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.

With qualified lookup tables, the MDM system features a new data model for product applications that replaces the traditional application-centric view (consisting of a single table of applications) with a product-centric view (consisting of both a main table of products and a qualified table of applications).

In an MDM repository, the list of generic applications is stored in a qualified table, which usually contains multiple lookup fields to define the valid value combinations among them and for “search-within-a-search” from the main table. You can also flag any field of the qualified table to be an application-specific qualifier. A qualifier applies not to the qualified table record by itself, but rather to the association of the qualified table record with a main table record.

Each record in the qualified table defines a single unqualified application of a product in the main table; the complete set of qualified table records together comprise the entire universe of valid unqualified applications for all of the products in the repository.

Applications provide yet another way to locate products within a large repository of complex product information, so that in addition to drilldown search by manufacturer, category, attributes, keyword, and other traditional criteria, you can also search for products by their application.

For example, in an automotive parts repository, each part may be compatible with one or more vehicles; these vehicle specifications represent the unqualified applications and appear in the qualified table of valid vehicles (the valid table). You can then search for parts within the repository by the various specifications of a vehicle, such as year, make, model, engine type, and so on.

A qualified table used for product applications usually contains multiple lookup fields and multiple qualifiers.

When you link an unqualified application to a product (by assigning the qualified table record to the value of a qualified lookup field in the main table), you can also assign a value to one or more application qualifiers. A qualifier is an additional specification for that particular combination of product and application that further defines the unqualified application.

You can assign multiple instances of the same unqualified application to a single product, where each instance has a different set of qualifier values.

Consider the multiple main table records shown in figure below that store application data for just a single automotive part using normal fields.

Part No	Year	Make	Model	CA Equip	A/C	P/B
A2-444	1998	Toyota	Celica	Yes	Yes	Yes
A2-444	1998	Toyota	Celica	No	Yes	Yes
A2-444	1996	Toyota	Celica	No	Yes	Yes
A2-444	1998	Ford	Mustang	No	Yes	Yes
A2-444	1997	Ford	Mustang	No	No	No

Using qualifiers to store the additional application specifications, the qualified table would have fields Year, Make, and Model, and the qualifiers CA Equip, A/C, and P/B, and for the applications above, would contain the records shown in the figure below.

Vehicles:

Year	Make	Model	[CA Equip]	[A/C]	[P/B]
1998	Toyota	Celica
1996	Toyota	Celica
1998	Ford	Mustang
1997	Ford	Mustang

A qualified lookup field in the main table would replace all of the vehicle specification fields, and the application specifications would be stored as qualifier values associated with main table/qualified table links, resulting in the single main table record shown in the following figure.

Part No	Lookup [Vehicles]
A2-444	1998; Toyota; Celica; Yes; Yes; Yes 1998; Toyota; Celica; No; Yes; Yes 1996; Toyota; Celica; No; Yes; Yes 1998; Ford; Mustang; No; Yes; Yes 1997; Ford; Mustang; No; No; No

Using qualifiers to distinguish between different uses of the same unqualified application: (1) eliminates the need to enumerate every distinct value combination of fields and qualifiers taken together; (2) in so doing, dramatically reduces the number of distinct records in the qualified table, making it more useful as a valid table of legal lookup values; and (3) avoids a tremendous amount of data duplication, especially when rich content (such as images, text blocks, and PDFs) is added to each qualified table record.

This innovative data model has the following advantages:

§         It completely eliminates all duplication of both product data and application data typical of previous systems

§         It efficiently enforces validation against the table of qualified table records

§         It dramatically reduces memory and storage requirements

§         It is radically more efficient for maintenance and searching. For example, an automotive parts catalog that historically contained over twenty million application records is represented within an MDM repository with just over one million part records and forty thousand vehicle specification records.