IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management, Version 11.3

Product domain model

Product is the central entity in Product Domain. It is stored only once in the PRODUCT table.

An illustration of a standard Product structure.

Product attributes are defined by product types. For more information on product attribute modeling approaches, see the Platform and core features overview.

There are two basic strategies to persist entity attributes to the data model: hard and soft.

Using the hard persistence strategy, you can “harden” subtypes, which implies creating database tables and services based on their business request. The Product type hierarchy provided out-of-the-box has four hardened subtypes with corresponding tables to store product instance records:

Table 1. Product type hierarchy hardened subtypes and corresponding tables
Hardened subtype:	Table:
GoodsProduct	GOODSPRODUCT
ServiceProduct	SERVICEPRODUCT
FinancialProduct	FINANCIALPRODUCT
InsuranceProduct	INSURANCEPRODUCT

Using the soft persistence strategy involves the use of Specs and XML metadata. You can use the Specs feature to model product attributes without creating new tables and services. InfoSphere® MDM provides the SPEC table to let you define attribution for any product type. Specs are attached to product types via ENTITYSPECUSE table and can be cascaded down to subtypes.

A Product inherits the Specs from its Type and provides Values in the form of XML, which are stored in PRODUCTVAL table. Using a traditional approach, attributes on the product are persisted to actual database columns, but this can result in an explosion of database tables. Using XML can easily relate the product type to other hardened structures and it is not appropriate to relate these structures to the product type’s hardened ancestor.

You can use Specs Formats (versions) to introduce Product attribute changes over time. A Spec can have many Spec Formats, and these are stored in the SPECFMT table. Spec Formats allow changes contained in new spec formats to without impacting existing products that use that spec. Spec Formats also have a SPECFORMATTRANSLATION translation table that contains all the localized data for translation of attribute names.

InfoSphere MDM can manage product content in multiple languages. Product values for system local are stored on PRODUCTVAL and content for other locales is stored on PRODUCTVALNLS table.

InfoSphere MDM also provides Product Party Relation, Terms and Conditions, Category Hierarchies, Product Search, Product Suspect Process, and so on.

Last updated: 16 Oct 2014