Product Masks 

Using MDM product masks, you can slice and dice a single master MDM repository of product information into an effectively unlimited number of custom virtual repositories, dramatically simplifying the maintenance of a single repository targeted at multiple audiences. Each virtual repository can contain a different subset of products from the master, and appears to the user as a completely private repository.

Product masks can be used to create virtual repositories for a variety of purposes – including custom subsets for contract customers and targeted market segments – all driven by a single MDM repository.

Unlike SQL views, product masks impose no performance penalty whatsoever, and are defined at the individual product level rather than the query level. To the user of the MDM system, they appear as simply another dimension of the multidimensional search; on the Web, a mask can be automatically applied to the published electronic catalog upon site entry, so that each user sees only the slice of the MDM repository that you want them to see.

For more information, see Modifying Masks.

Product masks allow you to create multiple custom subset repositories from a single master MDM repository without duplicating the underlying main table records. This guarantees consistency and synchronization of the data across updates, since there is never more than one copy of each main table record.