Introduction to CategoryStructure Entity

The CategoryStructure entity suite implements the structure of Category records in the WebShop pattern. The CategoryStructure entity inherits from the WsyStructure pattern and adds an ItemRelation entity and a number of additional fields. The following entities are scoped under CategoryStructure.Data:

• Node
• Link
• ExpandedLink
• ItemRelation

The relations between these entities are depicted below:

Data Model for Category Structure

The item structure is formed by one Node instance for each category. The nodes are linked together by Link instances in a hierarchy. The top node of the hierarchy are given by the MainCategoryNode reference from a Shop instance.  Leaf sub nodes are then in term linked to Item through ItemRelation instances.

The ExpandedLink entity is used to keep record of what path of linked Node instances that a web user has traversed, as represented by a user Session instance.