I am developing a website for a manufacturing company. The company has a few thousand part numbers. The parts fall into around 150 categories. Each product category has specifications (length, height, width, etc).
I need to find a way to store all of this in my database for the website. The product specifications have me completely stumped. Each category has a different number of specifications ranging from 5 to over 50 (they are complex engineering products). I need to find a way to put them into my database so that I can get them out in table format, edit the values in a web page, search them on my website, and export them into Print and Catalog formats.
I have looked into Master Data Management and Product Information Management Systems but they all seem very cost prohibitive for a company our size. Does anyone know of a software package or an easy way to write their own that will solve this issue?
My initial attempts have involved loading the data into 3 tables. A PropertyGroup table, a Property table (each property belongs to 1 group), and a ProductProperty table (each ProductProperty has a Product_ID and a Property_ID). My 2 concerns with this format is getting the data out in a dynamic and pivoted format and some of my property groups have levels of headers. By levels of headers I mean for example 3 properties could have their own header and also share a second header above their single column one. I also looked at putting all of the data into excel but that seems to lose some of the data granularity that I was looking for.
Any ideas?
Check out:
http://www.amazon.com/Data-Model-Resource-Book-Vol/dp/0471380237/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
and the volumes 2 and 3. I am sure you will find a full schema for your problem there 😉