Think eCommerce!: Oracle ATG Commerce Overview

Oracle ATG Commerce Overview

Catalog contains hierarchical structure for maintaining Products/SKUs in navigable manner. The Root node is Catalog Folder. Catalog Folder can have child elements, called Catalog. From ATG 10 version onwards ATG has added Site Based catalogs. A catalog may belong to one or more Sites and these sites may point to a single catalog. This structure provides easier way to implement multisite functionality.
Further, Catalog may have root categories, categories and subcategories which are of type category item descriptor in terms of product catalog repository. These categories are associated with each other just like a tree or graph like data structure. The relationship between these categories is populated whenever deployment happens on product catalog. This can also be invoked through Oracle ATG Dynamo Administration Console a.k.a. Dyn/Admin. This will populate ancestor categories, parent catalog etc. properties for a category, as well as sub-elements like Product, SKU.
Category or subcategory can have Products. Products are entities which are the units to be displayed on site. Product may contain multiple SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). Customer buys SKUs which have specific properties of Product, like Color, Size, Quantity etc.

Oracle ATG commerce provides OTB profile management module. Profile is required to maintain user data. Profile is associated with user session. User information like Name, Login Information, Shipping and Billing Addresses, Payment Methods, Order Information, Active as well as used Discount or Promotion Information, Purchase History etc.
Profile is also used while processing order as well as fulfillment process.

Shopping Cart is an Order in incomplete state. It contains SKU items which are added by user to bag or cart. It also holds orders for multiple sites in multisite environment. Shopping cart feature allows user to manage items he wants to purchase, like view/change quantity, see/apply discounts or promotions information, in stock/ out of stock information, item information of SKU.
In checkout process, Order undergoes few changes like shipping information, billing information, payment information, confirmation. This process is controlled by different formhandlers and commerce pipeline which provides full control of customization of checkout process to developers. Once order is placed it goes to fulfillment system for further processing.

These are B2B features to provide functionality specific to Business like purchase orders, requisitions.

In B2B there is a need to maintain product catalog at Business Account level i.e. a company may provide customized catalog items to its dealers or distributors. It gives more flexibility in B2B model.

B2B features also provide user to have multiple shipping and billing addresses. This information can be maintained by multiple user accounts belonging to same dealer. Profile here is maintained in organized manner, like Organization, Role etc.