Design Method of Product Catalog

9.3 Design Method of Product Catalog

E-Catalog is an electronic catalog to provide products information and service for the convenience of the customers to search online. Through e-catalog, users can acquire the latest product and price data, the cost of e-catalog is much lower than printing or mailing annual product list. In terms of requirements, information can be easily updated each month, each week, or each day, and customers will not obtain old list number, products which have been removed from the product line, inaccurate introduction or outdated price data. We consider the compatibility of software and hardware of the website, then arrange pictures with words aside, or video snippet to introduce company’s products and service, and list some technical information related to the products and service in proper place. If including some product opinion from the individual third party, or the opinion of current customers, the page will be more persuasive. Moreover, a searcher should

be placed in this part for customers to conveniently search information related to the company on the website. Products have been published recently or are going to be published should be introduced in an attractive method in the product catalog.

9.3.1 Product Information Storage

Product information storage is to store enterprises’ products in the form of data. Its goal is to make production information queried quickly through the database, such as inquiring the total kinds of products produced by the factory and annual output of various products. Another goal is to provide reference for the development of new products by using the database, and provide basis of decision-making for investing new product projects. Therefore, the design of database is first to set up

a system for collecting product information.

1. Organization of information

Information includes two main parts: Enterprise’s products information and information about the enterprise. Information related to product includes category, specification and introduction of current product. Image information should be added in product information, to directly and vividly display various products. Image information is corresponding to the trend of current commodity database multimedia. It not only can avoid uncertainty of literal description, but also can convey what literal cannot describe. It is also involved with information of product manufacturer, including corresponding address and contact method (phone and fax number, etc.), contact person or manager and also the introduction of the enterprise.

2. Information grouping

The mission of information grouping is to classify and handle collected information

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to determine how to create one or more special tables to record information. One important principle in database design is that one data can be recorded only once. If the same information is found in many places, the information should be placed in an individual table. According to this principle, when designing electronic product catalog, product information should be collected in the form of several special tables, namely, information is logically grouped according to the characteristics of the product information, then the information is cut into several tables to reduce repetition of information.

3. Structure of product information database

Just take industrial products table as an example to explain the structure of product information table and field list in product information system. Industrial products have many kinds, such as traffic, architecture, textile, packaging, energy resource, papermaking and so on. Considering these factors, industrial products table is designed to be consisted of five basic fields (Table 9.1). Thus, industrial products table in product information category is subdivided into a table consisted of five fields. The four tables of agro-goods, civil goods, cultural artwork and semi-finished goods are also divided into corresponding tables which are composed of five basic fields in the same manner.

Table 9.1 Industrial goods table structure

Product

Product Product Type Product Name Code

Product

No.

Image Introduction

10001 Packaging Packaging Board

Omit Omit 10002 Packaging Packaging Board

Omit Omit

4. Relation among tables

After subdividing product information table and enterprise information table, we need to consider creating the relation among these tables. The goal of creating the information storage to collect information is to make the enquiry of the information more effectively. There are many inquiring requirements, one of which is to inquire all products of a certain enterprise. Firstly, the enterprise should be found from the enterprise information table, and then all products of the enterprise should be found from every product information table. Information in one table is required to have certain relation with information of many other tables. In database, this relation is called as 1-N relation. Moreover, information system can also find the same product from different enterprises, and many tables (product information table) have N-1 relation with one table (production enterprise table). Therefore, product information table has N-N data relation with enterprise information table. It is necessary to develop a special table to maintain such relation (short for relation table).

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9.3.2 Product Information Inquiry Function

1. Design principle

The goal of DBMS is to create useful output information, or information for users to summarize and analyze which provide basis for customers to make decision. Since ANSI took SQL as the standard of relational database language in 1986, more and more DBMS have adopted SQL. Programming with it can achieve better performance than with ordinary command, so this technology is also used to design multiple inquiry functions.

2. Inquiry Example

(1) Inquiry of a certain commodity If we want to know the category and specification of hectograph, using the

SQL technology, we just need to input one command “select* from 001 where t_name ‘hectograph’”.

The “*” represents all fields in the database, namely all information about hectograph; “from 001” means the information comes from product industrial storage (001); “where t_name ‘hectograph’” is a restricted condition, which requires all output information is about “hectograph”, rather than other information.

(2) Inquire all products of some enterprise For convenient description, it is given to inquire all products of company A.

The idea of inquiring is: first to find company A from production enterprise table (006) to get the enterprise code of the company; using the code, to find all product codes matching with the code in relation table (007); the last step is to divide all product codes into each product information table, to get the required product information. The result will be the products of the enterprise.

The command programmed with SQL is shown as follows:

select distinct 007.t_name, 007.t_number, 006.org_name FROM 006, 007, 001, 002,003, 004,005 where 007.customerid=006.customerid and 001.produc_n= 007.produc_n and 006.org_name like " Company A " ;

It can be seen that inquiry program can conveniently be designed by using SQL. Therefore, the current inquiry program of product database designed with SQL also lays foundation for implementing high-speed searches when the information quantity enlarges in the future. In the process of designing electronic product catalogue, two common all-around inquiry methods are designed with SQL for common inquiry with specific goal, including to inquire the production enterprise of some product and to inquire the products of a certain enterprise; and multiple monomial inquiry including the existed type of inquiring some product. Monomial inquiry can list all the congeneric products, to serve product design and development of new product.

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