Relationship Between Categories and Catalogs

Catalogs are used to organize and classify collections of items by associating categories to the catalog.

The categories are organized to form a taxonomy and items are assigned to the categories. When a category is associated with the catalog a catalog category association is created which specifies the relationship of the association. The catalog category association may also represent the relationship between two categories, for example a relationship between a parent category and a child category.

Catalog Category Association

The date enabled attribute value is important regarding catalog category association. The catalog category association is date enabled providing the control of when the catalog category association is active in the catalog and when the catalog category association is inactive. The catalog category association has two attributes to support enabling dates; the start date and the end date. The start date is value is the first day that the catalog category association is available or active for use and the end date is the last day the catalog category association can be used, after this date the catalog category association is inactive. The date enabled attribute values are also used to control the visibility of content and the behavior of the category in the catalog. If a category association is inactive or end dated, having the value of the end date attribute past the current date, then the items can't be assigned to the category.

A catalog category association will be set to inactive state when the category referenced by the catalog category association is set to an inactive state automatically, but the display won't be refreshed automatically.