The ECDF

The ECDF is similar in format to the Digital Analytics Category Definition File (CDF).

You must provide the ECDF to use the Enterprise Product Report or to build Digital Recommendations business rules. This file defines:

The hierarchical structure that you see in the EPR report.
The categories that are used in Digital Recommendations rules.
The categories that are used to define top sellers for category recommendations and fallback recommendations.

The table that follows shows the structure of an ECDF when viewed as a spreadsheet.

Table 1. ECDF file structure example
File date	Client ID	Category ID	Category name	Parent category ID
YYYYMMDD	98765432	101GR	Men's
YYYYMMDD	98765432	201GR	Women's
YYYYMMDD	98765432	102GR	Men's Shirts	101GR
YYYYMMDD	98765432	103GR	Men's Pants	101GR
YYYYMMDD	98765432	202GR	Women's Shirts	201GR
YYYYMMDD	98765432	203GR	Women's Pants	201GR

An example snippet from an ECDF follows.

YYYYMMDD,98765432,"101GR","MEN'S",
YYYYMMDD,98765432,"201GR","WOMEN'S",
YYYYMMDD,XXXXXXX,"102GR","MEN'S SHIRTS","101GR"
YYYYMMDD,XXXXXXX,"103GR","MEN'S PANTS","101GR"
YYYYMMDD,XXXXXXX,"202GR","WOMEN'S SHIRTS","201GR"
YYYYMMDD,XXXXXXX,"203GR","WOMEN'S PANTS","201GR"

File naming convention

Use the following naming convention for ECDF files: ECDF_[clientID]_[optionalparameter].csv.

Typically, you use the date as the optional parameter. For example, if your client ID is 1938220 and the date is July 18, 2011, then the file name would be: ECDF_1938220_20110718.csv

Formatting guidelines

Use the following guidelines when you develop your ECDF:

Top level categories (such as Men's and Women's), do not have a do not have a parent category, so you leave the Parent category ID field blank.
Files must follow CSV standards as documented in RFC 4180.
Files must be UTF-8 encoded to handle special characters and trademark symbols.
Values cannot have unintentional leading or trailing spaces. Trailing spaces are treated as valid characters by Digital Analytics.
Values for the Category ID cannot contain commas (,).
Numeric values cannot contain a thousands separator.
Numeric values cannot have more than 10 digits to the left of the decimal point and 4 digits to the right of the decimal point.
Do not include currency symbols.
Each category must be defined only once in this file. For example, there cannot be two categories with the same category ID, and there cannot be two categories with the same name.
If you are including quotation marks within quotation marks, use double quotation marks per this example:
- 20070625, xxxxxxxxx,"STR95","Stool - 45"" High","166"
- in this case, the description in the report reada as follows: Stool - 45" High
The ECDF supports a category depth of up to 15, which matches the depth that is supported by the Category Definition File and the Product Categories Report.