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Home > Archive > Commerce Server Catalog > July 2006 > Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
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Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
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| This is a total newbie question.
When would one use virtual catalogs and when would one use CatalogDataSets?
We have a base catalog that contains all our products, categories,
relationships etc.
Now we need to expose certain aspects to certain clients and other aspects
to other clients.
In my mind, I can create virtual catalogs and expose them, or create catalog
sets and achieve the same result. Looks like catalogsets can have security
tied to it, but nothing much else. So it seems illogical that MCS would have
two ways to do the exact same thing with such a small difference.
What am I missing?
Thanks in advance for your help.
| |
| Vinayak Tadas[MSFT] 2006-07-22, 1:18 am |
| Virtual catalogs and Catalog sets serve different functionality
A virtual catalog allows you to customize a base catalog. For eg lets say I
have a base catalog with two categories "General Products" and "Preferred
Products"
I can create a virtual catalog which includes only the "Preferred Products"
category from the base catalog and also provide a discount of 10% on the
products in the virtual catalog. In addition I can change the other
properties like Display Name, description etc in the virtual catalog.
Catalog Sets on the other hand provide a way to group together a set of
related catalogs targetting a customer. It does not allow you to customize
the contents of the base catalogs. For eg I can have base catalogs named
"General" and "Preferred" and then create a catalog Set which includes only
the Preferred base catalog. The catalogset can then be associated with the
users profile and then displayed when the user logs in. Also Catalog Sets
should not be thought of in terms of implementing security.
Hope this helps
Thanks
Vinayak Tadas
Microsoft
http://blogs.msdn.com/vinayakt
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Thread-Topic: Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
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Subject: Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:11:01 -0700
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This is a total newbie question.
When would one use virtual catalogs and when would one use CatalogDataSets?
We have a base catalog that contains all our products, categories,
relationships etc.
Now we need to expose certain aspects to certain clients and other aspects
to other clients.
In my mind, I can create virtual catalogs and expose them, or create
catalog
sets and achieve the same result. Looks like catalogsets can have security
tied to it, but nothing much else. So it seems illogical that MCS would
have
two ways to do the exact same thing with such a small difference.
What am I missing?
Thanks in advance for your help.
| |
|
| Aweomse! Thanks.
But this brought up another question in my mind. Our need is to just display
a subset of the information to our users. So essentially all we need to do is
create a the "Preferred Products" grouping(shouldn't matter if it is a
virtual catalog or a catalog set) and we should be able to display that.
However is there a performance difference in using Catalogsets over Virtual
Catalogs(materialized)?
Thanks once again.
HG
""Vinayak Tadas[MSFT]"" wrote:
> Virtual catalogs and Catalog sets serve different functionality
>
> A virtual catalog allows you to customize a base catalog. For eg lets say I
> have a base catalog with two categories "General Products" and "Preferred
> Products"
> I can create a virtual catalog which includes only the "Preferred Products"
> category from the base catalog and also provide a discount of 10% on the
> products in the virtual catalog. In addition I can change the other
> properties like Display Name, description etc in the virtual catalog.
>
> Catalog Sets on the other hand provide a way to group together a set of
> related catalogs targetting a customer. It does not allow you to customize
> the contents of the base catalogs. For eg I can have base catalogs named
> "General" and "Preferred" and then create a catalog Set which includes only
> the Preferred base catalog. The catalogset can then be associated with the
> users profile and then displayed when the user logs in. Also Catalog Sets
> should not be thought of in terms of implementing security.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> Thanks
> Vinayak Tadas
> Microsoft
> http://blogs.msdn.com/vinayakt
>
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
> You assume all risk for your use. © 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
> reserved.
> Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
> http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm
> Get Secure! For more info visit http://www.microsoft.com/security. Please
> reply to the newsgroups only
>
>
> --------------------
> Thread-Topic: Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
> thread-index: AcasSWL04bxVmt/qT+SK1LE/RF0rHA==
> X-WBNR-Posting-Host: 12.47.224.8
> From: =?Utf-8?B?SEc=?= <HG@discussions.microsoft.com>
> Subject: Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
> Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:11:01 -0700
> Lines: 19
> Message-ID: <1A6229B2-FA60-405D-A031-E2F694E94297@microsoft.com>
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> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
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> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.1830
> Newsgroups: microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog
> Path: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl
> Xref: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog:6192
> NNTP-Posting-Host: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl 10.40.2.250
> X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog
>
> This is a total newbie question.
>
> When would one use virtual catalogs and when would one use CatalogDataSets?
> We have a base catalog that contains all our products, categories,
> relationships etc.
>
> Now we need to expose certain aspects to certain clients and other aspects
> to other clients.
>
> In my mind, I can create virtual catalogs and expose them, or create
> catalog
> sets and achieve the same result. Looks like catalogsets can have security
> tied to it, but nothing much else. So it seems illogical that MCS would
> have
> two ways to do the exact same thing with such a small difference.
>
> What am I missing?
>
> Thanks in advance for your help
| |
| Vinayak Tadas[MSFT] 2006-07-23, 1:16 am |
| What you can do is create the base or virtual catalogs which represnt the
products and then create the catalogsets with each catalog set containing
the appropriate list of catalogs. Based on the logged on user you can then
select which catalogset to use
See this post on catalogsets
http://blogs.msdn.com/vinayakt/arch.../29/122858.aspx
On the performance issue as I already said catalogsets and virtual catalgos
are two different features. There is a big perf difference between them
Think of catalog sets as a Folder and think of virtual catalogs as files
containg the data. Opening a folder is fast since it typically contains few
files but opening a large file can take time.
If you can use base catalogs and catalog sets to implement your
requirements I guess that will be the ideal approach form a perf perspective
Thanks
Vinayak Tadas
Microsoft
http://blogs.msdn.com/vinayakt
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
You assume all risk for your use. © 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.
Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm
Get Secure! For more info visit http://www.microsoft.com/security. Please
reply to the newsgroups only
--------------------
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<b64J#MPrGHA.4188@TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl>
Subject: RE: Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 13:31:01 -0700
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X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.1830
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog
Path: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl
Xref: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog:6197
NNTP-Posting-Host: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl 10.40.2.250
X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog
Aweomse! Thanks.
But this brought up another question in my mind. Our need is to just
display
a subset of the information to our users. So essentially all we need to do
is
create a the "Preferred Products" grouping(shouldn't matter if it is a
virtual catalog or a catalog set) and we should be able to display that.
However is there a performance difference in using Catalogsets over Virtual
Catalogs(materialized)?
Thanks once again.
HG
""Vinayak Tadas[MSFT]"" wrote:
> Virtual catalogs and Catalog sets serve different functionality
>
> A virtual catalog allows you to customize a base catalog. For eg lets say
I
> have a base catalog with two categories "General Products" and "Preferred
> Products"
> I can create a virtual catalog which includes only the "Preferred
Products"
> category from the base catalog and also provide a discount of 10% on the
> products in the virtual catalog. In addition I can change the other
> properties like Display Name, description etc in the virtual catalog.
>
> Catalog Sets on the other hand provide a way to group together a set of
> related catalogs targetting a customer. It does not allow you to
customize
> the contents of the base catalogs. For eg I can have base catalogs named
> "General" and "Preferred" and then create a catalog Set which includes
only
> the Preferred base catalog. The catalogset can then be associated with
the
> users profile and then displayed when the user logs in. Also Catalog
Sets
> should not be thought of in terms of implementing security.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> Thanks
> Vinayak Tadas
> Microsoft
> http://blogs.msdn.com/vinayakt
>
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.
> You assume all risk for your use. © 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights
> reserved.
> Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
> http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm
> Get Secure! For more info visit http://www.microsoft.com/security.
Please
> reply to the newsgroups only
>
>
> --------------------
> Thread-Topic: Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
> thread-index: AcasSWL04bxVmt/qT+SK1LE/RF0rHA==
> X-WBNR-Posting-Host: 12.47.224.8
> From: =?Utf-8?B?SEc=?= <HG@discussions.microsoft.com>
> Subject: Virtual Catalogs or Catalog Data Set
> Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:11:01 -0700
> Lines: 19
> Message-ID: <1A6229B2-FA60-405D-A031-E2F694E94297@microsoft.com>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="Utf-8"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> X-Newsreader: Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000
> Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
> Importance: normal
> Priority: normal
> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.1830
> Newsgroups: microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog
> Path: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl
> Xref: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog:6192
> NNTP-Posting-Host: TK2MSFTNGXA01.phx.gbl 10.40.2.250
> X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.commerceserver.catalog
>
> This is a total newbie question.
>
> When would one use virtual catalogs and when would one use
CatalogDataSets?
> We have a base catalog that contains all our products, categories,
> relationships etc.
>
> Now we need to expose certain aspects to certain clients and other
aspects
> to other clients.
>
> In my mind, I can create virtual catalogs and expose them, or create
> catalog
> sets and achieve the same result. Looks like catalogsets can have
security
> tied to it, but nothing much else. So it seems illogical that MCS would
> have
> two ways to do the exact same thing with such a small difference.
>
> What am I missing?
>
> Thanks in advance for your help
| |
| Step van Schalkwyk 2006-07-27, 1:21 pm |
| This ties in with my predicament:
I have 200 stores which all sell from one catalog, but with different
pricing. From a performance perspective I have tried to create 200 base
catalogs containg all the products (50 000), but the import time is
approaching 5 days!
I'm trying an architecture which contains ONE base catalog containing all
the products in a hierarchy of 3 categories (about 20 main categories, 5 sub
categories, 20 sub-sub categories and about 40 products per sub-sub category).
I am creating one virtual catalog per store, and instead of using the API to
import products again to each virtual catalog, I am trying to associate every
product with each virtual catalog (store).
On each store (virtual catalog), I have about 20 separate virtual catalogs
showing a subset of the store virtual catalog, with the same products but
with differnt category hierarchies, different product names and pricing.
Am I correct in my approach? Using 200 base catalogs is a no-starter as we
have to have near- immediate disaster recovery.
Thanks!
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