Pros and cons of catalogVersion attribute

[Former Member]

Hi, colleagues.

Could you answer a question from subject in details? What are the pros and cons of catalogVersion attribute?

Thanks

[ArthurPerry · Accepted solution]

1,2) In the database the catalog version column is a simple foreign key to the catalog version table. In queries that display the catalog version this would be a join to that table and the catalog table. In most general queries however you would be using this as a filter in the where clause and joins or subselects would not be needed.

3) Not sure what you mean by productivity, but catalog versioning is a very powerful way to support end-user maintenance of product or content data in a way that supports staged vs online data, or even more complex synchronization workflows (although with performance and maintainability cost)

4) Again, not sure what your after with DB normalization, but each catalog version of an entity's data is a copy of that data, and potentially copies of related catalog-aware entities.

[Former Member]

Sure, Tobias, I understand the mechanism, how it works and a purpose of catalog system 🙂 But I need a bit more explanation from the technical point of view:
1. Amount of joins
2. Amount of subselects
3. Productivity
4. DB normalization
5. Other aspects

Thanks

[Former Member]

Hi Mykyta, The catalogVersion is used to connect an item (i.e. a product) to a catalog system. The main feature of the catalog system is the ability to have different versions of the data. You typically have a staged and online version which allows for modifications during the enrichment/contentmanagement process, so that end customers will not see the versions before they got approved. Another important feature of the catalog system is the permissions system - i.e. a dutch product manager can only manage content from the dutch catalog.

Let us know if you have more specific questions, or (better) post a new question.

[ArthurPerry]

See the Core Training Trail on Catalogs which describes specifically how to make an item catalog-aware.