the rollup is the complexity but the actual category is entered onces. for imports I have a entity that while importing converts the supplier categories to the once you use in ofbiz. this allows you to have standard categories for all suppliers, in the catalogs used for customer ordering.
each supplier has their own catalog with their categories for ordering from them (see supplier_product) then there is/are catalog(s) for the ecommerce(customer) ordering. I implemented this for a Autoparts store where their system was updated nightly with inventory prices and new or obsolete parts. Association of parts, has nothing to do with categories but products. categories are used for quick look up of a product. once you at the product then association to other products for compatible, replacement are used. from there then the suppliers for that product is looked up. at least that is the way I implemented it. ========================= BJ Freeman http://bjfreeman.elance.com Strategic Power Office with Supplier Automation <http://www.businessesnetwork.com/automation/viewforum.php?f=93> Specialtymarket.com <http://www.specialtymarket.com/> Systems Integrator-- Glad to Assist Chat Y! messenger: bjfr33man Linkedin <http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=1237480&locale=en_US&trk=tab_pro> Michal Cukierman sent the following on 5/1/2010 12:08 PM: > Thank you Deyan for your post, > > Actualy those are very precious sugestions. Thank you very much for that. I > am now investigating possible ways for solving my concerns, Ofbiz is one of > tools that are pretented to be the best. There is one problem regarding > creation of complex categories structure. To be more precise: In my system I > am going to import all categories structures automaticly from suppliers. > Those can differ from each other. Your solution would be great if there will > be one model to refer. I tried to use structures from automotive software > like PartEpert or AllData. Unfortunately I am unable to gather data from > those databases. What is more: different part manufactures use different > numbering schema (yes, I am PLM consultant:)). Have you found a way of > modeling your structure, is there an open database keeping all those data? > I assume that most of companies do it manualy. In my case it could be > dificult, because of automatic import process. > > The best thing would be to have a categories structure based on Parts > numbers. We would be able to find replacements, variants and uses for each > part. As far I have not found a good solution for that. > > Regarding EntityListIterator, if its an implementation of Lazy loading > (fetch data 'just in time'), it could be a problem as well (1 000 000 calls > to a database is slow as well - but it will not kill my app). I see the > following solutions for solwing the problem: > > 1) join on rollup and Product category. > 2) select product categories where parent category id is not in ( select > from rollup ). > > I have not checked that as far as I don't have time for this at the moment. > Anyway, single query is the best solution. Databases are optimised for > operations like that and we should use it. > > > Regards, > Michał > > 2010/5/1 Deyan Tsvetanov <[email protected]> > >> associations, for example: compatible with, replaceable by, >> required or anything else ( product_assoc_type table ) >> >
