Extending Advanced Catalog Management

For this purpose, the data from InfoSphere MDM Collaboration Server in XML format has to be transformed to XML format which is consumable by the WebSphere Commerce Server data loader feature. This transformation is achieved by using XSL transformation which is provided in the mapping files.

The out of the box Advanced Catalog Management solution has only a few attributes mapped including some mandatory attributes as explained in Objects and classes. If users need to map more attributes and publish them from InfoSphere MDM Collaboration Server to WebSphere Commerce Server, they need to extend the mapping and hence the solution.

Extending the mapping

In order to extend the mapping, you need to add your own mappings to the mapping files as mentioned in Publishing catalog data.

The extension would include adding mapping for all the new attributes that users add in a similar pattern to the samples mentioned in Publishing catalog entries. The specific pattern would depend upon the kind of attributes that are being added.

Extending the common integration framework

To add new business objects to the support, developers will need to extend the common integration framework for the given objects.

Developers will need to create new exporters for the new objects and create new mapping for transforming the InfoSphere MDM Collaboration Server data to the new business objects.

With the new business object data, developers will need to create a new business object loader to publish the data to the target system, for example WebSphere Commerce Server.

Adding custom Java implementation

If extension involves adding new Java™ code, it is recommended to introduce your own Java classes instead of adding new methods to any out-of-box Java class. This can avoid your custom implementation from being overwritten when applying patches to Advanced Catalog Management. By introducing new classes to an existing package, you can avoid changes in the build scripts provided out-of-box.