What Is a Base Catalog?
A catalog, also known as a base catalog, is a group of products that you organize so that your customers can find what they are looking for when shopping on your Web sites. You create a catalog from a collection of categories and products. Each catalog must have a unique name, and each product or category can appear in only one base catalog per Web site.
Base catalogs contain categories, products, and product variants, but they do not contain specific pricing rules. You must create a virtual catalog from one or more base catalogs in order to create pricing rules. For information about virtual catalogs, see What is a Virtual Catalog?
The product data for a base catalog is stored in the Catalog database. When you create a base catalog, Commerce Server 2009 automatically creates tables in the Catalog database. Each table starts with the name of the base catalog.
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Managing Tasks Common to All Business Management Applications