Tutorial: Adding fields in the Catalogs tool

In this tutorial, you extend the Management Center Catalogs tool to display UserData information, which business users can manage and edit in the tool.

In this tutorial. you add language insensitive and language sensitive properties to the Catalogs tool.
  • To add a language insensitive property, you customize the Catalogs tool to provide a mechanism for selecting UserData information for products. The CatalogEntry noun uses the UserData element as a data extension point to add new data for the warranty example that is used in this tutorial without changing the logical model. In this tutorial, warranty information is added to the CatalogEntry noun UserData element to demonstrate the addition of language independent properties. A warranty consists of a term or the number of days the warranty applies and a type, either limited or comprehensive. Warranty information is not translated because it contains only the Warranty term and type.
  • To add a language sensitive property, you add a property to the CatalogEntryDescription noun. This property defines care instructions for catalog entries. In this tutorial, the care instruction information applies to a specific catalog entry and language. The care instruction consists of a text description of the instruction.

After you complete this tutorial the warranty term UserData column displays on the product list table in the Catalogs tool. The Category Manager can open the property view, browse Warranty information, select values for Warranty term and Warranty type, and save the values to the database. The Category Manager can also open the property view to browse the information for the product care instruction in the Catalogs tool.

Learning objectives

After completing this tutorial, you should be familiar with the concept of Management Center.

After completing this tutorial, you should be able to perform the following tasks:
  • Extend HCL Commerce query templates to include new data.
  • Update an object definition to include new UserData or attribute properties.
  • Update a properties view definition to include new widgets for displaying new properties.
  • Update a list view definition to include new properties.

Time required

Expect this tutorial to take three hours to complete. The tutorial can take longer if you explore concepts that are related to this tutorial.

Skill level

This tutorial is intended for advanced developers that are responsible for creating and customizing HCL Commerce services and customizing Management Center. To complete this tutorial, ensure that you are familiar with the following terms and concepts:
  • Web services
  • XML
  • HCL Commerce services
  • Relational databases
  • SQL
  • Rational Application Developer
  • Management Center framework
  • JSP
  • Access control

System requirements

Before you begin this tutorial, ensure that you create a user with the category manager role for testing your Management Center customization. For more information about creating a user, see Creating a user.

If you want to use EclipseLink SDO with JPA, see Customization section of Replacing Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) physical Service Data Objects (SDO) with Eclipselink SDO linked with Java Persistence API (JPA).

Tutorial resources

You can download and review a compressed file that contains the code samples that are used in this tutorial. Download and extract this file to a temporary directory, such as C:\Temp: