuring Workflows. |
The following table defines terms that are unique to Search Merchandising, which is a feature of ATG Merchandising available to users who also have ATG Search.
