There are many examples of standard products that can come from multiple
manufacturers. If I have a hardware store and I sell 3/4 inch galvanized pipe
tees, they could come from three or four different manufacturers. Should I have
a separate 3/4 inch galvanized tee product for each manufacturer? I hope not! I
used the example of electronic components the last time this was discussed - the
same holds true there.
It IS a limitation. It will come up again, and when it does, I'll continue to
make the same suggestion.
Chris Howe wrote:
why would you have more than one manufacturer for the
same product? wouldn't that make it a different
product? I agree that it would be better for a more
generic product role setup, but if all the roles are
addressed AND it's not limiting, why go through the
trouble of refactoring?
--- Adrian Crum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I know about the manufacturer field in the Product
entity. What do you do if
there is more than one manufacturer for a product?
That's the limitation that
brought forth my original suggestion.
Why have a dozen different entities linking products
to a dozen different party
roles? We could have one entity that links products
to any party - regardless of
their role.
So, one entity could link a product to one or more
suppliers, one or more
manufacturers, one or more product managers, etc. It
seems more flexible to me.
Chris Howe wrote:
The manufacturer is desribed in the Product
entity.
The only other relationship to a product that I
can
think of is the supplier and that is desribed in
the
SupplierProduct entity. Having a product manager,
again is probably managed easiest by putting the
product into a productCategory and managing the
productCategoryRoles on that. Outside of those
relationships, can you think of another that would
have to do with a product?
--- Adrian Crum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I had suggested some time ago a
ProductRelationship
entity - where a product can
be related to a party, such as a manufacturer.
Would
something like that meet
your needs?
Al Byers wrote:
I think I have a need for a ProductRole that
mirrors the ContentRole
entity. I want to associate a manager with a
product. Is there another
way to do this? If not, should I just create such
an entity for this
custom use or should it be something to propose
for general use?
-Al
