Subcatalog organization: an example
XYZ-CORP is an enterprise and a catalog organization that maintains items, such as processors, motherboards, and chipsets.
It defines the following subcatalog organizations:
- XYZ-Vendor, an enterprise and supplier of XYZ-CORP, makes memory chips. XYZ-CORP creates the XYZ-Vendor category in the catalog and authorizes XYZ-Vendor to extend the catalog by managing the XYZ-Vendor category. XYZ-Vendor adds its own items to the XYZ-Vendor category and is responsible for managing the XYZ-Vendor category and the items within it. Additionally, XYZ-Vendor is authorized to create and manage categories within the XYZ-Vendor category, such as the Perfect category.
- XYZ-Retail, an enterprise and seller of some XYZ-CORP
items, primarily sells computer hardware. XYZ-CORP defines seller
entitlements that allow XYZ-Retail to access the Memory and Platform
categories in the master catalog. XYZ-Retail can assign items from
the Memory and Platform categories and their subcategories to its
own categories. This includes items from the XYZ-Vendor category,
the Perfect category, the Base Y category, and the Base X category.
Additionally, XYZ-CORP allows XYZ-Retail to extend the catalog by granting XYZ-Retail authority to manage the XYZ-Retail category. XYZ-Retail is responsible for managing the XYZ-Retail category, its subcategories, and the items contained within them.
The following graphic shows the subcatalog example.

Categories and items that XYZ-retail can sell
In the previous example, XYZ-CORP defines seller entitlements that allow XYZ-Retail to sell items under the Memory and Platform categories. The Memory category contains the XYZ-Vendor category, which is maintained by XYZ-Vendor, and the Perfect subcategory, which is also maintained by XYZ-Vendor. The Platform category contains the Base X and Base Y categories, which are maintained by XYZ-CORP. In the example, XYZ-Retail is entitled to sell items from categories maintained by XYZ-CORP, XYZ-Vendor, and XYZ-Retail.
If the Base X category contains the items BaseX-1 and BaseX-2, the Perfect category contains the items SDRAM and SODIMM, and the Monitor category contains the items LCD Fine and LCD Better, XYZ-Retail can sell items from the categories listed below:
Memory category
- XYZ-Vendor category
- Perfect category, including the items SDRAM and SODIMM
Platform category
- Base X category, including the items BaseX-1 and BaseX-2
- Base Y category
XYZ-Retail category
- Monitor category, including the items LCD Fine and LCD Better
- Peripherals category
The following figure demonstrates the above example.
