Taxonomy Tables

[Former Member]

Hi,

I am new to MDM, I am not understanding the concept of Taxonomy tables I have gone through different sites but not getting clear picture on this, Can any one brief me or can provide good document with business scenario of taxonomy table.

Regards,

Venki.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Venki,

Taxonomy table are used to store & manage the product classification structure defined by the category records and the associated attributes of Product.

When you view a taxonomy table in Taxonomy mode, MDM uses a tree to display the category records of the table as a hierarchy of categories and subcategories, and a grid to list the entire pool of attributes.

In simple way, It works on the principle of BOM (Bill of Materials concept) of a Product. where you can drill down a product to find out the number components used to build it, which level a product asscosiate with main component & also the attributes (like Colour, Size, Quality of Metal etc).

Lets take Example :

Electronics ---0

(A) Lap Top----

---

Level 1

(A01)Sony -

---

Level 2

........ ...... (A011) Monitor u2026u2026.(Size 17u201D, 15u201D, 14u2019) Level.3

..............(A012) CPU u2026u2026u2026 (4 GB, 3 GB, 2 GB) u2026u2026..Level 3 (A02) Dell - Level 2

.......(A021) Monitor u2026u2026.(Size 17u201D, 15u201D, 14u2019) u2026...Level 3

.......(A022) CPU u2026u2026u2026 (4 GB, 3 GB, 2 GB) u2026u2026Level 3 (B) TVu2026u2026Level 1

........(B01) Samsung u2026u2026u2026u2026Level .2

(B011) Monitor u2026u2026 (Size 20u201D, 25u201D, 32u201D) - Level -3

|.......(B02).LG -

---

Level 2

(B021) Monitor u2026u2026 ( Size20u201D, 25u201D, 32u201D) -

---

Level 3

Above example is simple one, not excatly how a product is classified.

Regards,

MSR

Edited by: srihari reddy on Oct 16, 2009 2:34 PM

[Former Member]

sss

[Former Member]

Hi Venki,

Check the below example

You have hierarchy like

Root

- PC

-- Desktop Computer

-- Laptop

- Vehicle

-- 4 Wheeler

-- 2 Wheeler

For this hierarchy i will create one field say Product and look up that to this taxonomy table. In addition, i want to maintain other fields related to these products like Price (for all the products), Mileage (for Vehicle), Brand (for PC), Service Period (for Laptop), Processor Speed (for Desktop), etc.

Now if you create all these additional attributes as the fields in main table then your main table structure would be

ProductID | Product | Price | Mileage | Brand | Service Period | Processor Speed

100 | Laptop | 30000 | NULL | IBM | 2 YEARS | NULL

200 | 2 Wheeler | NULL | NULL | NULL | 2 GHZ

If you look carefully in above table, these additional fields are not common for all type of products, for ProductID=200 we have utilized only one field i.e. processor speed. Hence in order to design this type of requirement, Taxonomy table is used which allows you to link this additional information with the hierarchy nodes known as Attributes.

In Taxonomy table, we create hierarchy and link those with the attributes. whenever you select the particular node in main table, its corresponding linked attributes would get displayed hence above situation can be avoided

Regards,

Jitesh Talreja

[rajesh_chavan]

Hi,

A taxonomy table is a special kind of lookup table that provides support not only for a hierarchy of category and subcategory records, but also for category-specific attributes that can be assigned to each category on a category-by-category basis.

The taxonomy table itself and the fields of each of its records are created and defined in the MDM Console, the hierarchy of product categories and their associated category-specific attributes are created and managed using the MDM Client in Taxonomy mode.

[http://help.sap.com/saphelp_mdm550/helpdata/en/43/e0615f82b40a2ee10000000a11466f/frameset.htm]

MDM console and Data Manager reference guide will give you mre idea abt this.

Cheers,

Rc

[Former Member]

Hi,

Taxonomy tables are used where we need to maintain product and attributes relationship. You maintain a hierarchy and different levels of hierarchy will have different set of attributes. e.g.

Hierarchy:

vehicles>4wheeler>car ............. this level will have attribute specific to a car like BHP, seater, Displacement

vehicle>4wheeler>jeep...............this will have attributes specific to a jeep like tonnage capacity, front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, BHP etc.

Also we maintain variants using Taxonomy tables.

You can read more on this in MDM Data Manager Reference guide.

Manish