Review: Building Database-Driven Web Catalogs

The systems for preparing electronic catalogs, contend the authors, are widely divergent from those used for print catalogs. Paper catalogs are developed using programs such as Quark, PageMaker, and Framemaker using databases that access various elements by page number rather than product number. An electronic catalog, on the other hand, is prepared from a database that organizes products by SKU number. As a result, as companies move to the Internet, they must either maintain two separate catalog databases -- one for print and the other for electronic catalogs -- or move to a new discipline that the authors call Marketing Product Data Management (MPDM), which allows publishing to both Web and print catalogs.

The company's main MPDM database would sit inside the company's firewall and be the source for regular "snapshots" that form the online catalog database hosted on the webserver available to the world. The authors describe what platform and features to look for in building such a system, the different capabilities required for publishing both print and Web catalogs, and the team needed to develop, maintain, and publish the database. The volume concludes with a discussion of the current open issues in this field, as well as a case study of how AMP, the largest manufacturer of electronic connection systems, developed an central MPDM system that enables both Web and print catalogs. This book has a narrow but important focus; you'll probably need it mainly if you're a larger company that already publishes a print catalog.