Product Applications and Application-Based Search 

A product application is a particular use of a product. Applications are especially important in certain industries where application-driven product selection is the traditional way to locate products within a large MDM repository of complex product information.

For example, in the automotive parts business, customers typically select parts based not on the category or manufacturer but rather on the particular year, make, model and engine type of the vehicle. There are millions of parts, tens of thousands of different vehicles, and since each part can be used in more than one vehicle, tens of millions of applications. Finally, the use of the part is often further qualified by specific characteristics of the vehicle, such as whether or not it has air conditioning or is California-equipped.

In an MDM repository, product applications stored in qualified tables can dramatically reduce the duplication of data that has historically plagued most application-based systems. In the automotive example, parts are stored in the main table, the “valid table” of vehicle specifications are stored in the qualified table, and each application of a part to a vehicle is represented by assigning the vehicle specification to the part.

Note that each lookup record in a qualified table is generic, in that it does not include the various conditions that might further qualify the use of the product in that application, even though the particular application may require additional conditions to properly define it.

In MDM, these additional conditions are called qualifiers. Qualifiers allow a single lookup record to be used for multiple applications that are basically the same except for the additional conditions, dramatically reducing the number of distinct applications in the qualified table and avoiding a tremendous amount of data duplication.

In the automotive example, qualifiers allow a single vehicle specification record to be used for vehicles that are equipped differently. This eliminates the explosion of vehicle specifications that normally occurs when the additional conditions for each application result in additional – but almost identical – vehicle specification records, as in most existing application-based systems.

With or without product applications per se (or the need for application-based search), a qualified table can also be used to store any large set of subtable records that contain fields whose values are different for each main table record, such as multiple prices for different quantities, divisions, regions, or trading partners, cross-reference part numbers, and additional distributor/supplier/customer- specific information for different distributors, suppliers, or customers.

For more information about applications and application-base search, see Working with Qualified Tables.