Creating a Catalog Definition

If you decide to create your own catalog instead of importing one, you must first create the catalog definition. After you create the catalog definition, you can add categories, products, and properties to the catalog.

To create a catalog definition you perform three steps:

  1. Add property definitions. For example, Name, Description, Artist, Title, and List Price are property definitions. Property definitions are used in product definitions and category definitions.
  2. Add product definitions. For example, an online music retailer might have a product definition for the product Compact Discs that contains the properties Artist, Title, and List Price. All products in your catalog are instances of product definitions. A product definition specifies the properties for a particular type of product.
  3. Add category definitions. For example, Name and Description are properties of a category that are defined in a category definition.

The following figure shows how product and category definitions are based on property definitions.

A figure that shows how product and category definitions are based on property definitions.

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