Adding products to a Catalog, and drowning in terminology.

[G.W. Haywood]

Hi there,

First post to this list.  I'd like to contribute to the project.  When
I have things clear in my mind (if I ever get that far) I propose to
write some user documentation.  As you all know, it's badly needed.

Background:

I gained my first class honours engineering degree in 1976.  I'm very
confortable coding in C, C++, Perl and even assembler.  But I detest
Java so I don't think I'll be doing much coding for the OfBiz project.

I have a couple of businesses which might possibly benefit from OfBiz.
To begin with I'm trying to get a demonstration eCommerce site running
for one of them.  The site is running, I've given it some personality,
but as yet it has no products.  I'm using OfBiz 13.07.02 and the Derby
database at present but I plan to migrate to MySQL or PostgreSQL when
I've got to grips with the basics.

There are tens of thousands of products to import, a minimum of 40,000
up to a maximum of about 200,000 from over a thousand manufacturers if
OfBiz will cope with it - that's one of the things I want to find out.
On a 2.5GHz dual Opteron with 16GByte ECC RAM running over the local
Ethernet I'm afraid it looks rather slow at the moment.  Usually it
will take several seconds to render a page and sometimes it will take
of the order of ten seconds.

Immediate problem:

I've spent almost two weeks reading the revised volume 1 of the Data
Model Resource Book and about how to import products from data files,
and I'm not a lot clearer about it now than I was when I started out.
Most of the time I seem to be going around in circles reading the same
incomplete, out of date, inconsistent and confusing notes which very
often contain links to pages or even Websites which no longer exist.

Following this document:

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBENDUSER/Apache+OFBiz+Business+Setup+Guide

I have set up a new Catalog - or at least I think I have.  But that's
as far as I've been able to go following the text.  In particular, the
section entitled "Category Setup" is a masterpiece of confusion.  The
concepts of the relationships of a Category to a Product, to a Catalog
and to each other are not clear to me.  The section "Category Setup"
suggests that one should give descriptions to the Categories, but as I
have no clear idea yet what they're for, I'm able to describe them
only as "A Sort Of Category".  To a novice like me, the administration
interface offers no help, and to the extent that it's possible is even
more confusing than the Business Setup Guide.

My main concern is if I get it wrong at this stage, but ultimately do
manage to import a couple of hundred thousand products, that I'll just
have to do it all over again after fixing my Categories.

Questions:

Please would someone explain to me in simple English what a Category
is for, why I need to create four or more of them, what I need to do
with them after I create them, and exactly how that should be done?

What is a Browse Root Category (and why is it called that)?

Why should I want one?

Why does one Category have to be a child of another?  What is the
significance of this parentage?

Why is the child of the Browse Root Category described as a "top-level
browse Category" when (since it's a child of the Browse Root Category)
it seems it's not at the top level?  What is the name of this child?
Others seem to have names, but not that one.

Are the Promotions, "All Products" Category, Default Search, Purchase
Allow and View Allow categories children of the Browse Root Category
as well or are they children of the apparently unnamed and mis-described
top-level browse Category?  And are there really only two of them there:
Promotions and "All Products"?  If so, why are they seemingly pressed
into service for other purposes, and does that not run counter to the
data model ethos?

Of course I already have categories in the existing product data, and
they don't map well to those suggested in "Category Setup", as they're
more in the nature of sections and sub-sections in a paper catalogue.
I don't know if the concept of an OfBiz Category resembles my concept
of a category - note that I've used a small 'c' in my own categories
for that reason.  To begin with, can I simply not have any Categories
at all, and then add my own categories after importing the products?

--

73,
Ged.

[Sharan-F]

Hi Ged

Welcome to the community and it's great that you'd like to contribute!

I'm not an expert on catalog or products (so perhaps someone else may respond in the meantime) but I will try and put together response for you tomorrow on the points that I know a bit about.

Thanks
Sharan

[Jacques Le Roux]

I will try to answer a bit as well, maybe today...

Jacques

Le 09/03/2016 19:50, Sharan-F a écrit :

> Hi Ged
>
> Welcome to the community and it's great that you'd like to contribute!
>
> I'm not an expert on catalog or products (so perhaps someone else may
> respond in the meantime) but I will try and put together response for you
> tomorrow on the points that I know a bit about.
>
> Thanks
> Sharan
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/Adding-products-to-a-Catalog-and-drowning-in-terminology-tp4677654p4677724.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

[Pierre Smits]

Hi Gerald,

Please see my response inline.

Best regards,

Pierre Smits

ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>
OFBiz based solutions & services

OFBiz Extensions Marketplace
http://oem.ofbizci.net/oci-2/

On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 7:01 PM, G.W. Haywood <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> First post to this list.  I'd like to contribute to the project.  When
> I have things clear in my mind (if I ever get that far) I propose to
> write some user documentation.  As you all know, it's badly needed.
>
> I'm using OfBiz 13.07.02 and the Derby
> database at present but I plan to migrate to MySQL or PostgreSQL when
> I've got to grips with the basics.
>
> There are tens of thousands of products to import, a minimum of 40,000
> up to a maximum of about 200,000 from over a thousand manufacturers if
> OfBiz will cope with it - that's one of the things I want to find out.
> On a 2.5GHz dual Opteron with 16GByte ECC RAM running over the local
> Ethernet I'm afraid it looks rather slow at the moment.  Usually it
> will take several seconds to render a page and sometimes it will take
> of the order of ten seconds.
>
> Immediate problem:
>
> I've spent almost two weeks reading the revised volume 1 of the Data
> Model Resource Book and about how to import products from data files,
> and I'm not a lot clearer about it now than I was when I started out.
> Most of the time I seem to be going around in circles reading the same
> incomplete, out of date, inconsistent and confusing notes which very
> often contain links to pages or even Websites which no longer exist.
>
> Following this document:
>
>
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBENDUSER/Apache+OFBiz+Business+Setup+Guide
>
> I have set up a new Catalog - or at least I think I have.  But that's
> as far as I've been able to go following the text.  In particular, the
> section entitled "Category Setup" is a masterpiece of confusion.  The
> concepts of the relationships of a Category to a Product, to a Catalog
> and to each other are not clear to me.  The section "Category Setup"
> suggests that one should give descriptions to the Categories, but as I
> have no clear idea yet what they're for, I'm able to describe them
> only as "A Sort Of Category".  To a novice like me, the administration
> interface offers no help, and to the extent that it's possible is even
> more confusing than the Business Setup Guide.
>
> My main concern is if I get it wrong at this stage, but ultimately do
> manage to import a couple of hundred thousand products, that I'll just
> have to do it all over again after fixing my Categories.
>
> Questions:
>
> Please would someone explain to me in simple English what a Category
> is for, why I need to create four or more of them, what I need to do
> with them after I create them, and exactly how that should be done?
>
> A category is intended to provide a grouping mechanism for defined

products and/or services. A product can belong to many categories.




> What is a Browse Root Category (and why is it called that)?
>

The Browse Root Category is a category that functions as a parent to child
categories. In a catalog it is the first category to browse from.


>
> Why should I want one?
>

Without the Browse Root Category the child categories are not shown in the
the category list.




> Why does one Category have to be a child of another?  What is the
> significance of this parentage?
>

It is not required. It is a feature to differentiate products.



>
> Why is the child of the Browse Root Category described as a "top-level
> browse Category" when (since it's a child of the Browse Root Category)
> it seems it's not at the top level?


That is part of the documentation of
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBENDUSER/Apache+OFBiz+Business+Setup+Guide
.That
is to build perception and understanding. It might be so that it needs a
revision.


> What is the name of this child?
>

The name you give it. You can augment the name when you access the category.



> Others seem to have names, but not that one.
>
> Are the Promotions, "All Products" Category, Default Search, Purchase
> Allow and View Allow categories children of the Browse Root Category
> as well or are they children of the apparently unnamed and mis-described
> top-level browse Category?  And are there really only two of them there:
> Promotions and "All Products"?


The Default Search, Promotions, Best Selling ( in fact all with show
'(one)" in the selection field can be regarded as master categories.

>   If so, why are they seemingly pressed
> into service for other purposes, and does that not run counter to the
> data model ethos?
>
> Of course I already have categories in the existing product data, and
> they don't map well to those suggested in "Category Setup", as they're
> more in the nature of sections and sub-sections in a paper catalogue.
> I don't know if the concept of an OfBiz Category resembles my concept
> of a category - note that I've used a small 'c' in my own categories
> for that reason.  To begin with, can I simply not have any Categories
> at all, and then add my own categories after importing the products?
>
> --
>
> 73,
> Ged.
>

[Sharan-F]

Hi Ged

As Pierre has already responded about the categories I wont add any more and I hope it has helped you understand the categories a bit more. (Thanks Pierre)

You mention that you already have some existing product categories that dont map (but you can create you own in order to classify your products), and a product can have mulitple categories.

I think the special categories are more related to the e-commerce site where they are used by customers to locate things. A customer will be more interested in being able to find products on the e-commerce site (so your Default Search is used there).  You may not want all your products in the default search category because you may have products that you dont on sell to customers such as stationery etc for internal use. You will buy then from a supplier but not sell them to a customer.

Perhaps I've strayed a bit off topic but I hope this also helps give a bit more context.

Thanks
Sharan

[Michael Brohl-3]

Hi Ged,

just a brief reponse regarding the data volume and performance: we have
worked on projects with millions of unique products to be navigated,
searched and filtered in OFBiz without any problems of that kind. The
caching mechanisms in OFBiz are working very well.

The database used was mySQL.

Regards and welcome to the community,

Michael

Am 08.03.16 um 19:01 schrieb G.W. Haywood:

> Hi there,
>
> First post to this list.  I'd like to contribute to the project. When
> I have things clear in my mind (if I ever get that far) I propose to
> write some user documentation.  As you all know, it's badly needed.
>
> Background:
>
> I gained my first class honours engineering degree in 1976.  I'm very
> confortable coding in C, C++, Perl and even assembler.  But I detest
> Java so I don't think I'll be doing much coding for the OfBiz project.
>
> I have a couple of businesses which might possibly benefit from OfBiz.
> To begin with I'm trying to get a demonstration eCommerce site running
> for one of them.  The site is running, I've given it some personality,
> but as yet it has no products.  I'm using OfBiz 13.07.02 and the Derby
> database at present but I plan to migrate to MySQL or PostgreSQL when
> I've got to grips with the basics.
>
> There are tens of thousands of products to import, a minimum of 40,000
> up to a maximum of about 200,000 from over a thousand manufacturers if
> OfBiz will cope with it - that's one of the things I want to find out.
> On a 2.5GHz dual Opteron with 16GByte ECC RAM running over the local
> Ethernet I'm afraid it looks rather slow at the moment.  Usually it
> will take several seconds to render a page and sometimes it will take
> of the order of ten seconds.
>
> Immediate problem:
>
> I've spent almost two weeks reading the revised volume 1 of the Data
> Model Resource Book and about how to import products from data files,
> and I'm not a lot clearer about it now than I was when I started out.
> Most of the time I seem to be going around in circles reading the same
> incomplete, out of date, inconsistent and confusing notes which very
> often contain links to pages or even Websites which no longer exist.
>
> Following this document:
>
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBENDUSER/Apache+OFBiz+Business+Setup+Guide 
>
>
> I have set up a new Catalog - or at least I think I have.  But that's
> as far as I've been able to go following the text.  In particular, the
> section entitled "Category Setup" is a masterpiece of confusion. The
> concepts of the relationships of a Category to a Product, to a Catalog
> and to each other are not clear to me.  The section "Category Setup"
> suggests that one should give descriptions to the Categories, but as I
> have no clear idea yet what they're for, I'm able to describe them
> only as "A Sort Of Category".  To a novice like me, the administration
> interface offers no help, and to the extent that it's possible is even
> more confusing than the Business Setup Guide.
>
> My main concern is if I get it wrong at this stage, but ultimately do
> manage to import a couple of hundred thousand products, that I'll just
> have to do it all over again after fixing my Categories.
>
> Questions:
>
> Please would someone explain to me in simple English what a Category
> is for, why I need to create four or more of them, what I need to do
> with them after I create them, and exactly how that should be done?
>
> What is a Browse Root Category (and why is it called that)?
>
> Why should I want one?
>
> Why does one Category have to be a child of another?  What is the
> significance of this parentage?
>
> Why is the child of the Browse Root Category described as a "top-level
> browse Category" when (since it's a child of the Browse Root Category)
> it seems it's not at the top level?  What is the name of this child?
> Others seem to have names, but not that one.
>
> Are the Promotions, "All Products" Category, Default Search, Purchase
> Allow and View Allow categories children of the Browse Root Category
> as well or are they children of the apparently unnamed and mis-described
> top-level browse Category?  And are there really only two of them there:
> Promotions and "All Products"?  If so, why are they seemingly pressed
> into service for other purposes, and does that not run counter to the
> data model ethos?
>
> Of course I already have categories in the existing product data, and
> they don't map well to those suggested in "Category Setup", as they're
> more in the nature of sections and sub-sections in a paper catalogue.
> I don't know if the concept of an OfBiz Category resembles my concept
> of a category - note that I've used a small 'c' in my own categories
> for that reason.  To begin with, can I simply not have any Categories
> at all, and then add my own categories after importing the products?
>

[Jacques Le Roux]

Quickly Inline...

Le 08/03/2016 19:01, G.W. Haywood a écrit :
> I have a couple of businesses which might possibly benefit from OfBiz.
> To begin with I'm trying to get a demonstration eCommerce site running
> for one of them.  The site is running, I've given it some personality,
> but as yet it has no products.  I'm using OfBiz 13.07.02 and the Derby
> database at present but I plan to migrate to MySQL or PostgreSQL when
> I've got to grips with the basics.

I'd recommend PostgreSQL, but that's up to you of course

>
> There are tens of thousands of products to import, a minimum of 40,000
> up to a maximum of about 200,000 from over a thousand manufacturers if
> OfBiz will cope with it - that's one of the things I want to find out.
> On a 2.5GHz dual Opteron with 16GByte ECC RAM running over the local
> Ethernet I'm afraid it looks rather slow at the moment.  Usually it
> will take several seconds to render a page and sometimes it will take
> of the order of ten seconds.

Do you have an SSD? It makes an huge difference for IOs (ratio 1/10 compared to a hard disk) and are now not that much expensive, even for large ones.

> Questions:
>
> Please would someone explain to me in simple English what a Category
> is for, why I need to create four or more of them, what I need to do
> with them after I create them, and exactly how that should be done?

When I 1st was confronted with the same I was also dubious. I then (2005) created this
http://www.les7arts.com/assist/OFBiz/Creation%20Catalogue%20de%20produits.htm#_bookmark_5276160
It explains what are those 4 (supposed "mandatory") categories and how to create them. But as you can see it's in French, you might try to translate
with Google.

Anyway Pierre explained this well. I'd just recommend to have a look at the links below  (credential: admin/ofbiz)

https://demo-trunk-ofbiz.apache.org/catalog/control/FindCategory
https://demo-trunk-ofbiz.apache.org/catalog/control/EditProdCatalogCategories?prodCatalogId=DemoCatalog

You might better understand how they are used OOTB, nothing better than an example.

HTH

Jacques

[Shrenik]

Hi Ged,

Herein I am sharing the link to documentation from Opentaps which is essentially
built atop OFBiz but mostly uses the catalog manager from OFBiz with very few,
if any, changes -
http://www.opentaps.org/docs/index.php/Opentaps_Users_Manual#Using_Catalog_Manager_and_Setting_Up_Your_Products

You may find this documentation more structured and easy to get started with. Do
note that this documentation should be good enough to get started very quickly
and to familiarise oneself with the terminologies but may not be an exact guide
for all screens and functions that you may experience in the latest OFBiz
catalog manager.

Hope this helps.

[G.W. Haywood]

Hello again all,

Thanks everyone who took the trouble to reply.  It was all helpful,
but the gold medal goes to Shrenik Bhurag. :)

On Sat, 12 Mar 2016, Shrenik Bhurag wrote:

> Herein I am sharing the link to documentation from Opentaps ...
> http://www.opentaps.org/docs/index.php/Opentaps_Users_Manual#Using_Catalog_Manager_and_Setting_Up_Your_Products

Thank you very much indeed for that.  In particular, this

http://www.opentaps.org/docs/index.php/Introduction_to_Catalog_Manager_Concepts_and_Terminology

is exactly what I've been looking for these past weeks.  It's a little
embarrassing, as I've just spent that last couple of days writing it!
I really can't understand why I didn't find it myself.  Of course the
people who wrote the Opentaps documentation did a much better job than
I could do at present, as they understand the concepts much better.

Is there some history?

--

73,
Ged.

[Shrenik]

Thanks Ged for the gold medal. :)

And welcome once again to the fun of being in this awesome community.

The only 'history' that should matter regarding why that documentation is better than any other is that they have been at it dedicatedly, with a fixed purpose for a longer period than any other, towards "marketing" their result of hard-work Opentaps, which is built around OFBiz.

I was also part of the Opentaps story for a short period, found it impressive in many aspects but could also see the cracks as I experienced it's half baked features. Fixed several of them while I implemented Opentaps for my clients. Unfortunately, couldn't contribute to having them fixed in the upstream for reasons still "unknown" to be and would be off-topic herein.

So back to OFBiz, which IMO has a history of experiments not going its way due to lack of long term collective effort for which I guess we have none other to blame than the community of which I am also a part. (Proof to it being that this is officially my 2nd post only). Off late some of the sleeping giants have woken up and I see every possibility of the much deserving OFBiz gaining more acceptability and an increased user base as there are several things going in its favour as a collective effort.

Dig no further about the history and look ahead to build a more productive future. :)