Commerce Server Blog

I came across a typical requirement where we are developing a website for each distributor but the commerce server site is same for all distributor’s website. I.e., the same product catalog data store for all distributors. They have typical requirement concerning which accessories that are to be shown on each product.  For example, distributor will show one accessory within each product  (for example charger for a mobile).  The other distributor wants to show the accessories which are compatible with the product (may be Bluetooth for mobiles).

I have suggested virtual catalogs for each web store and this typical requirement can be easily achievable using product relationship. First create all products in the base catalog and in the next step, create virtual catalog & build them. Now you can able to see all base catalog product and their relationships in the virtual catalog.If you try to remove them then you may get error – “The Relationship XXX could not be removed because it has been inherited from the base catalog.” 

Relationships created in base catalog cannot be removed in virtual catalog  but it will give flexibility to add new relationships to the virtual catalog product.

Now if you rebuild virtual catalog – it will not have impact to the newly added relationship in the virtual catalog. Now if you add any new relationship to the based catalog product and if you rebuild the virtual catalog again, you can able to see the newly added relationship in the virtual catalog and also the entries we have made to the virtual catalog.

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