ATG Merchandising introduces several terms that are new even to customers familiar with ATG Content Administration and ATG Commerce. Before reading this section, review the terminology defined for those products so that you have the foundation you need to understand the terminology defined here:
See the ATG Commerce Catalog Administration chapter of the ATG Commerce Guide to Setting Up a Store
See the ATG Content Administration Overview chapter of the ATG Content Administration Guide for Business Users
The following concepts are unique to ATG Merchandising or have a definition that is unique to ATG Merchandising:
Commerce Asset
A commerce asset is an asset you use to build a commerce Web site and whose lifecycle is managed by projects. Some commerce assets, such as catalogs, categories, products, SKUs, configurable SKUs, promotions and media assets, will display on your live Web site, while others, such as catalog folders, media folders, and media-external assets, are used to organize assets in your development environment.
In technical terms, commerce assets are the RepositoryItems provided by ATG Commerce used 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 (media assets) live in a content repository.
Catalog
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 presents one catalog to all users, the catalog itself is not a commerce asset, but a conceptual principle. If your site uses custom catalogs and employs several catalogs, each of which is tailored to the needs of a unique user segment, a catalog is a commerce asset that you can create, modify, and delete in ATG Merchandising. A catalog existing in another catalog may be called a subcatalog, although it is technically identical to a catalog.
Media Asset
A media asset is a type of commerce asset that either includes an external file, content from an external file, or a pointer to an external file. There are three types of media assets:
Media-internal-binary assets include a binary file, such as an image.
Media-internal-text assets include a block of text, such as text from a JSP.
Media-external assets include a link to an image or a text file, such as a JSP.
Although media assets are organized into media folders outside of the product catalog context, 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. Media assets must exist in folders called media folders.
Catalog Folder and Media 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.
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. You can think of an asset’s parent as the place in the catalog structure where that asset lives. For example, a blender product resides in the Kitchen Electronics category so Kitchen Electronics is a parent to the blender. That same blender may have another parent, such as the Wedding gifts category, demonstrating that a commerce asset can have multiple parents. An asset without parents is an orphan, visible in the Catalog Orphans view, rather than Catalog view.
Orphan
An orphan asset is a commerce asset that can exist in a catalog, but hasn’t been added to the hierarchy. Assets turn into orphans when you remove them from the catalog hierarchy or create them without specifying a location for them to reside in. Such assets are considered to be orphans, visible in the Catalog Orphans view, because they have no parents. Any asset can be an orphan except those that require a parent at all times (media assets) or those that never require a parent (catalog folders and media folders). You must incorporate orphaned assets into your catalog before you deploy them if you want them to be visible to site users in your catalog hierarchy.
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 three 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, and
a group of prices and 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 pricelist, you will often select a “base” list, then override inherited prices as needed.
Linking and Unlinking
One of the main tasks performed by a merchandiser is organizing a catalog into a structure that’s appropriate for the Web site. When you add a commerce asset to a catalog, you create a link between the asset you are moving and another asset, called a parent, that will contain it. It’s possible for 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 orphan and removes it from the catalog structure. The link and unlink operations do not apply to media assets because they always require a parent.
Workflow
A workflow defines a list of tasks and task actions, and organizes them into a sequence. When you create a project, you select a workflow for it. ATG Merchandising comes with one commerce workflow that refers to other workflows for deployment instructions, which is one difference between how workflows work in ATG Merchandising and ATG Content Administration. For more information on ATG Merchandising workflows, see Configuring Workflows.
Content Administration Database
The content administration database, also called the versioned database, is the database that stores merchandising content in a development environment. This database can contain asset versions, which is different from the production database that supports the live site and contains only the deployed version of an asset. The difference between the content administration database configured for ATG Content Administration and ATG Merchandising is the ATG Merchandising version contains additional tables in support of commerce assets. ATG Merchandising comes with a SOLID database that you can set up as a content administration database and use when you are evaluating the product.
