Attachments

An attachment is an association between a business object, such as a catalog objects, entries, groups and e-marketing spots, and its supplementary material, called an attachment asset.

For example, a television can have a user manual. The catalog entry for the television is the business object and the user manual is the attachment asset.

You can use attachments as in the following examples:

WebSphere Commerce development environment The business object and attachment target are linked by an attachment relation. Information about the usage for the attachment is stored in the attachment relationship.

Continuing with the television example, the user manual can exist in several languages. For example, manual A is written in both French and English and manual B is written in Japanese. In this case, manual A can be assigned to the French and English languages and manual B is assigned to the Japanese language. The set of both manual A and manual B is an attachment target. A user attaches an attachment target to a business object.

When designing a store page, a JSP page programmer can reference an attachment, and WebSphere Commerce ensures that the correct language attachment displays, depending on the language of the store.

The following diagram shows a simple view of an attachment.

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WebSphere Commerce development environment The following diagram shows a detailed view of an attachment.

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The above diagram displays the following objects:

Business object
Business objects that can use attachments are catalog entries, catalog groups, catalogs and collateral.
Attachment target
The attachment target is a collection of related target assets, grouped by language usage. An asset can be assigned to one or more languages. For example, an image of a product is the same for all languages, a user manual contains information in both English and French, or a warranty document contains information in German.
WebSphere Commerce development environmentAttachment relation
The attachment relation links the business object to the attachment target. It contains the usage information for the attachment target.

Within the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, attachment targets are grouped by usage. For example, all television user manuals are grouped together. With usage groups you can easily find the attachment target you want.

Attachments in WebSphere Commerce provide the following functionality:

Catalog objects, catalog groups, catalog entries, and marketing e-spots can have attachments as described above. Product Managers and Marketing Managers are responsible for creating and managing attachments.

Contracts, RFQs, and RFQ personalized attributes can also have attachments. These attachments are not displayed in the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator under the Attachment menu, but are specified during contract or RFQ creation.

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