Concrete5 Appropriate for PIM system...advice?

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Hi all, I have a question whether Concrete5 would be a good fit for ym use case:

-right now I have created a useful but rudimentary Product Information System (PIM see here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_information_management).... A PIM essentially takes product features and benefits and sends those to other places on the website where they are used.
-I am right now accomplishing this with the "Global Blocks" add-on pulling from extra areas I have added in pages. This allows a change on one page to propagate throughout many pages. This Solution is not scalable and does not do anything for reusing that information without a human manually deciding how and when to use it.

This will serve as a good example...I want to take this to the next level and essentially have:

Computer1 & 2 & 3 &4 ......hundreds of computer entries
-Processor Speed
-Memory
-Hard drive Space

Software1 & 2 & 3 .....many different software programs
-OS Supported
-Benefit1/2/3/4/5

Essentially a whole mess of products that have dimensions added to them. Once those dimensions are in there, many interesting things can be done when comparing them later on.

My question is: How is the best way to tag these products with these pieces of information?

I think that Attributes are the way to go...essentially creating a new Attribute Type for each high level "thing" (software, hardware, etc.) and then within that type have individual attributes defined for the common things between them.

From what I have seen, though, aren't Attributes assigned to pages and not the actual "thing" itself? In the eCommerce add-on there are definitely "things", but maybe I am not understanding how to do this fully in Concrete5? I was looking at the Data Display add-on but I am not sure that would do what I am looking for either.

Thanks for any advice!

pendragn
 
olliephillips replied on at Permalink Reply
olliephillips
The built in attribute categories are user, file and collection/page. Many applications store custom attributes against pages. It really makes no difference to the end user, though as you say, Ecommerce adds a new attribute category.

If you don't want to store your data against pages, this is guide to creating your own attribute category.

http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/developers/attributes/catego...

Hope that helps.
pendragn replied on at Permalink Reply
pendragn
Thanks! I was following this (great!) thread: http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/customizing_c5/new-object... ....they are dealing with the same thing I am thinking about. It is a great discussion on the dynamics between page-based and "something else-based" ways of sorting data. I think for now, what I need to achieve I "can" do with a mix of attributes ans the pages themselves, but the discussion over on the other thread is very interesting about creating query-able data structures while keeping the inherent page-based goodness that we use C5 for.

Nick
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
check out the product specifications block. It might be a better start for you.

best wishes

Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz