Commerce Server Catalog - XYZ

Author

XYZ_CatalogProducts

adam23

2006-02-08, 5:54 pm

I have a catalog that contains books. Each book can have multiple authors so
I had to create an author table and a table that links CatalogProducts with
Author. Does anyone have a suggestions on how searching by author should be
implimented while using Commerce Server catalog search. I currently have it
set up to first query the author with a list of all the ProductIDs by the
particuliar author. I then modify the SQLWhereClause of the CatalogSearch
object by looping through the list of ProductIDs and concatenating each
ProductID to the clause similiar to

ProductID = 'A' or
ProductID = 'B' or
ProductID = 'C' or

This works until until an author has too many books and the sql string gets
too complex. The only thing I can think of is to join the 3 tables which
means I can't use CatalogSearch. Anyone have any other suggestions?

Rory

2006-02-11, 6:03 pm

One way you could do it. Is to create a new set of products setup with
an "Author" definition basically these would be products you don't sell
but hold all the information about the author. Then on the book itself
you could set up a relationship which could be linked to the Author
product Reltionships are pretty easy to setup using the Catalog Manager
in Feature Pack 1.

I am gathering this may be easier to search (anyone please correct me
if I am wrong). The nice thing about this approach is you could still
use the Catalogue Manager or BizDesk to edit authors instead of having
to create a new interface for non technical people to update authors.
It may also help when you deploy your catalogue from your Staging to
Live box etc..

Rory