External Catalogs: Using Join Keys

A new feature in Commerce Server 2002 is support for join keys. Use join keys to link to external tables to retrieve inventory data at run time, and to associate multiple values with a product.

Two common scenarios for using join keys are:

  • Retrieving volatile catalog data at run time, such as inventory data. You cannot include inventory data in the catalog itself because the site never writes to the catalog database. In addition, to use Network Load Balancing, the catalog database must be read-only.
  • Associating multiple values with a product, such as a list of song titles for a CD, a cast list for a movie title, or a list of customer reviews for a product.

The following figure shows how you can use join keys to retrieve data from an external table and the Commerce Server catalog database.

Figure showing the use of join keys to retrieve data from an external table

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