sap nw mdm 7.1 sp08 publisher reference guide - oct 2011

SAP AG • Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16 • 69190 Walldorf Germany • +49 1805 34 34 34 • fax +49 1805 34 34 20

SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM)

MDM Publisher Reference Guide

Release: MDM 7.1 SP08 October 6, 2011

ii MDM Publisher Reference Guide

Copyright © 2005-2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice. Some software products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. Microsoft, Windows, Excel and Access are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. IBM, DB2 and DB2 Universal Database are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. HTML, XML, XHTML and W3C are trademarks or registered trademarks of W3C®, World Wide Web Consortium, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. JavaScript is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., used under license for technology invented and implemented by Netscape. The Sentry Spelling-Checker Engine Copyright © 1994-2004 Wintertree Software Inc. All rights reserved. QuarkXPress technology used under license from Quark, Inc. © 1986-2004 Quark Technology Partnership. All rights reserved. Quark, QuarkXPress and QuarkXPress Passport are trademarks of Quark, Inc. and all applicable affiliated companies, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and in many other counties. SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serves informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary. These materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by SAP AG and its affiliated companies (“SAP Group”) for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. 09 08 07 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 SAP AG Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16 69190 Walldorf Germany +49 1805 34 34 34 tel +49 1805 34 34 20 fax [email protected] email http://www.sap.com web Printed in the United States of America.

MDM Publisher Reference Guide iii

Contents

Introduction ................................................................................ 7 Welcome ............................................................................................ 9

Prerequisites .................................................................................. 9 Basic Concepts ................................................................................ 10

Families and the Family Hierarchy ............................................... 10 Publications and Presentation Hierarchies ................................... 11 Sections, Spreads, and Pages ..................................................... 11 Items and Objects ........................................................................ 12

Items ................................................................................................... 12 Objects ................................................................................................ 13 Object Snapshots ................................................................................ 14

Repository Preparation .................................................................... 15 Step 1: Verify The Families Table Exists...................................... 15 Step 2: Refine Product Families ................................................... 15 Step 3: Add Data Fields to the Families Table ............................ 15 Step 4: Create Masks of the Records to Publish .......................... 15

Publisher Steps ................................................................................ 16 Step 1: Create Default Layouts .................................................... 16 Step 2: Create the Publication ..................................................... 16 Step 3: Arrange the Publication ................................................... 16 Step 4: Publish ............................................................................. 16 Step 5: Create an Index ............................................................... 16

Part 1: Guided Tour ................................................................. 17 Starting and Connecting to a Repository ......................................... 19

Starting Publisher ......................................................................... 19 Setting Up Unencrypted Repository Connections ........................ 19 Setting Up Secure Repository Connections ................................. 20

MDM Publisher Main Window .......................................................... 21 The Toolbar .................................................................................. 21 Main Window Panes .................................................................... 22

Hierarchy Pane .................................................................................... 22 Families Pane ...................................................................................... 23 Spreads Pane ...................................................................................... 23 Master Pages Pane ............................................................................. 24 Objects Pane ....................................................................................... 24 Spread Pane (Spread Editor) ............................................................... 24 Node – Workspace – Object Properties Tabs ...................................... 25 Template Tree Pane ............................................................................ 26 Image Links Pane ................................................................................ 26 Objects Snapshot ................................................................................ 26 Defining Perspectives .......................................................................... 27

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Part 2: Creating Default Layouts ............................................ 29 Layout Properties ............................................................................. 31

A customized layout for family objects .......................................... 31 Absolute and Conditional Properties ............................................ 32 Updating Yor Records “On The FLy” ............................................ 32

Working in Layout Mode ................................................................... 33 Understanding the Anatomy of a Layout ...................................... 33

Layout Items ........................................................................................ 33 Default Family Layout .......................................................................... 34 Node Items Tab ............................................................................... 35 Attributes in Layout Item Lists .............................................................. 36 Resetting and Inheriting Property Values ............................................. 37 Layout Processing and Layout Elements .............................................. 38

Setting Default Layout Properties ................................................. 38 Promoting and Demoting Items ............................................................ 39 Promoting Layout Items ....................................................................... 41 Grouping Common Information ............................................................ 42 Demoting Layout Items ........................................................................ 43 Demoting Images ................................................................................. 45 Combining Related Items ..................................................................... 46

Creating Pivot Tables ................................................................... 47 Example ............................................................................................... 48 Stack Pivot ........................................................................................... 50 Horizontal Pivot .................................................................................... 51 Vertical Pivot ........................................................................................ 51 Nesting and Combining Pivots ............................................................. 52 Advanced Use of Pivot Tables ............................................................. 52

Representing Qualified Table Data ............................................... 53 Managing Attribute Ratings .......................................................... 54 Formatting Text and Image Values ............................................... 55

Managing Style Inheritance .................................................................. 57 Arranging the Look-and-Feel of the Table .................................... 57 Setting Multilingual Settings .......................................................... 58

Part 3: Creating The Publication ............................................ 59 Creating Publications ........................................................................ 61

Creating a Publication .................................................................. 61 Working in Publication Mode ............................................................ 63

Anatomy of a Publication .............................................................. 63 Comparing Family and Publication HierarchIes ............................ 64 Understanding Inheritance in Publication Mode ........................... 65 Using Masks ................................................................................. 66 Publication Operations ................................................................. 67 Composing the Spreads ............................................................... 69 Creating a Layout Template ......................................................... 71 Arranging the Catalog ................................................................... 71

Removing Empty Pages ....................................................................... 72 Using Freestyle Text on a Page ........................................................... 72

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Managing Image Links (Links Pane) .................................................... 72

Part 4: Publishing to InDesign................................................ 75 Publishing a Publication ................................................................... 77 Creating an Index ............................................................................. 79

Extract Indexed Data Sources ..................................................... 79 Creating and Editing the Index ..................................................... 79 Assigning Styles to the Indexed Keys .......................................... 80 Publishing the Index ..................................................................... 81

Part 5: Advanced Topics ......................................................... 83 Advanced Pivoting ........................................................................... 85

Horizontal Pivots and Column Duplication ................................... 85 Pivoting Images ........................................................................... 87 Stack Pivots and Partitions: A Comparison .................................. 87

Advanced Layout Operations ........................................................... 89 Using the Spread Pane ................................................................ 89 Incorporating Images in Text Objects........................................... 89 Merging Cells in a Table .............................................................. 91 Using Qualified Lookup Tables .................................................... 93

Part 6: Reference ..................................................................... 97 Conditional Property Types .............................................................. 98 Layout Item Properties ..................................................................... 99 Style Properties .............................................................................. 115 Glossary ......................................................................................... 118

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INTRODUCTION This part of the reference guide provides an overview of MDM Publisher, including its distinctive features, terminology, and overall design philosophy.


Welcome SAP MDM enables you to create visually stimulating print catalogs that retain their connections to ever-changing product data. MDM Publisher is a powerful tool for single-source, cross-media catalog publishing. With MDM Publisher, you create and manage catalogs that contain the rich product data stored in an MDM repository. Key catalog creation and management features include: • The use of product families that are based, by default, on the

taxonomy structure of the repository. Rather than tying catalog layouts to specific product records, layouts in MDM publications are based on these product families, making it easy to add, delete, or move products in a catalog.

• A partition feature, used to group the records of product families according to attribute values and other data elements, such as lookup tables and text attributes.

• Easy and intuitive catalog layout and design tools.

• Separate storage of images, PDF files, and other data that apply to all records in a family.

• Connection to “live” MDM repository data, which facilitates the update of catalogs whenever new product information is available.

• Web and print publishing capabilities.

• Options for producing multilingual publications, for use by different groups of users.

PREREQUISITES Before you begin working with SAP MDM Publisher, be sure that your MDM repository has been created and that most or all of the initial data has been added. This step is performed in the MDM Console. The following software must already be installed: • Master Data Server (MDS)

• MDM Layout Server (MDLS)

• MDM Publisher • MDM Indexer If problems occur, see SAP NOTE 1290736 to troubleshoot issues when starting to work with the MDM Publisher.

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Basic Concepts FAMILIES AND THE FAMILY HIERARCHY A family (or product family) is a group of records that are related by one or more common fields and/or attribute values. In MDM, families are organized hierarchically, usually according to the underlying repository taxonomy. The family hierarchy is represented as a tree in MDM applications, with each individual family appearing as a leaf node in the tree. This hierarchical structure is important not only for organizational purposes, but also for inheritance. The following is an example of a family hierarchy:

Each family in the family hierarchy is stored as a record in the Families table of the MDM repository. You can add fields to the Families table to store general family data, such as images, text blocks, and other information that applies to a product family as a whole rather than to the individual product records. The family hierarchy is dynamic, meaning that as product records are added, deleted, and edited in the MDM repository, MDM automatically adds, deletes, and repopulates families in the family hierarchy.


PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATION HIERARCHIES Publications are the catalog documents created by MDM Publisher. You can create, open, close, and print them just like any document in a word processing or desktop-publishing program. MDM organizes publications in hierarchies, rather than as single, continuous, scrolling documents. The leaf-node item in a publication’s hierarchy is a presentation, which can represent either a family or an individual record. It contains the actual product information that will be published in the catalog. For this reason, a publication’s structure is called its presentation hierarchy. Unlike the family hierarchy, you can organize the presentation hierarchy to meet the specific needs of each publication. For example, for a single catalog, you may want to publish only certain sections, or you may divide it into “chunks” so that different people can work on the overall publication simultaneously. You add, delete, move, and split nodes to create a structure that matches the requirements of the catalog that you want to produce. The following is an example of a presentation hierarchy:

SECTIONS, SPREADS, AND PAGES Like chapters in a book, an MDM publication is made up of individual sections, represented by the section nodes in the presentation hierarchy. Each section, in turn, is made up of individual pages and spreads, each of which can contain one or more presentations. You can use the presentation hierarchy to add, delete, and reorder sections, and to move presentations from one section to another. Selecting a presentation in the presentation hierarchy displays its corresponding pages and spreads in the Spreads pane and in the Spread editor of the MDM Publisher main window.


The following figure is an example of the pages and spreads of a selected section:

ITEMS AND OBJECTS The information that appears on the pages and spreads of an MDM publication is determined by the items and objects that belong to the presentations of that publication. Although these terms seem interchangeable, they are differentiated in MDM Publisher as follows: • Items refer to the fields, attributes, and qualifiers that belong to the

records of a specific family or presentation. • Objects refer to the layout elements that end up on the actual

spreads of a publication.

Items MDM compiles the list of items for a family or presentation by collecting schema information from the main, qualified, and Families table of the MDM repository, as illustrated in the following example:


As you can see in this example, the presentation’s main-table records consist of:

• Item No, Category, and Manufacturer

• The attributes Sleeve, Size, and Color

• The qualified lookup field Local Price, which looks into the Prices qualified table. The Prices qualified table consists of the field Region and the qualifier [Price]. Finally, two family data fields have been added to the Families table: Logo and Features.

Note that items are not directly related to the specific records or the data. Instead, they work on the metadata level and enable you to create standard layouts for your publication, since you are not working at the level of actual record values. In MDM Publisher, you can customize the placement and appearance of every item in a family by defining the layout properties for each item.

Objects MDM Publisher supports two classes of objects: • Family or presentation objects. The table, text, and image objects

that MDM Publisher generates from record data associated with a family or presentation.

• Non-family objects. Text blocks, drawings, and images that a user adds directly to a spread.

MDM generates family and presentation objects by getting the records that belong to a family or presentation from the MDM repository and then applying the various layout properties defined for the items in those records. The resulting objects are displayed in MDM Publisher, as illustrated in the following figure:

Non-family objects can be added from a source within the MDM repository (such as an image that belongs to a separate product family) or from an external file. Once objects have been generated by MDM or added by a user, you can use the Spread editor to size and place each object precisely on the pages of the publication.


Object Snapshots As a result of the live connection between MDM Publisher and the MDM repository, the data that you are working with can be refreshed. When working with the family hierarchy to build the default layout, every time data and metadata is changed in the repository – such as records being added, deleted, or modified – the objects of the affected families are updated automatically. When creating the publication itself, you can choose whether or not to refresh the data automatically. However, in order to exactly maintain the data that you have formatted and laid out in your publication, you need to prevent such updates. To protect against this hazard, MDM Publisher creates a snapshot of the presentation objects after they are initially generated. Like a photograph, this snapshot records the objects in the presentation and stores them with your presentations. The snapshots – and not the dynamic repository data – are used to populate the spreads of the publication. They also facilitate the loading of the objects, because MDM does not need to regenerate the objects each time a presentation is selected. Note that if you later decide that you do want to include the repository changes in your spreads, you can instruct MDM Publisher to update the snapshots.


Repository Preparation The following steps should be completed before you begin using MDM Publisher.

STEP 1: VERIFY THE FAMILIES TABLE EXISTS A Families table is required in order to create publications. A repository’s Families table is created automatically when the repository is created, but it may be deleted at a later time, in which case a new Families table must be added. For more information about the Families table, see the MDM Console Reference Guide.

STEP 2: REFINE PRODUCT FAMILIES The content of an MDM publication is derived from the families defined in the family hierarchy of an MDM repository. The default family hierarchy is its main table taxonomy, meaning that, in most cases, the family hierarchy in a repository starts out identical to its category hierarchy. While categories are ideal for organizing records in a repository, you will probably want to group records differently for your publications. For more information about refining families, see the MDM Data Manager Reference Guide. STEP 3: ADD DATA FIELDS TO THE FAMILIES TABLE You can add fields to the Families table. This is very efficient when you have data that is related to families themselves rather than to single records. Such fields may be family images, a family description, or other data. For more information about adding fields to the Families table, see the MDM Console Reference Guide.

STEP 4: CREATE MASKS OF THE RECORDS TO PUBLISH You can create MDM record masks to slice and dice an MDM repository into any number of custom virtual repositories. Using masks can help you filter only the repository records you want to use in a specific publication. Using masks, you can create sets of different records that can be published as custom catalogs. For more information about creating and using masks, see the MDM Data Manager Reference Guide


Publisher Steps The following steps outline the basic process of creating a publication with MDM Publisher. Each step is later expanded into its own chapter of this guide.

STEP 1: CREATE DEFAULT LAYOUTS Default layouts are the templates used to present family data in your publications For more information, see “Working in Layout Mode” on page 33.

STEP 2: CREATE THE PUBLICATION Once your layouts are designed, the next step is to create a publication document, which fills in your layouts with actual product data. For more information, see “Creating Publications” on page 61.

STEP 3: ARRANGE THE PUBLICATION In this step, you customize the layouts, data flow, and pagination for your catalog. For more information, see “Working in Publication Mode” on page 63.

STEP 4: PUBLISH Once your publication is ready to go, you have options for printing individual sections or the entire publication to the Adobe InDesign plugin. For more information, see “Publishing a Publication” on page 77.

STEP 5: CREATE AN INDEX You can use the MDM Indexer plugin to automatically create an index for the publication. For more information, see “Creating an Index” on page 79.


PART 1: GUIDED TOUR This part of the reference guide lists the prerequisite tasks for creating your publication in MDM Publisher. It then explains how to start MDM Publisher and subsequently provides an in-depth description of the panes and main features of the MDM Publisher user interface (UI).


Starting and Connecting to a Repository A repository must be loaded on a running Master Data Server in order for MDM Publisher to connect to it.

STARTING PUBLISHER

To start Publisher and connect to a repository: 1. Double-click the MDM Publisher icon.

2. In the Connect to MDM Repository dialog, select the desired MDM repository, the language layer to work in, and enter your user name and password.

3. Click OK to connect Publisher to the repository.

NOTE ►► If an MDM repository does not appear in the list, you must add it by clicking “…” (browse) to set up the connection (see the following sections for more information).

NOTE ►► If a repository’s TCP/IP port number changes, you must re-add the repository as the old entry will load whatever repository is loaded on the old TCP/IP port.

SETTING UP UNENCRYPTED REPOSITORY CONNECTIONS

To set up an unencrypted connection to an MDM repository: 1. In the Connect to MDM Repository dialog, click “…” (browse).

2. In the Choose Repository dialog, select the Master Data Server on which the repository is loaded. If the Master Data Server has not been previously connected to by Publisher, type the name or IP address of its host, or click “…” (browse) to select it from a list. NOTE ►► If the Master Data Server is configured to listen on non-"MDM default" ports, you must type in the port number after the Master Data Server name, using the format ServerName:PortNumber (for example, ServerXYZ:54321). Otherwise, Data Manager will be unable to connect to the Master Data Server.

3. Select the repository (you may have to click the “refresh” button next to the Repository field to load the repository names).

4. Click OK to add the repository to the Connect to MDM Repository list.


SETTING UP SECURE REPOSITORY CONNECTIONS Secure connections are only possible for repositories loaded on SSL-enabled Master Data Servers (see “Network and Communication Security” in the MDM 7.1 Security Guide for more information).

To set up a secure connection to an MDM repository: 1. In the Connect to MDM Repository dialog, click “…” (browse). 2. In the Choose Repository dialog:

a. Select the SSL-enabled Master Data Server b. Click Secure Connection c. Enter the paths to the client Key File and SSL Library

3. Click the “refresh” button next to the Repository field and choose the repository you want to connect securely to.

4. Click OK to add the repository to the Connect to MDM Repository list. 5. In the Connect to Repository dialog, a lock icon similar to the one

shown below indicates that communications with the selected repository will be established on a secure connection.


MDM Publisher Main Window The main window of MDM Publisher includes a combination of panes and sub-panes, which can be configured and saved in separate perspectives. The toolbar at the top contains a range of controls that you use together with the main menu and the different panes that you display according to the tasks that you are performing. This section describes the toolbar controls and the different panes available in the main window. The following is a sample configuration of the MDM Publisher main window:

Depending on the task that you are performing, a different configuration of panes is displayed by default. For example, if you are just beginning, and defining the family layout of the individual families in the family hierarchy, you will have the Family Hierarchy pane displayed at the top left, with the Family Objects pane towards the right. If you are working on the actual publication, the Family Hierarchy pane will be the Presentation Hierarchy, and the Family (tree) pane will display the Family Hierarchy instead.

THE TOOLBAR The toolbar at the top of the main window contains a collection of dropdown lists, fields, and buttons. Toolbar controls include, from left to right:


• Publication dropdown list. Contains the Family Hierarchy and all publications available on the Master Data Layout Server for the connected repository. Only one publication can be open at a time.

• Zoom options. Provides zoom levels of the Families, Presentation/Family Objects, and Spread panes.

• Tree options. Expands or collapses branches of the selected tree.

• Redirection dropdown list. Contains all the qualified lookup fields available for publication. Selecting a field opens a dialog box that enables you to choose how the subrecords of qualified data associated with the qualified lookup field are displayed in the publication.

• Context Colors button. Toggles the display of context colors in the Spread pane. Context colors indicate which pivots have been applied to a layout table.

• Annotation button. Toggles the display of annotated objects on the Spread editor pane. An annotated object can be displayed/hidden without having to recalculate the object.

• Measurement toolbar. Specifies the exact placement and size of objects on a spread in the Spread editor, based on axis, width, and height values. To move the toolbar, choose View Measurement Floating.

MAIN WINDOW PANES Normally, you display only the panes that are relevant to the task that you are performing. By default, the main panes used in each task are displayed automatically. This section describes the full list of available panes. The next section explains how to define and save different configurations of panes for reuse in performing specific tasks.

Hierarchy Pane The pane at the top left of the main window contains a tree of the hierarchy selected from the Publication list in the toolbar. In Layout mode, you display the Family Hierarchy of the connected MDM repository. In Publication mode, you display the Presentation Hierarchy. The pane is renamed accordingly. The default structure of a family hierarchy is a direct result of the partitioning defined in MDM Data Manager. All new products with the same data partition values are added automatically to the correct family, without needing to assign products to the families. Nodes are displayed in the tree as follows:


• Nodes that are the result of family partitioning have a pink rectangular icon to the left of the node name.

• Nodes whose layout properties have been set directly (rather than having been inherited) have a small pink square to the left of the node icon.

• An internal node or a leaf-node family that does not contain main-table product records is highlighted in gray.

Selecting a node in the Hierarchy pane updates the rest of the panes with the information for the selected node. You can also right-click a node to display a context menu that lists node and hierarchy-related operations. You can use the Set Record Mode Search command in the context menu of the Hierarchy pane to set the search selections that correspond to the selected node in the Family Hierarchy. This enables you to conveniently identify the product records associated with either the selected leaf-node family or the set of families that are children of the selected internal node.

Families Pane In Presentation mode – when your publication hierarchy is displayed in the Hierarchy pane – the hierarchy of the families in your publication is displayed in the Families pane. You can add content to a publication by dragging nodes from this pane into the Presentation Hierarchy pane.

Spreads Pane The Spreads pane displays thumbnails of the pages and spreads of the current publication. A spread is a combination of two facing pages. The thumbnails contain shaded areas that represent the layout positions of specific families on the page/spread. Hovering the mouse above a shaded area displays a tooltip that gives the name of the family or presentation that it represents. You can perform the following actions in the Spreads pane:

• Control the flow of presentations over multiple spreads and pages • Add new pages

• Remove empty pages

• Reorder pages • Repaginate sections Selecting a hierarchy node displays a red box on the corresponding thumbnail in the Spreads pane. This red box corresponds to the display in the Families, Objects and Spread panes. You can move the box on the spread, and resize it to control the zoom.


Master Pages Pane The Master Pages pane, below the Spreads pane, contains thumbnails of the master pages for the publication. You can select a master page thumbnail to add or edit non-family objects (text, drawings, and images added “manually” to a spread) on the master pages of the publication. You can choose to hide or display master page objects on a spread-by-spread or section-by-section basis. Dragging a master-page thumbnail to a location in the Spreads pane adds new pages to that part of the publication.

Objects Pane The Family Objects or Presentation Objects pane displays a preview of either the family or the presentation objects – table, text, and image objects generated from the record data – that belong to the node currently selected in the Hierarchy pane. These objects reflect the layout properties defined for the items of the selected family or presentation, listed in the Node (Properties) pane at the bottom. Right-clicking an object displays a context menu that lists the operations that you can perform on the selected object. Family object data is cached on the Master Data Layout Server at the time MDM Publisher is accessed. Pressing F5 refreshes this cache and updates family objects with any repository changes that have occurred since the current MDM Publisher session began.

Spread Pane (Spread Editor) The Spread editor is a WYSIWYG canvas on which you can precisely place and size each presentation object on the page and spread of your publication. The way your presentation appears in the Spread pane is the way it will look on paper. A spread initially displays the layout captured in the latest “snapshot” of its corresponding presentation objects. You can add non-family objects to a spread by creating them from within MDM Publisher or by dragging them from an external source. You can rearrange, delete, and resize each of the objects appearing on a spread, independently of the other objects. The following visual indicators are used in the Spread editor:

• A red frame indicates a selected presentation.

• A blue frame indicates a selected object.

• Green shading indicates a non-family object. • A red dot indicates an object that contains additional content.


Node – Workspace – Object Properties Tabs At the bottom right of the MDM Publisher main window is a set of tabbed panes that display the layout properties defined for the family or presentation node selected in the Hierarchy pane. These properties define how the record items of the selected node should be transformed into objects. Most layout work takes place in this pane. As you make changes to the layout properties in the different tabs of this pane, MDM Publisher updates the Objects pane accordingly. Depending on the tab that you choose along the bottom of the pane, you can display the fields and attributes that belong to the records of the selected family or presentation. You use the tabs to group the items as follows: • Node. The family fields and the main table fields, qualifiers and

attributes of the layout items • Workspace. The global settings for the publication, such as page

setup details and the paragraph and character styles available to the items in the publication

• Object Properties. The specific properties (and values) of the currently-selected object


Template Tree Pane The Template Tree pane is used to store templates for presentation spreads. The templates can be stored hierarchically, with leaf nodes representing the individual templates. You can provide organization structure to the tree by adding, deleting, moving, and renaming internal section nodes.

NOTE ►► When applying a template of one category to another category, ensure that the general layout size is similar so that mismatches in the layout do not occur.

To save a template: 1. With the Presentation Hierarchy displayed, select the node of the

presentation to lay out. 2. In the Spread pane, make the changes to be used for the presentation. 3. Right-click in the Spread pane and choose Save as Template. The

template – named according to the presentation – is saved in the Template Tree.

4. To apply the template to another category: a. Display the presentation in the Spread pane. b. Drag the selected template into that pane. c. From the popup menu, choose either Apply Template To

Connected Items Only, or Apply Template To All Items, as appropriate.

Image Links Pane The Image Links pane displays the properties of the selected image in a layout object. To display the pane, choose View Pane Image Links. This pane is useful for viewing the image information needed for preparing the catalog for printing and publication.

Objects Snapshot The (Presentation or Family) Objects Snapshot pane displays all objects that have been deleted from a presentation, either by using the Delete command or as a result of a content refresh (calculation). Objects not currently used in the spread are indicated by a red icon in the corner of the object in the Spread pane Right-clicking in the Objects Snapshot pane displays a context menu that lists the operations you can perform on the selected object.


Defining Perspectives Rarely, if ever, will you need to use all of the panes in the MDM Publisher main window at the same time. Instead, you will use only those panes that are relevant to the task that you are performing. Once you choose the set of panes that are relevant to regular tasks that you perform, you can save the configuration as a perspective for later use. For example, when creating default layouts for family objects, you do not need any of the spread-related panes, such as Spreads pane, and Spread editor. Therefore, you can hide the panes that you do not need and choose View Perspectives Save Perspective to create a perspective that you will use for Layout mode. The next time that you begin an MDM Publisher session or need to work in Layout mode, you can choose the saved perspective from the View menu. Common publication tasks and their related panes are listed in the following table. You can use the lists as starting points for creating your own perspectives:

Task Related Panes

Customizing layouts Hierarchy pane Objects pane Node tab Workspace Properties pane

Composing spreads Hierarchy pane Spreads pane Spread editor Template Tree pane

Building publications Hierarchy pane Families pane


PART 2: CREATING DEFAULT LAYOUTS This section describes the tasks that you can perform in order to create templates for family data in your publications.


Layout Properties The default layout properties for an MDM product family are used to generate a layout consisting of a single table. Each column in the table represents a separate family item and each row represents a separate product record for the family. The layout properties defined for the items in the family are displayed in the Node tab. To refine this table into a more attractive and readable layout – such as in the following example – you need to customize the layout properties contained in the MDM Publisher Node and Workspace tabs, in the main window of MDM Publisher.

A Family Layout

A CUSTOMIZED LAYOUT FOR FAMILY OBJECTS Layout properties allow you to:

• Hide unwanted field or attribute data

• Move selected data out of the table • Pivot the table on one or more items

• Group common values among records • Combine item data into a single object

• Format text values with customizable styles As you save changes to layout properties, you can immediately see the effects on the family layout in the Family Objects pane.


You can customize layout properties for each individual leaf-node in the family hierarchy. For greater convenience, you can use inheritance to customize layout properties on higher-level nodes (such as internal nodes or the root node) and let each descendant family receive these properties automatically. Inheritance is a powerful tool for creating flexible, reusable layouts.

ABSOLUTE AND CONDITIONAL PROPERTIES Most layout properties are absolute. The value that you specify for an absolute property – such as Page Width and Page Height – is applied globally regardless of the circumstances. Layout mode also supports properties that are conditional. These properties are applied only if certain conditions are met for the layout item within the particular family. The values of conditional properties are applied on a family-by-family and item-by-item basis. For descriptions of the different types of conditional properties, see “Conditional Property Types” on page 98 .

UPDATING YOUR RECORDS “ON THE FLY” As you work in MDM Publisher, you may sometimes notice data that needs to be changed or updated. This requires you to switch to MDM Data Manager, update the data, and then switch back to MDM Publisher. You can perform the switch easily by following this procedure:

1. In MDM Data Manager, be sure that you are in Record mode (View Record Mode).

2. In the Family Hierarchy pane, right-click any family node and choose Set Record Mode Search from the context menu.

3. Later, during your work in MDM Publisher, you can switch to Data Manager, check that the correct family records are displayed, and edit the data as necessary.

To refresh the data in MDM Publisher, press F5 on the Family Hierarchy root node.


Working in Layout Mode You use Layout mode to define the family layout of each individual family in the family hierarchy. When you define family layouts in Layout mode, MDM displays a preview of how each family layout will publish to the Web and to paper. The set of tabs along the bottom of the MDM Publisher main window allows you to view, edit, and restructure any aspect of the family layout. In Layout mode, you can set layout properties at the default item level, the root node, internal nodes, or on a leaf-node family-by-family basis to define the layout of each family, and also to restructure the tables of product records using a table pivoting tool.

UNDERSTANDING THE ANATOMY OF A LAYOUT A family layout contains a set of items that provide different types of information and which are rearranged into different layout elements, as described in the following sections. The panes that are needed for the layout process are: • Family Hierarchy

• Spreads

• Family Objects • Spread

• Family Objects Snapshot

• Template Tree • Node Items tab You may want to close any other open panes. The following sections explain the main elements used in creating layouts for your publication.

Layout Items The layout items in a family layout contain both family information and information for each object, consolidated from the records of two different source tables within the repository: • Families table. The family data that applies to all of the product

records in the family is stored in the fields of the Families table; these items contain the same value for every product record in the family.

• Main table. The information for each product in the family is stored in the fields, qualifiers, and attributes of the main-table product records; these items usually contain a different value for each product record.


Among the layout items from the main table, the partition items – the fields and attributes that define the family itself – also contain the same value for every product record, just as the items from the Families table. You can access the value of lookup table fields (other than the lookup-table display fields), which are extensions of the main-table product records through the main table / lookup table relationship. You do this by flagging the lookup table files as alternative display fields in the MDM Console. The set of layout items from the Families table and the set of layout items from the main table are combined to form a single collection of layout items for the family layout.

Default Family Layout By default, a family layout consists of a single table that contains all the information within the family, with all the layout items arranged as columns of the table as in a spreadsheet. This is the starting point for any family layout process, before any layout specifications have been changed from their default values. In this default layout, each individual layout item (regardless of the source table) is just a column in the single table layout of product records for the family, as illustrated in the following figures:

Layout Items

Family fields are, in effect, grafted onto the set of fields, qualifiers, and attributes of the main-table product records, to create a virtual record for each product that consists of: (1) the family-specific family data and (2) the record-specific object information.


A Default Family Layout

The columns of the table layout can include layout items of any data type, including images, text blocks and other data types.

Node Items Tab A list of layout items appears in a number of places in the panes of Layout mode, including the Items, Table Layout, and Ordering tabs in the Node tab at the bottom of the main window. These item lists include the family fields and the main-table fields, qualifiers, and attributes.

List of Layout Items


In the item lists, MDM:

• Appends the item name as follows:

• [Fam]: family fields

• [ADF]: alternative display fields (non-display fields)

• [Rel]: relationship fields

• [Qual]: qualified table fields and qualifiers

• Highlights attribute names in italics

• Highlights layout items that have been hidden with the Hide Item Entirely property in gray

• Highlights attribute names linked below the selected node in blue

NOTE ►► In the Items and the Table Layout tabs, you can use the context menu on any item to sort the items in a number of different ways.

NOTE ►► Clicking on any item in the Family Objects pane automatically selects the same item in the list of the active tab.

NOTE ►► In the Ordering tab, layout items that have been hidden with the Hide Item Entirely property or that are used as stack or horizontal pivots are not included in the item list.

NOTE ►► You can select all items in a list by pressing Ctrl+A.

Attributes in Layout Item Lists Unlike the sets of family fields, main table fields, and qualifiers – which are always the same for every product record in the family – the set of attributes that appears in layout item lists varies according to the selected node in the family hierarchy. Specifically, the set of attributes includes only those that are visible from the selected node. An attribute is visible if it is:

• Linked to or inherited by the selected node (“linked at or above”).

• Linked to a category directly beneath the selected node (“linked below”). These attributes are highlighted in blue.

When the root is the selected node, the set of visible attributes is all the linked attributes in the repository, because all the categories are below the root.


As you move down the family hierarchy from node to node, you will notice that:

• Attributes linked at or above the selected node – in particular those that had been linked below the previously-selected node -- change from blue to black in the list of layout items.

• Some attributes are no longer visible because fewer categories occur directly beneath the new selected node; these attributes disappear from the list of layout items.

NOTE ►► For inheritance purposes, you can use the Table Layout tab to pivot or sort by any visible attribute, including those that are linked below the selected node and are highlighted in blue. When a lower-level node then inherits the pivoted or sorted attribute item, and the attribute is no longer visible, the attribute name is highlighted in red in the corresponding bin in the Table Layout tab, rather than being removed from the list, and the attribute item is ignored when the table layout is generated.

Resetting and Inheriting Property Values The second column of a properties grid contains checkboxes that indicate the status of each property value: • Reset. When the checkbox is deselected, the selected layout object

does not support inheritance, it is the default object, or it is at the root node and has no default object. You can use the Reset checkbox to change an individual property value back to its factory default value.

• Inherit. When the checkbox is selected, the layout object can inherit from a default object, from a parent node in the hierarchy, or from another node. You can use the Inherit checkbox to break or restore inheritance for an individual property value.

You can copy a set of properties from one higher-level node to another node or set of nodes in another category. This enables you to apply a specific set of properties that have manually overridden inherited properties to another set of nodes.

To copy properties from one node to another: 1. Right-click the node whose properties have been overridden and

choose Copy Overridden Node Properties from the context menu. 2. Right-click the node to which you want to assign the copied set of

properties and choose Paste Overridden Node Properties from the context menu.


Layout Processing and Layout Elements Once you begin the layout process – promoting and demoting columns, pivoting columns, hiding columns, merging cells, and so on – the various layout items within the table (the columns) are restructured and rearranged. A processed family layout ends up consisting of several different layout elements, with some of the layout items still within the table layout and others of them outside the table, as follows: • Common information. Layout items that have been promoted –

both family items and main table items -- appear in text boxes above the table layout.

• Footnotes and legends. Layout items that have been demoted appear either above or below the table layout, as footnotes (in a single text box) or as a legend (in a subtable).

• Table layout. The table layout contains the layout items that remain after promoting, demoting, and hiding columns. The table can be further restructured and reformatted using the table pivoting tools.

The following items are placed into a single text box or table cells:

• All individual values of a multi-valued layout item, with values separated by the Multi-Valued Delimiter

• An image and the image description

• A text value image and text value, for an attribute text value with an associated text value image

SETTING DEFAULT LAYOUT PROPERTIES The catalog layout for a product family is automatically generated according to the layout properties defined for its items, shown in the Node tab (see “Layout Item Properties” on page 99 for a full list of layout item properties). As described previously, the layout properties are listed in a single table, with each column representing a separate family item and each row representing a separate product record belonging to the family, as in the following example:


A Family Layout

To customize the family layout and create a default layout, you need to apply rules to the default level of the family hierarchy.

NOTE ►► You can define rules for any specific node of the hierarchy, any parent node or the top parent node. You should, however, always work from the highest node possible in order to define rules once and let them propagate to the child nodes.

Some of the common properties that you may want to set include: • Hide / Unhide items. You can hide internal or organization-related

data that you do not want to publish, or which is not relevant. To hide a selected item, choose Hiding Hide Item Entirely.

• Hide empty items. Empty fields do not usually add any additional information for the reader, and they take up space on the layout. Therefore, you may want to hide an item when it is empty. To do so, select all the items in the Items list, and choose Hiding Hide Empty Item.

• Converting units of measurement. You may at times need to convert the values of a numeric item with a unit of measurement to a common unit for all records. For example, you may choose to have the Cutting Diameter unit of measurement in microinches for all records. To do so, select the item and choose Units of Measure Convert to Common Unit, and select the Value from the list.

Promoting and Demoting Items You can move information out of the table layout into other family layout elements in a variety of ways and based on a range of criteria, as follows:


• Common information. You use the Promotion to Common Information set of properties to promote layout item information into text and image boxes above the table layout. You can promote entire items with all common values, just the common values, and only distinct values. You can promote properties, text, and images.

• Footnotes and legends. You use the Demotion to Footnotes and Legends set of properties to move layout item information above or below the table layout as footnotes or as a legend. When you demote items, you can use your own custom set of numbering systems.

Depending on the particular property, promotion and demotion do not always remove the layout item itself from the table layout. You can also hide layout items so that they do not appear in the family layout at all. The following illustration depicts the different layout elements and how each relates to the overall family layout.

Layout Elements of a Processed Family Layout

The following illustration is the source table that is used throughout this section to explain the different means of promoting and demoting information in a table:


Source Product Family Table, Before Promotion and Demotion

Promoting Layout Items You can promote a layout item out of a table so that its value or values appear as common information and its column is removed from the table layout. The range of options for promotion is found in the Promotion to Common Information set of properties in the Properties list of the Items tab. The layout item properties are data-sensitive, and MDM promotes each item only if it meets the corresponding criterion. The most basic property used for promotion is Promote Column With All Common Values. This property promotes a layout item whose values are the same for all products in the family, or for all products in a stack pivot subtable. Looking at our source table, you can see that the table layout has several columns with all common values:

• The Image field, which is a family item

• The Category field, which is a partition item that defines the family

• The Style field, which is a regular layout item that has the same value for every product

None of these layout items should take up valuable space in the table layout. By applying the Promote Column With All Common Values property, these items are promoted and the column for each item is removed from the table, as follows:


Promoted Items

NOTE ►► The family items from the Families table and the partition items from the main table always contain the same value for every product record in the family, and should almost always be promoted.

Other properties used to promote common information include:

• Promote Common Multi-Values. Used when the values are not the same for all products in the family, and you want to promote just the common values of the layout item

• Most Common Value. Used to promote only the most common value of an item, leaving the column in the table layout and tagging the common value to indicate that it applies to a product “unless noted.”

• Distinct Values. Used to promote an entire set of different values even when the values have nothing in common from product to product.

Grouping Common Information When the set of layout items promoted out of a table is large, you can use the Common Information Grouping set of properties to arrange the promoted information into groups of layout items, as in the following example.


Grouped Items

In this example, the six promoted layout items have been placed into two groups of common information, each containing three items.

To arrange promoted items into a group: 1. Select an item that should go into the first group. 2. In the Properties list, choose Common Information Grouping

Group ID.

3. From the list in the Value cell, choose a value (such as 1) for the group.

4. Select the other items to be added to that group and assign each item the same value (the group number).

5. Repeat the previous steps to create other groups with other numbers for the remaining common information.

Demoting Layout Items You can demote a layout item so that its values appear as footnotes or as a legend, and its column can be removed from the table layout. Using the Demotion to Footnotes and Legends set of properties, you can:

• Display the demoted values either as footnotes or as a legend • Place the demoted values either below or above the table layout


• Either remove the demoted column and make the corresponding records superscript entries in the previous column of the table layout, or leave the demoted column in the table layout

In the following figure, the most common value in the Size field (Medium) and the common value in the Materials multi-valued field (Cotton) were each promoted to appear as common information. The remaining values in each field can now be demoted to appear as footnotes, shown in the boxes below the table.

Demoted Items

NOTE ►► The superscripts are attached to the values in the column preceding the demoted column in the table layout, based on the item ordering. If the demoted item was the first column of the table layout, the superscripts are attached to the new first column.


To demote item values to footnotes: 1. Select the item – usually one that has been promoted using either the

Promote Common Multi-Values property or the Promote Most Common Value property – whose remaining values should be moved to a footnote.

2. In the Properties list, display Demotion to Footnotes and Legends Demote Remaining Column Values to Footnotes.

3. Select the checkbox in the Value cell.

4. Use the Footnote and Legend Numbering Symbols subproperty to choose a numbering symbol set:

5. If you choose the Auto Select option, MDM selects the next set of symbols from the built-in sequence of numbering symbol sets.

NOTE ►► You can use the Custom Symbols subproperty to override the setting of the Footnote and Legend Numbering Symbols property by specifying a comma-delimited string of numbering symbols.

NOTE ►► The Restart Numbering For Each Stack Pivot Subtable property restarts at the first symbol of the symbol set for each stack pivot subtable, and places the corresponding set of footnotes right after each subtable, rather than all the footnotes after all of the subtables.

Demoting Images Each image in an image field may also have a description associated with it. Conversely, each text value of a text attribute may also have an image associated with the text value. In such a case, for each product record, the single layout item has two values that are displayed in the family layout in a single text box or table cell: the image itself, and the image description or attribute text value. When you demote an image field or text attribute, both the images and the image descriptions or text values are removed from the table layout and appear as the footnote or legend values.

NOTE ►► You can also use the Demote Image and Use Text as Symbol property to leave the description or text value in the table layout column, and use the value as the numbering symbol for the demoted image. This option is often used in conjunction with the Preserve Demoted Column Rather Than Superscript property.


Combining Related Items Certain items in a family may have a common general meaning, and you may want to combine them visually in the layout in order to highlight their relation to one another. Combining items creates subsections within the main item. For example, you have a raw table that includes items that describe drilling performance on different materials, as follows:

Raw layout

In order to display the three drilling performance attributes combined item by item, you may want to rearrange the table as follows:

Rearranged layout

To rearrange the table: 1. Combine the items:

a. Choose the Node Table Layout tab. b. In the Properties pane, choose Sort/Combine Items (at the

bottom of the Properties list). c. From the Available items list, Add the items to the

Sort/Combine Items pane.


2. Set the Combined Value and Name Delimiter:

a. Switch to the Items tab.

b. Choose Delimiters Combined Item Value Delimiter and enter a delimiter. For example, you may use a semi-colon (;) to display the items in a row, or the line feed symbol (¶, .Alt+0182 on the keyboard) to display each item in a different row.

3. Omit repetitive item names (in our example, Drilling Performance):

a. In the Items tab, choose the second of the items to be combined from the Items list.

b. From the Properties list, choose Item Name Display Name.

c. In the Value cell, change the display name to omit the repetitive words, leaving spaces instead.

d. Repeat steps b and c for the other item(s). The results for our example would like this:

Finished layout

CREATING PIVOT TABLES In addition to promoting and demoting layout items, MDM Publisher also provides a special “pivoting” tool. Pivoting enables you to restructure the table of records within each product family to eliminate redundant data values and streamline a densely-structured table layout. The pivot tool eliminates the selected columns, and sorts and groups the records into multiple subtables based on the pivot column values. You can then rearrange the resulting subtables, labeling each of them with the pivot values in a number of different ways. Each resulting subtable is called a base table. The general procedure for defining pivots is as follows:

1. Choose the Node Items tab.

2. In the Properties pane, choose the relevant option in the Pivoting set of properties.


Each type of pivot arranges the resulting subtables differently, as follows:

• A stack pivot (Stack Pivot Type) recombines each of the resulting base tables into a single table arranged vertically one on top of the other. It either adds an additional row containing the pivot values above each base table, or it labels each of the base tables with the pivot values.

NOTE ►► You can use the Separate Stack Pivot Subtables option in the Value list to break the table into multiple subtables, so that the stack pivot behaves somewhat like a partition.

• A horizontal pivot (Horizontal Pivot Type) recombines each

of the resulting base tables into a single table by arranging them horizontally side-by-side. It adds an additional row containing the pivot values at the top, to label the set of columns comprising each base table.

NOTE ►► A number of undesirable side effects – such as column duplication and record holes – can occur when using horizontal pivots.

• A vertical pivot (Vertical Pivot Type) recombines each of the

resulting base tables into a single table by arranging them vertically one on top of the other. It adds an additional column containing the pivot values to label the group of rows that comprise each base table.

You can apply any combination of pivot types to a table, and multiple pivots of the same type can be nested and combined. Each pivot type also supports several different formats.

Example The following two tables – resulting from a number of different pivots -- display SKU and Price information for 18 shirt types in different sizes and colors.


A pivoted table from a typical department store catalog

The two tables are a more compact and readable version of the following single source table.

Original Unpivoted Table

All three types of pivots were applied to this table to create the resulting two tables shown previously.

• Stack pivot by Material • Horizontal pivot by Size • Vertical pivots by Color and Price


To achieve the final table of the catalog, a single pivot at a time was applied to the source table. The sections that follow use this example to explain the differences between the pivot types.

Stack Pivot A stack pivot by Material is applied to the original table, resulting in two vertically-stacked base tables, each labeled by one of the stack pivot values – Cotton and Linen – in an additional row above each table.

Single Stack Pivot by Material


Horizontal Pivot A horizontal pivot by Size is applied to the original table, resulting in three horizontally-arranged base tables, each labeled by one of the horizontal pivot values – Small, Medium, and Large – in an additional row above each base table.

Single Horizontal Pivot by Size

Vertical Pivot A vertical pivot by Color is applied to the original table, resulting in three vertically-arranged base tables, each labeled by one of the vertical pivot values -- Black, White, and Red – in an additional column to the left or right of each base table.

Single Vertical Pivot by Color


Nesting and Combining Pivots You can nest and combine multiple pivots of the same type. For example, if a second vertical pivot – by Size – is applied to the table in the previous section, the result is nine vertically-arranged base tables of two records each, as follows:

Nested Vertical Pivots Color and Material

The order in which you apply the pivots affects the sort order of the resulting base tables, where the values of the first pivot are used as the primary sort, the values of the second pivot are used as the secondary sort, and so on. If the pivots were combined rather than nested, the Color and Size columns would be combined into a single column that contains a set of value combinations, such as Black/Small, Black/Medium, Black/Large, and so on.

Advanced Use of Pivot Tables To utilize pivot tables in the most efficient way, it is necessary to understand the benefits and disadvantages of using each pivot type, and how to best combine the range of options. For more information about pivoting and manipulating tables, see “Advanced Pivoting” on page 85. For a complete list of the pivot-related properties, see “Layout Item Properties” on page 99.


REPRESENTING QUALIFIED TABLE DATA MDM uses qualified tables to store a set of lookup records that support qualifiers: database “subfields” that apply not to the qualified table record by itself, but rather to each association of a qualified table record with a main table record. Qualified tables support multiple prices (including quantity price breaks), cross-reference part numbers, other distributor/supplier/customer-specific information, and product applications. MDM Publisher provides an easy way to manage qualified links, enabling filtering and inclusion of qualified links per the non-qualifier values. For example, consider the case of a Prices Qualified table that is referenced from the Products main table. The prices vary according to the country in which the products are sold, and are translated to a Country flat lookup table field as Non-Qualifier, and a Price Real field as Qualifier, as in the following illustration:

Default Layout of Qualified Table Data

Yu may want to publish a catalog for France only, and exclude the price links for Germany. To do so, you would:

1. Choose the Node Qualified Records tab. The list of non-qualified records is displayed.

2. Select the relevant Include checkbox or deselect it to exclude as appropriate.

The result of the exclude would be:


Table after price links for Germany are excluded

See “Using Qualified Lookup Tables” on page 99 for more information about working with qualified tables.

MANAGING ATTRIBUTE RATINGS You can define ratings for numeric attributes, and have them appear by default as a suffix in the attribute display name, such as Length [Nom] or Height [Min].

To manage the display or non-display of a rating suffix: 1. Choose the Node pane Items tab.

2. In the Items list, select all the items (Ctrl-A).

3. Use the Ratings set of properties as follows:

− Rating Tags Hide [Nom] Only: Hides the [Nom] rating tag of the numeric attributes.

− Rating Tags Hide All: Hides all the rating tags: [Nom], [Min], [Max], [Avg], and [Typ] of the numeric attributes.

− Hide Only If Single Rating: Hides the tag only if the numeric attribute has only one rating; if more than one rating is available, the ratings are displayed.

Often, you may want to merge a minimum and maximum rating for a numeric attribute. For example, a numeric attribute Width has [Min] and [Max] ratings that appear as independent items in the Items list and as separate columns in the table, as follows:


Min and Max width ratings

To merge the ratings: 1. Choose the Node Table Layout tab. 2. In the Available Items list, select the relevant items (in our example

Width[Min] and Width[Max]) and add them to the Sort/Combine Items list. The two items will be combined into a single column, with the item names separated by a semicolon.

3. To represent the range of values, such as between [Min] and [Max], change the delimiter as follows:

a. Switch to the Items tab.

b. Choose Delimiters Combined Item Value Delimiter and enter the appropriate delimiter, such as a hyphen (-).

4. Rename the combined column to show the attribute name only once: a. In the Items list, choose the second item that was combined.

b. In the Properties list, choose Item Name Original Name.

c. Delete the name in the Value cell. d. In the Items list, select the first cell and change the entire

header name, such as Width Range in our example. 5. To show the UOM only once, after the second item:

a. In the Items tab, choose the first item again.

b. Choose Units of Measure Common Unit Format.

c. In the Value cell, choose Hide Entirely.

FORMATTING TEXT AND IMAGE VALUES MDM assigns a default style to the text values contained within it. You can customize the default style, or you can create entirely new styles and apply them to different family items. MDM Publisher supports the following types of styles:


• Style. A combination of character and text-box formatting properties applied to items

• Character style. Font-related properties applied to specific item names and/or values

• Tag. Hard-coded formatting applied to specific characters in item values

You assign, define and manage styles in the Workspace Styles tab.

To add a new style to the list of user-defined styles: 1. Right-click in the Styles tab and choose Add Style from the context

menu. A New Style entry is added to the list. By default, it inherits its property values from the Default Style.

2. Type the name for the new style and press Enter.

3. Select the name of the new style and edit the relevant properties in the Properties pane:

a. Deselect the Inherit checkbox of the font property that you want to modify.

b. In the Value cell, select the new value. c. When you have completed your changes, press

Shift+Enter to save the style definitions.

To duplicate a style: 1. In the Styles list, right-click the style that you want to duplicate and

choose Duplicate Style from its context menu. A new Copy of <style> entry is added to the list.

2. Rename the style. 3. Define the style properties by modifying them in the Properties pane.

4. Press Shift+Enter to save your style.

To edit the default style: 1. Choose Default Style in the top field of the Styles list. 2. Edit the properties list as needed.

3. Press Shift+Enter to save.

To assign a style to an object: 1. With the specific family node selected, or from the top Family

Hierarchy node, choose the Node Items tab. 2. From the Items list, select the item to assign to the new style. 3. In the Properties pane, choose Styles and select the relevant property.

See “Style Properties” on page 115 for a complete list of available style properties.


Managing Style Inheritance User-defined styles inherit their properties directly from the Default Style, rather than according to the hierarchical inheritance within the family hierarchy. When you change a property value for a user-defined style, it breaks the inheritance for that style property. You manually restore inheritance from the Default Style by selecting the checkbox again. You cannot propagate inheritance of style properties, because they do not support hierarchical inheritance.

To restore or break inheritance for multiple properties for one or more styles:

1. Choose the Workspace Styles tab and select one or more styles. 2. In the Properties pane, select one or more properties. 3. Right-click one of the properties and from the context menu, choose

Inherit Reset or Break Inheritance (as appropriate).

ARRANGING THE LOOK-AND-FEEL OF THE TABLE You use the Node Table Properties tab to define the look-and-feel of the family table. Styles that you can define for the table include:

• Column header format. Use the Column Header Format property to:

• Display or hide column headings • Swap column headers with horizontal pivot values

• Add spanning headers

• Vertically merge empty and non-empty cells to eliminate wasted space.

• Maximum number of rows or pivot values per table. Use the Maximum Record Rows Per Table property and the Maximum Horizontal / Vertical Pivot Values Per Table properties to split a table layout into multiple tables across multiple pages, or to wrap it horizontally or vertically.

• Borders. Use the Table Border property to define the thickness of the different borders, and row and column separators of the table. You can also remove the table borders entirely. To remove borders at the individual layout item level, use the layout Item properties.


SETTING MULTILINGUAL SETTINGS MDM repositories can store field and attribute data in multiple languages. This lets you publish different language versions of the same catalog without having to recreate each presentation. Using the Redirect Data Language property, you can print item data in multiple languages inside the same catalog by cloning the item and selecting different languages for the original and cloned items. Note the following multilingual inheritance rules: • String property settings made in secondary languages do not affect

the corresponding settings in the primary language. • String property settings made in the primary language affect those

property settings in secondary languages For more information about using multilingual repositories, see the MDM Console Reference Guide.


PART 3: CREATING THE PUBLICATION This part of the reference guide explains how to create and customize a publication.


Creating Publications After creating your default family layouts, you are ready to arrange them into a catalog. To do so, you create a new publication in MDM Publisher. Publication mode enables you to create one or more publications, each of which contains a presentation hierarchy that is based on the Family Hierarchy and family layouts defined in Layout mode. Typically, you will want to organize the published catalog accordingly: first by category, and then, if you have partitioned the data by another field such as manufacturer, by the partitioned subcategory. Note, however, that you can organize the publication according to any lookup field that was used to partition the root of the family hierarchy in Family mode, rather than by the field upon with the family hierarchy is layered.

CREATING A PUBLICATION When creating a new publication, you have three options: • Create an empty publication. You add all of the catalog content

manually, rather than automatically loading the nodes of the Presentation Hierarchy.

• Create a publication organized by partitions. You load the hierarchy based on one or more of the fields used to partition the Family Hierarchy.

• Create a publication based on a defined mask. You load records filtered according to selected product masks.

Additionally, you can add specific single records and images into your publication by dragging the record or image directly from Data Manager to its spread in MDM Publisher. Note that the Node Records tab must be open in both Data Manager and in MDM Publisher (at the bottom).

To create a new publication: 1. Choose File New. The New Publication dialog box appears. 2. In the Name field, enter a name for the new publication. 3. From the dropdown list, choose the type of publication that you want to

create:

• Empty Publication.

• Family Publication.

• Recordset Publication.


If you choose Family Publication or Recordset Publication, you can choose from the set of masks that have been preconfigured for the family. From the Available masks list, select the masks to be applied by adding them to the Selected masks list. In addition, if you choose Family Publication, select the following boxes, as appropriate:

• Maintain node status: Transfers the status of each node form the Family Hierarchy to the publication

• Partition to single record nodes: Splits a family into single-record presentations

4. When you choose OK, the default configuration of Publication panes is shown in the main window.

To drag-and-drop a record into MDM Publisher 1. In Data Manager, choose Record mode, and display the category

containing the record(s). 2. In MDM Publisher, display the publication, and choose the Node

Records tab at the bottom. 3. Drag the record from the Records pane in Data Manager to the

Records pane in MDM Publisher.


Working in Publication Mode In Publication mode, the following panes are displayed by default: • Presentation Hierarchy • Spreads

• Presentation Objects

• Spread • Presentation Objects Snapshot (Unused Only)

• Families • Node Section Properties tab

Default Publication Panes

See “Main Window Panes” on page 22 for more information about the default publication panes.

ANATOMY OF A PUBLICATION Each publication that you create in Publication mode contains a duplicate of every Layout mode object and family. Layout settings made in Layout mode are inherited in the publication and continue to reflect any changes that are made there. The nodes of a publication are organized into a publication hierarchy that consists of the following node types:


• Publication root. Displays the user-specified name of the publication rather than the fixed name of the base table of the Family Hierarchy. You can rename an existing publication.

• Leaf-node families. A standard publication family that directly corresponds to its Layout mode family, and usually inherits directly from it rather than from the node above it in the publication hierarchy.

• Non-family leaf nodes. Nodes that can occur if you delete all the leaf-node families beneath an internal node, or use context-menu commands to add a non-family node as a leaf.

• Internal nodes. Nodes that are structure only and do not store or allow you to set property values, so that property values set at the root are inherited directly by each leaf-node family. Note that internal nodes are also considered “non-family nodes.”

Publication Node Types

COMPARING FAMILY AND PUBLICATION HIERARCHIES When it is first created, the publication hierarchy appears to be very similar to the family hierarchy, but differs from it in a number of important ways: • Inheritance. Properties that support hierarchical inheritance in

Layout mode can be set at the publication root. This breaks the inheritance from Layout mode so that inheritance can be set for each publication family.


• Flexible structure. Whereas in Layout mode, the structure of the family hierarchy and the set of families are fixed and defined by the partitions that you have created, in Publication mode, you can add, remove, duplicate, and resequence families and internal nodes in the publication hierarchy.

A family hierarchy may be altered when the following occurs: • You add or remove leaf-node families according to explicit changes

that you make to partition items. • MDM automatically adjusts data to maintain the integrity of the family

hierarchy in the:

• Set of main-table product records

• Values of main-table fields and attributes • Taxonomy hierarchy

• Set of linked attributes Removing families from the family hierarchy can affect the integrity of existing publications. Specifically, a publication family that corresponds to a family that no longer exists in Layout mode becomes invalid. You can manually delete invalid nodes one-by-one, or you can use the Synchronize Publication Children command to validate every publication family and delete the invalid families automatically.

UNDERSTANDING INHERITANCE IN PUBLICATION MODE The rules of inheritance in Publication mode extend Layout mode inheritance as follows: • Inheritance from Layout mode. Each property value in Publication

mode directly inherits from the corresponding object and family in Layout mode, and each property can be overridden or inherited.

• No hierarchical inheritance. Publication mode does not support inheritance within the publication hierarchy, nor can property values be set for internal nodes, which are structural only.

• Root override. Properties that support hierarchical inheritance in Layout mode can be set at the publication root to break inheritance from Layout mode for each publication family.

The specific inheritance from Layout mode to Publication mode – for each family in the publication – is summarized in the following table:


Inheritance in Publication Mode

Layout Object Inheritance from Corresponding Object in Layout Mode

Special Behavior

Page setup Each property inherits None Layout items Each layout item

property inherits Root override for layout item property values

Table layout Each pivot and sort bin inherits

No root override; tab is disabled at root

Item ordering Each item ordering list inherits.

No root override, but item positions can be propagated from the root (without inheritance from the root)

Qualified records Each qualified table record inherits

Root override for qualified record selection

Relationships Each relationship inherits Root override for related record inclusion for each relationship

Table properties Each table property inherits

Root override for table property values

Styles Each style property inherits

Publication-specific styles can be created in Publication mode and inherit directly from the Default style

Whenever possible, set property values in Layout mode rather than in Publication mode. When you override inheritance in Publication mode, you do so on a publication-specific basis.

USING MASKS When you create a publication, you can apply one or more product masks to filter the set of main-table records that appear in the publication. When the masks are applied, the publication hierarchy does not include every family in the family hierarchy. Instead, it includes each family only if one of the masks contains at least one of its records. For each family included in the publication, the main-table records that are in the family but are not included in one of the masks are deselected in the Node Records tab.


To include records that were excluded when you first created the publication, you can do either of the following:

• If the family that contains the excluded records is in the publication, you can reselect excluded records in the Node Records tab. (You can also deselect records that were previously included.)

• If the family is not in the publication, you can drag-and-drop (or copy-paste) the family from the Family Hierarchy pane into the publication hierarchy.

PUBLICATION OPERATIONS The tree structure in the Presentation Hierarchy pane displays each publication as a separate node. You can use the tree context menu to create, rename, delete, load, and unload publications. You can also set the active publication for viewing, editing, and publishing one or more families within a particular publication. The Set Record Mode Search option in the context menu allows you to set the search selections in Record mode to correspond to the selected leaf-node family. This allows you to conveniently identify the product records associated with the family. You can use the context menu from the top node of the Presentation Hierarchy to select most operations that you need to perform. The following table describes operations that you can perform to edit a publication.

Publication Editing Operations

Operation Description Method Add families Add a selected family

or branch of families to the publication.

1. From the structure in the Families pane, drag the family or the branch to the Presentation Hierarchy and drop it at the target location.

2. Choose the relevant option from the popup menu to determine the level at which it should be placed in the publication hierarchy.


Operation Description Method Add non-family node

Add a new non-family node to the publication.

1. From the context menu of the top node of the Presentation Hierarchy, choose Add Internal Node or Add Non-Family Node.

2. Drag the new node to the target position in the hierarchy and choose Insert as Sibling or Insert as Child as appropriate.

NOTE: The Add Child option is not activated when the drop target is a leaf-node publication family.

Rename node Renames the selected node.

1. From the context menu of the node that you want to rename, choose Rename.

2. Type the new name and press Enter.

Delete node Removes the selected leaf or internal node from the publication.

From the context menu of the node that you want to delete, choose Delete.

Move node Moves a leaf or internal node between locations in the publication.

Drag the new node to the target position in the hierarchy and choose Insert as Sibling or Insert as Child as appropriate. NOTE: The Add Child option is not activated when the drop target is a leaf-node publication family.


Operation Description Method Synchronize publication children

Synchronizes the publication families with the current family hierarchy. This prevents a publication family from becoming invalid if it corresponds to a family that no longer exists in Layout mode.

From the context menu of the node whose children you want to synchronize, choose Synchronize Publication Children.

Delete non-family children

Removes all non-family nodes from the publication. This quickly eliminates all internal structures from the Presentation Hierarchy, and thereby flattens and collapses the tree so that each publication family becomes a first-level child of the publication root.

From the context menu of any node whose non-family children should be deleted, choose Delete Non-Family Children.

Set/Prevent automatic data refresh

Determines if data in the publication is automatically refreshed as it changes, or if the data in the publication is “frozen” at a selected stage.

In the Node > Refresh Options tab, choose either Enabled or Disabled for the New Records and the New Family Data elements.

COMPOSING THE SPREADS You use the Spread pane in MDM Publisher to define the physical geometry – the size, place and other special parameters – of the presentation objects in each publication spread. We recommend that you initially compose the spread of a selected family that is representative of most of the families in the publication. When you are satisfied with the results of your efforts, you can save the layout as a template, and apply it to other similar families. This saves you significant time and effort in repeating the composition procedure for each family spread.


Before you begin, you need to synchronize the data between the Presentation Objects pane and the Spreads pane. To do so, from the context menu of the top node of the Presentation Hierarchy, choose Calculate Initial Presentation Objects. The layout in the Spread pane will now be identical to that in the Presentation Objects pane. The following table describes some of the operations that you can perform on objects in the Spread pane.

Spread Composition Operations

Operation Method Change position of an item in a spread

In the Spread pane, simply drag the item to its new location

Resize an image • From the context menu of the image, choose Size Images and use the options in the displayed dialog box to change the image size.

• Drag the handles on the image border to manually resize the image.

Adjust the image size to a defined frame

From the context menu of the image, choose Fit Content to Frame.

Adjust the image frame to the image contents

From the context menu of the image, choose Fit Frame to Content.

Align multiple images 1. Select the multiple images by using the Shift key as you click on each image.

2. From the context menu of the last image selected, choose Align and Distribute and then choose the relevant option.

Adjust the relative positioning of multiple images

1. Select the multiple images by using the Shift key as you click on each image.

2. From the context menu of the last image selected, choose the relevant Bring... or Send... option.


CREATING A LAYOUT TEMPLATE When you have achieved the desired layout for a representative family in your publication, you can create a template that you can apply to other families.

To create a layout template: 1. In the Spread pane, from the context menu of layout, choose Save as

Template. The family name is added as the first node in the Template Tree pane.

2. From the context menu of the new template node, choose Rename and enter a name for the template.

To apply the template to other families in the publication, either at the level of specific families or at the level of parent node:

1. Display another family to use the template. 2. From the Template Tree, drag the template name to the layout in the

Spread pane. 3. From the popup menu, choose one of the following:

• Apply Template to Connected Items Only: Applies the template to the specific family

• Apply Template to All Items: Applies the template to all children of the parent family

ARRANGING THE CATALOG Once you have customized the layout for your publication, you are ready to arrange the families in the catalog. Usually, at this stage, each family will occupy a single page. In order to arrange multiple families per page, you use the Flow Section option to flow in family data and place the families together on single pages as efficiently as possible.

To flow family data: 1. In the Spreads pane, right click the first (or other) family and choose

Flow From Page from the context menu. The Flow Presentations dialog box appears.

2. Select the following parameters:

• Alignment. Aligns all family data to the selected parameter. Inner Edge and Outer Edge are used with the double-spreads.


• Runaround and Runaround Anchor. Runaround allows families to flow around a family designated as a Runaround Anchor, which locks the position of the selected family on the page.

• Separation. Defines a space, in points, that separates one family from another on the page.

• Split Presentations To Fit Pages. When selected, divides family data (such as between promoted data and the table) between different pages

3. Click OK. The families are flowed onto the pages according to the parameters selected.

Removing Empty Pages As a result of the Flow Section operation, certain pages of your family may now be empty and need to be removed.

To remove empty pages: 1. Right-click the empty page and choose Remove Page from the context

menu. The Confirm Remove Page dialog box appears. 2. Click OK. The page will be removed and the remaining pages will be

renumbered. 3. Repeat the previous steps to remove other empty pages.

Using Freestyle Text on a Page You can add text blocks to a page and manually position them and define their text styles.

To add text blocks to a page: 1. In the Spread pane, right-click on the spread and choose Add Non-

Family Text. the Formatting dialog box appears, along with a window into which you type your text.

2. In the text window, type the text that you require and then select it. 3. In the Formatting dialog box, define the paragraph and font styles by

selecting the appropriate options in the Value column. Different text strings can have different styles in the same text box.

4. Click Apply.

Managing Image Links (Links Pane) You can use the Image Links pane to view information about an image that is linked to one or more families of your publication. This pane gives you the name of the image and its file name, the data group it belongs, along with all of the relevant size and print parameters.


To view the Image Links pane: 1. In the Spreads pane or the Spread pane, select the family layout that

contains the image. 2. Choose View Panes Image Links. The Image Links dialog box

appears, with a list of all parameters relating to the linked image.


PART 4: PUBLISHING TO INDESIGN This part of the reference guide describes the options for publishing to the Adobe InDesign plug-in.


Publishing a Publication SAP NetWeaver MDM uses a plugin to Adobe InDesign, a desktop publication application, to handle the page layout, pagination, and final publishing. MDM Publisher provides two options for publishing your catalog data: • Publish Section. Sends the pages and spreads of a selected

section of the catalog to InDesign. • Publish Sequential. Sends selected presentation objects only, not

the spreads. With either option, you can select the following publication targets: • Adobe InDesign. The publication data is sent to the InDesign

application as an InDesign document. • Adobe InDesign Server. The publication data is saved as an

InDesign document on the Adobe InDesign server. • XML. The published data is saved as an XML file. Once the document opens in Adobe InDesign, you can modify, save, and package the publication as you would any other InDesign document. In addition, you can perform certain MDM Publisher operations – such as refreshing object data and reflowing presentations – from within InDesign. This enables you to update the publication with new data quickly and easily, without having to refresh within MDM Publisher and resend to InDesign.

Publishing a section of a publication: 1. From the top node of your Publication Hierarchy, right-click and choose

Publish Section from the context menu. The Publish dialog box appears.

2. In the Format dropdown list, choose the target of your published document.

3. In the Paper Module dropdown list of the Publish to block, choose the IP address of the running InDesign machine.

4. In the Page range in section block, choose:

• All to print all individual pages of the catalog

• Pages and the page range (from and to) to print a selected set of pages


Publishing a range of sections from a publication: 1. From the top or any node of your Publication Hierarchy, right-click and

choose Publish Sequential from the context menu. The Publish dialog box appears.

2. In the Format dropdown list, choose the target of your published document.

3. In the Paper Module dropdown list of the Publish to block, choose the IP address of the running InDesign machine.

4. In the Publish what block, choose:

• Entire publication to print the entire catalog

• Families and the range (from and to) to print only a selected set of families

5. In the Publish options block, indicate the options for paginating, laying out and sorting the family data


Creating an Index You use MDM Indexer – a separate MDM application – to generate an index for your catalog, based on the paginated InDesign documents. The general procedure for creating the index is as follows:

1. Extract the indexed data sources from the InDesign document. 2. Create the index in MDM Indexer. 3. Assign styles to the indexed keys. 4. Publish the index.

The following sections describe these procedures in depth.

EXTRACT INDEXED DATA SOURCES You use the MDM Indexer plugin to extract paginated indexed data sources from each InDesign document, and store the sources in the MDM catalog. These sources are then used to generate the indexes for the publication.

To extract indexed data sources: 1. In MDM Indexer, open the first paginated document to be indexed. 2. Choose SAP MDM Indexer Document Set Paginated State. The

application begins to extract the indexed keys. On the MDM tab [within the DTP], the Notification Pending indicator displays Yes during the extraction, and No upon completion.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each paginated document. The paginated indexed keys are compiled and saved as Chapter 1 of the catalog, along with a document name and time stamp.

CREATING AND EDITING THE INDEX

To create the index: 1. In MDM Indexer, open the catalog used for creating Chapter 1 in the

previous procedure. 2. Click the Index Mode button to switch to Index mode. 3. Right-click in the Indexes pane and choose Create Index from the

context menu. The Create Index dialog box appears. 4. Type a name for the index and select the index sources that you

extracted from the paginated documents in the previous procedure. NOTE ►► You can also add or delete sources after the index is created.

5. Right-click in the Keys pane and choose Add Index Key from the

context menu.


6. In the Properties pane, modify the names for Key Field 1. Rename Key Field 2 and Key Field 3 (and so on), if the index has multiple levels.

For example, you might call the first level (Key Field 1) Category, and the second level (Key Field 2) Manufacturer.

7. If you choose No Sources in step 4, you can add the sources now by dragging them from the Indexes pane to the proper location in the index tree in the Index Sources pane. MDM Indexer takes all of the paginated indexed keys and creates an index using the selected sources and the created keys. The results are displayed in the Index Preview pane.

8. If the index is to contain multiple chapters, repeat this procedure for each catalog.

ASSIGNING STYLES TO THE INDEXED KEYS Within MDM Indexer, you can apply font styles and properties to the index keys that you have created. You can view the formatted text in the Index Preview, prior to publishing the index to InDesign.

To assign styles to indexed keys: 1. Open the Styles tab of Index mode. The index styles are organized in a

hierarchy. The default style is shown for each level. 2. Using the Properties pane at the right, you can assign styles for each

key field that you defined in the previous procedure. Use the dropdown menu in the second column of the Style row of each key field.

Assigning Styles to Index Keys


PUBLISHING THE INDEX Publishing generates the index and sends it to Adobe InDesign, where you can edit it and finalize it as part of your published catalog.

To publish the index: 1. In MDM Indexer, right-click on the index tree and choose Publish

from the context menu. The Publish dialog box appears. 2. In the Format dropdown list, choose the target of your published

document. 3. In the Layout Server dropdown list, choose the name of the

Master Data Layout Server. 4. In the Paper Module dropdown list of the Publish to block,

choose the IP address of the running InDesign machine.


PART 5: ADVANCED TOPICS This part of the reference guide describes a range of MDM Publisher features and tasks that you can perform while creating and publishing your publications.


Advanced Pivoting A pivot is a table layout operation that divides the entire set of product records into subsets based on the set of values of a pivot column. Each subset corresponds to one of the distinct values, and the set of subsets corresponds to the entire set of product records. Pivots can be nested, so that a second pivot operates on each of the subsets of the first pivot, further dividing each of the first pivot subsets into second pivot subsets, and so on until all pivots have been applied. The following sections describe pivoting operations that are more complex than those explained previously in this guide. The pivoted table used for the examples is as follows:

A pivoted table

HORIZONTAL PIVOTS AND COLUMN DUPLICATION Because a horizontal pivot arranges the base tables side-by-side, it reduces the height of the pivoted table by reducing the number of table rows. In so doing, the pivot may often result in the undesirable side effect of dramatically increasing the width of the pivoted table by duplicated each column of the base table for each horizontal pivot value.


For example, in the following figure, the single horizontal pivot by Size reduces the height of the pivoted table from 18 to six rows, but it increased the total number of columns from five to 12.

Columns Duplicated Under a Horizontal Pivot

This column duplication may be acceptable if the number of unpivoted columns is relatively small, and it may be unavoidable if the data values in each instance of the column are different for each row. However, if the data values are the same across each instance of the columns, the resulting tables may be unacceptably wide and may need to be eliminated. A way to solve the problem of too-wide tables is to use a vertical pivot to reduce the column duplication. Vertical pivoting eliminates the duplication of vertically-pivoted columns by removing it from the horizontal pivot span. If we apply a vertical pivot by Color to the previous table, the total number of columns in the table is reduced to nine, as follows:

Use of a Vertical Pivot to Reduce Column Duplication


PIVOTING IMAGES You can use a layout item to pivot by an image when the layout item is an image field or a text attribute with text value images. This enables you to create compelling illustrated table layouts, as in the following example.

Vertical Pivot Displaying an Image Rather than Text

NOTE ►► Use the Hide Image Text property to hide the image description (of an image field) or the attribute text value (of a text attribute) and leave only the image.

STACK PIVOTS AND PARTITIONS: A COMPARISON When you use the Separate Stack Pivot Subtables option of the Stack Pivot Type property, the single table layout is broken into multiple table layouts, one for each stack pivot subtable. In this case, the stack pivot behaves somewhat like a partition, in that both the pivot and the partition break the set of records in the family into multiple subsets based on the values of the item by which you partition or pivot. But whereas the partition breaks the family into multiple families, the stack pivot preserves the single family and breaks it into multiple table layouts, as summarized in the following table.


Partitions versus Stack Pivots Before Action After Single family / single table

Partition Multiple families / single tables for each

Stack pivot Single family / multiple subtables

Here is a rule of thumb for deciding whether to partition or stack pivot:

• To assign different family data to each subset of the records, use a partition.

• To assign the same family data to each subset of the records, use a stack pivot.


Advanced Layout Operations This section describes different means of fine-tuning your family layout, using the tools provided in MDM Publisher.

USING THE SPREAD PANE The Spread pane is a WYSIWYG editor that displays how the selected family will appear when published. You can use the pane to monitor the current status of the family layout as you make changes to each of the layout and style properties. The Spread pane consists of the following elements: • Simulated page. The white background is a simulated sheet of

paper that is accurately sized according to the page height and width. It provides a rough estimate of how the family layout will fit on the page.

• Guides. Purple guide lines indicate the page margins, as well as the margins between columns.

• Layout elements. The common information, table layouts, and footnotes and legends all faithfully reflect the specified layout item properties, pivots and sorts, item ordering, and formatting styles.

• Context colors. The cells of the table layout are color-coded to visually highlight stack, horizontal, and vertical pivots. You can turn

context colors on and off using the (Context Colors) button. When you hover the mouse over a layout item in the Spread pane, a tooltip appears with the following information: • The original name of the layout item

• The style of the item • The original value of the layout item, if it is a lookup field or a text

attribute If you double-click on a layout item, the item is highlighted in the Items or Table Layout tab in the Node tab and the Formatting dialog box is displayed for common information items.

INCORPORATING IMAGES IN TEXT OBJECTS When publishing data that resides in multiple forms of text – text, text blocks, non-family text, large text and so on – you may want to incorporate images to make the overall layout visually more stimulating. You can use the options described here for this purpose.


Creating Bulleted Lists To emphasize multiple values of an item in promoted text, you can use the Bullets Display Values as Bullets property, choosing the string to use with the Bullet Symbol subproperty. Alternatively, you can drag-and-drop non-family images from the Images table in MDM Data Manager to the Spread pane, to function as image bullets in your text, as follows.

To use images as bullets: 1. In MDM Data Manager, in Record mode, display the Images data

group. 2. Size the windows of MDM Data Manager and MDM Publisher so that

both windows are visible. 3. In MDM Publisher, with the Presentation Hierarchy open, display the

text block that will receive the image in the Spread pane. 4. In the Records pane of MDM Data Manager, scroll to the image to be

added to the spread, and drag-and-drop it to the Spread pane. 5. In the Spread pane, select the image and use its handles to define the

appropriate size. You can use the Fit Content to Frame option in the context menu to size the image properly within the frame.

6. Move the resized image to its proper location on the layout.

7. Select the image, use the Shift key to select the text block to which it belongs, and choose Group Items from the context menu. This enables you to treat the images and text as a group so that you manipulate the items as a single entity.

Adding Images in Text Strings You may at times need to incorporate symbols and icons in the middle of text strings.

To add images to text: 1. Add the image as described in steps 1 to 5 of the previous procedure

(“Creating Bulleted Lists”). 2. Choose the Object Properties Items tab at the bottom of the main

window. 3. From the Items list, select the image name, and in the Properties list,

select the Wrap Text Around Image property.

4. Position the image into the line of text, which should automatically wrap around it as needed.


MERGING CELLS IN A TABLE When structuring tables for publishing, you may notice that certain column cells are common to all records, but it would still be more reasonable to leave the information in the table rather than promote it. In this case, you may want to merge the common repetitive cells to make the table more readable and, at times, save paper space. The following illustration is an example of manipulating table data with a common single-valued cell family.

Table cells containing the same data value

The last column – Standard Package Size – contains the same value for all records. Therefore, you might want to merge the cells so that the value appears only once.

To merge cells with the same data value: 1. Choose the Node Items tab. 2. In the Items list, select the item (name of column to be merged). 3. In the Properties list, select the property Unpivoted Columns

Merge Like Cells in Unpivoted Column. All cells of the column are merged into a single cell.


The results in our example would look like this:

Merged cell contains the single value

Next, you may want to align the text so that the shared value appears in the center of the merged cell.

To align text in a cell: 1. Choose the Workspace Style tab. 2. Right-click New Style and choose Add Style from the context menu. 3. Right-click the New Style (x) name, choose Rename Style from the

context menu and enter a meaningful name for the style (such as Center Alignment in our example).

4. In the Properties list, define the style properties:

• Horizontal Alignment: Center

• Vertical Alignment: Center 5. Switch back to the Node Items tab.

6. In the Items list, select the item (Standard Package Size in our example), and choose the Styles Column Value Style <your new style>. The value of the column is displayed in the middle, as defined by the new style.

This function can be useful when using the Common Multi-Value property. For example, you have a table similar to the following, with a Miscellaneous item that contains multi-valued text that is the same for all products.


Multiple text values apply to all products in the table

You want to combine all cells in the column into a single cell with the list of values shown one time.

To merge cells with multiple shared values: 1. Choose the Node Items tab.

2. In the Items list, select the item (such as Misc. in our example).

3. In the Properties list, select the property Unpivoted Columns Merge Like Cells in Unpivoted Column. All cells of the column are merged into a single cell.

4. Switch back to the Node Items tab.

5. In the Items list, select the item (Misc. in our example), and choose the Delimiters Set Multi-Valued Delimiter <your delimiter>. For a delimiter, you may choose a semicolon (;), quotation marks (“ “) or another character.

USING QUALIFIED LOOKUP TABLES Qualified lookup fields present a special set of challenges in family layouts because they are multi-valued in two dimensions – horizontally and vertically – as follows: • Multiple links. A qualified lookup field is multi-valued, in that each

field value can store multiple links, not only to multiple qualified table records, but also to multiple instances of the same record.

• Multiple values for each link. The value for each link is multi-valued, in that each link value consists of the one or more display fields of the qualified table and all the qualifier values for the link.

Layout mode handles single-valued lookup fields with multiple display fields by placing all the lookup display field values into a single text box or table cell, and separating individual values with a semi-colon (;). You can also access the individual lookup-table display fields by flagging them as alternative display fields in the MDM Console. For example, the following two main-table product records contain pricing data for each product, for the years 2002 and 2003.


Quantity Pricing Information for Two Product Records SKU Name Lookup [Pricing] 213 Gear 2002; 1; $3.51

2002; 10; $3.36 2003; 1; $3.54 2003; 5; $3.46 2003; 10; $3.39

215 Sprocket 2002; 1; $5.01 2002; 10; $4.85 2003; 1; $5.04 2003; 5; $4.96 2003; 10; $4.88

The pricing information is stored in a qualified table. The Pricing qualified table has the fields Year and Qty and the qualifier Price, and contains five records, as follows:

Qualified Table with Quantity Price Records Per Year Year Qty [Price] 2002 1 2002 10 2003 1 2003 5 2003 10

If qualified lookup fields were treated like any other multi-valued layout item, MDM would pack the qualified information for each product – consisting of the multiple year / quantity / price values – into a single cell in the table layout, as shown in the first figure of this section. Layout mode uses a general approach in which the highly structured qualified information is automatically “decomposed”, so that you can promote, demote, and pivot the constituent items as needed to properly represent the data. Rather than pack all the qualified information into a single cell, Layout mode automatically expands the multi-value in each of its two multi-valued dimensions, as follows:


• Split. The qualified lookup field is split horizontally into its component values by replacing it in the list of layout items – and the default family layout – with each of the display fields and all of the qualifiers of the qualified table (thereby increasing the number of layout items). MDM appends the [Qual] tag to the name of the qualified table display fields and qualifiers in layout item lists.

NOTE ►► MDM includes all the qualifiers as layout items, not just the qualifiers that are display fields.

• Clone. Each product record is cloned vertically across each of the

multiple qualified lookup values for each record, with each instance representing a single qualified link of the qualified lookup field (thereby increasing the number of records in the table layout of the family).

The splitting and cloning of the qualified looking field in the first figure of this section would result in the following table.

Qualified Table Display Fields, Qualifiers, and Cloned Records

In the table layout, the single qualified lookup field has been replaced by three layout items, and the two product records have been expanded into 10 (with five instances for each records, one for each year/quantity combination in the qualified table). Horizontally pivoting the table by Year and Qty (and vertically pivoting by SKU and Name to eliminate the column duplication) results in the following compact table layout.


Qualified Information Properly Structured with Pivots

2002 2003 1 10 1 5 10 SKU Name Price Price Price Price Price 213 Gear $3.51 $3.36 $3.54 $3.46 $3.39 215 Sprocket $5.01 $4.85 $5.04 $4.96 $4.88


PART 6: REFERENCE This part of the reference guide includes tables of parameter descriptions for the main functions used with MDM Publisher:


Conditional Property Types

Conditional Type Description and Examples Context sensitive Applied only if the layout item appears in the

family layout in the corresponding layout context. Examples include: Common Information Name Style

Column Header Style

Data sensitive Applied only if the data values within the layout item meet a particular criterion for applying the property. Examples include: Promote Column With All Common Values

Hide Empty Item

Type sensitive Applied only if the data type of the layout item is applicable for applying the property. Examples include: Convert to Common Unit

Image Variant

Property sensitive Applied only if another property or layout action has already been applied to the layout item. Examples include: Common Information Format

Stack Pivot Format


Layout Item Properties

Property Description [Default Value] Item Name Original Name The repository name of the layout

item. Type The data type of the layout item. Redirect Data Language The language to use for

multilingual items, if not the current language [None]

Display Name The name actually displayed in the Layout pane. The Original Name is displayed in the Layout pane tooltip.

Strip New Lines When Not in Column Header

Strips new line characters from the layout item name when promoted or demoted.

Common Information Format The format for the layout item when promoted as common information: [Item Name With Common Information Value]

Hide Common Information Item Name

Separate Item Name and Value

Item Name Font Style The font style of the layout item name (style override): None

Regular

[Bold]

Italic

Bold Italic


Property Description [Default Value] Swap Item Name and Value Interchanges the order of the item

name and value when the name and value appear in the same text box or table cell in a pivoted column, so that the item name appears after the value or values.

Spanned Column Header Name The string to place in the spanned column header [<None>].

Number of Columns To Span The number of columns to merge [<None>].

Column Width The value of the column width to use instead of the auto-sized width [<None>].

Common Information Grouping Group ID The ID of the group into which the

layout item is placed when promoted to common information: [None]

1

:

10

Group Delimiter The string used to separate layout items in a common group [¶].

Pivoting Stack Pivot Format The format of the layout item

when used as a stack pivot: [Item Name With Pivot Value]

Hide Pivot Item Name

Item Name in Vertical Pivot Column [n/a ↑]

Span Item Name Above Stack Pivot Value


Property Description [Default Value] Stack Pivot Type The pivot type of the layout item

when used as a stack pivot: [Single Stack Pivot Table]

Full Horizontal Span in Single Stack Pivot Table

Separate Stack Pivot Subtables

Horizontal Pivot Format The format of the layout item when used as a horizontal pivot: [Item Name With Pivot Value]


Item Name in Vertical Pivot Column [n/a ↑]

Span Item Name Above Horizontal Pivot Values

Vertical Pivot Format The format of the layout item when used as a vertical pivot: [Item Name With Pivot Value]


Item Name in Vertical Pivot Column Header

Do Not Merge Value Cells Does not merge the table cells in the vertical pivot column even though they contain the same value.

Pull Out Like Columns From Horizontal Pivot Span

Condenses duplicated columns that contain identical values for the layout item, and removes them from the horizontal pivot span as much as possible (performs a partial vertical pivot).

Position After Rather Than Before

Places columns removed from the horizontal pivot span for the partial vertical pivot layout item after, rather than before, the base table.


Property Description [Default Value] Ignore NULL Values Ignores NULL values when

comparing values and attempting to pull out duplicated columns, so that the NULL will match any value and not interfere with the pull out.

Extend Header Unpivoted Columns Hide Item Name in Unpivoted Column Header

Hides the name of an unpivoted layout item when it appears in the column header of the table layout.

Merge Like Cells in Unpivoted Column

In a single base table, merges table cells that contain the same value.

Item Values Item Value Font Style The font style of the layout item

value (style override): [None]

Regular

Bold

Italic

Bold Italic

Missing Record Item Value The string to use as the layout item value for each column of a record hole created by the combination of horizontal and vertical pivots.

NULL Item Value The string to use as the layout item value for a NULL value. If empty, the layout item name is suppressed when the name and value appear in the same text box or table cell in a pivoted column [<None>].

N/A Item Value The string to use as the layout item for a N/A value.


Property Description [Default Value] Treat N/A as NULL Value Whether or not to format N/A

values using the NULL Item Value property.

Override Promoted Value [<None>]. Copy Block Markup Text [<None>]. Value Sorting and Grouping Sort Order The sort order of the layout item

when used as a pivot or sort: [Ascending]

Descending

Natural [n/a ↑ Ascending]

Reverse Natural [n/a ↑ Descending]

Sort Numeric Text Values Arithmetically

Sorts the values of a text layout item based on its numeric, rather than text, values.

Value Ordering and Grouping Manually overrides the default natural sort order of a lookup field or text attributes (alphabetical, hierarchical, or text-value order), renames values, and combines them into value groups. The original value is still displayed in the Layout pane tooltip.

Multi-value Sort Order Options are: Ascending

Descending

[Natural]

Reverse Natural [n/a ↑ Descending]

Data Entry Order is Natural


Property Description [Default Value] Sort Holes in Table Whether empty values (“holes”)

appear first or last in the table. First

[Last]

Hiding Hide Item Entirely Unconditionally hides the layout

item. Apply Pivot or Sort Before Hiding

Pivots or sorts the table layout before hiding the item.

Hide Empty Item Hides the layout item if all its values are NULL.

Treat Each Column Separately

Hides the table layout column if its values are NULL on a per-stack-pivot subtable basis and/or on a per-horizontal-pivot base table basis.

Generate as Annotation Bullets Display Values as Bullets Displays the layout item values as

bullets. Bullet Symbol The string to use as the bullet

symbol [•]. Insert Tab Between Symbol and Value

Inserts a tab between the bullet symbol and the layout item value.

Promotion to Common Information Promote Column With All Common Values

Promotes the layout item to appear as common information if all its values are the same for all products in the family.

Treat Each Stack Pivot Subtable Separately

Promotes the layout item if its values are the same on a per-stack-pivot subtable basis.

Hide Rather Than Promote Column

Hides, rather than promotes, the layout item with all common values.

Promote Common Multi-Values

Promotes only the common values of a multi-valued layout item.


Property Description [Default Value] Promote Most Common Value

Promotes only the most common value of a layout item.

Most Common Value Suffix The string to append to the promoted most common value, to indicate that not all records in the table layout share that value [(unless noted)].

Promote Column Even With Distinct Values

Unconditionally promotes the layout item to appear as common information even if all its values are not the same for all the products in the family.

Tag Each Value With Values of Specified Item

Appends to each promoted distinct value in square brackets ([ ]) the corresponding values of the specified layout item, to indicate the table layout records to which each distinct value applies.

Tag Item The layout item whose values are used to tag the distinct values [display field of table].

Preserve Duplicate Instances of Each Value

Preserves, rather than collapses, duplicate instances of each tagged distinct value.

Demotion to Footnotes and Legends Demote Remaining Column Values to Footnotes

Demotes the layout item values that have not been promoted to common information to appear as footnotes.

Demote to Legend Rather Than Footnotes

Demotes the layout item value to create a legend, rather than footnotes.

Position Above Rather Than Below

Places the demoted layout item values above, rather than below, the table layout.

Preserve Demoted Column Rather Than Superscript

Leaves the demoted layout item column in the table layout and places the numbering symbols in the column, rather than the superscript.


Property Description [Default Value] Display Item Name With

Footnote Values Displays the layout item name along with each footnote value.

Restart Numbering For Each Stack Pivot Subtable

Restarts numbering at the first symbol of the symbol set for each stack pivot subtable, and places the footnotes or legend before or after each stack pivot subtable, rather than all at the beginning or end.

Demote Image and Use Text as Symbol

Uses the image description (of an image layout item) or the text value (of a text attribute layout item), rather than the symbol, to footnote a demoted image.

Footnote and Legend Numbering Symbols

The set of numbering symbols to use for the layout item when demoted to appear as footnotes or as a legend: [Auto-Select]

*, , ǂ, #, ¦, ¦, ¤, $...

i, ii, iii, iv…

I, II, III, IV…

A, B, C, D…

1, 2, 3, 4…

Custom Symbols Overrides the built-in symbol sets with a user-defined set of symbols, specified as a comma-separated list [<None>].

Insert Space Between Symbol and Value

Inserts a space between the numbering symbol and the layout item value.


Property Description [Default Value] Symbol Font Style The font style of the numbering

symbol (style override): None

[Regular]

Bold

Italic

Bold Italic

Symbol Character Style The character style to use for symbols: New Style

[None]

Prefix to Symbol The prefix to add to a symbol. Suffix to Symbol The suffix to add to a symbol. Units of Measure Convert to Common Unit Converts the values of a numeric

layout item with a unit of measure to a common unit, chosen from the list of applicable units [None].

Convert Unit Suffix The string to use as the common unit instead of the built-in unit string [<None>].

Coupled Convert to Common Unit Converts the coupled values of a coupled numeric layout item to a common unit, chosen from the list of applicable units [None].

Converted Unit Suffix The string to use as the coupled common unit, instead of the built-in unit string [<None>].


Property Description [Default Value] Common Unit Format The common unit format of a

numeric layout item with a unit of measure: [Display With Value]

Promote to Column Header

Hide Entirely

Display in First Row Only

Surround Promoted Unit With Parentheses

Encloses a common unit promoted to the column header with parentheses.

Item Name / Promoted Unit Delimiter

The string to use to separate the layout item name and the promoted common unit [Space].

UOM delimiter The delimiter to use for units of measure .

Units Character Style The character style to use for units of measure. New Style

[None]

Ratings Rating Tags Hides/displays the rating tags:

[Display All]

Hide [Nom] Only

Display All

Hide Only If Single Rating Hides the tag or tags only if the numeric attribute has a single rating.


Property Description [Default Value] Images Image Variant The variant to use for an image

layout item, chosen from the list of image variants: B&W

JPG

New Variant

[Original]

Thumbnail

Hide Images Hides the image (of an image layout item) or the text value image (of a text attribute layout item).

Hide Image Texts Hides the image description (of an image layout item) or the txt value (of a text attribute layout item).

Image Scale Percentage The percentage by which to scale the image [<None>].

Image Width The bounding image width to use instead of the image print size width [<None>].

Image Height The bounding image height to use instead of the image print size height [<None>].

Interchangeable Interchanges the bounding width and height if the resulting resized image would be larger.

Expand Expands the image to exceed a bounding dimension if the other dimension does not meet a certain threshold (for extreme aspect ratios).

Threshold Percentage The threshold percentage below which the image should be expanded [<None>].

Adjustment Percentage The adjustment percentage by which the image should be expanded [<None>].


Property Description [Default Value] Delimiters Item Name/Value Delimiter The string to use to separate the

layout item name and value when they appear in the same text box or table cell [:].

Multi-Valued Delimiter The string to use to separate the multiple values of a multi-valued layout item [;].

Combined Item Name Delimiter The string to use to separate the combined layout item names when the name and value appear in the different ext boxes or table cells [;].

Combined Item Value Delimiter The string to use to separate the combined layout item values when the name and value appear in different text boxes or table cells, or the combined layout items when they appear in the same text box or table cell [;].

Coupled Numeric Delimiter The string to use to separate the value pairs for a coupled numeric layout item instead of the string set in Taxonomy mode [<from Taxonomy mode>].

Numeric Formatting Decimal Places The number of decimal places for

a numeric layout item [<from MDM Console or Taxonomy mode].

Show Fractions Displays the numeric layout item as fractions, rather than decimal, but only if the unit permits it [<from MDM Console or Taxonomy mode].

Thousands Separator The thousands character for a numeric layout item [,].

Decimal Symbol The decimal character for a numeric layout item [.].

Allow E Notation Permits E notation for a numeric layout item.


Property Description [Default Value] Strip Trailing Zeros Removes trailing zeros from the

values of a numeric layout item. Display Leading Zero Displays a leading zero for the

values of a numeric layout item. Value Padding Prefix to Value The string to add to the beginning

of each value of the layout item [<None>].

Suffix to Value The string to add to the end of each value of the layout item [<None>].

Maximum Pad Width The width of each padded value of the layout item [<None>].

Leading Pad Character The character to prefix to each value [<None>].

Relationships Related Category Matching Item

Synchronization Copies or moves values from the related category that matches the layout item within the related records of a matching set, into the corresponding matching layout item in the product family, when the two layout items are different. [None]

Copy Values to Matching Item in Product Family

Move Values to Matching Item in Product Family

Apply NULL Values in Related Records

Clears the value of the layout item within the related records of a product relationship, to de-emphasize related record values when horizontally pivoting or demoting to footnotes.


Property Description [Default Value] Ignore Values in Related Records Ignores the values of the layout

item within the related records of a product relationship to further de-emphasize related record values when pivoting, promoting, demoting, and hiding, so that the related record values will match any value and not interfere with the applicable operation.

Styles Common Information Name Style The style to use for the layout

item name when the item appears as common information [Default Style].

Common Information Value Style The style to use for the layout item value when the item appears as common information [Default Style].

Column Header Style The style to use for the layout item name when the item appears in a column header [Default Style].

Column Value Style The style to use for the layout item value when it appears in a table cell [Default Style].

Stack Pivot Name Style The style to use for the layout item name when the item is used as a stack pivot [Default Style].

Stack Pivot Value Style The style to use for the layout item value when the item is used as a stack pivot [Default Style].

Horizontal Pivot Name Style The style to use for the layout item name when the item is used as a horizontal pivot [Default Style].

Horizontal Pivot Value Style The style to use for the layout item value when the item is used as a horizontal pivot [Default Style].


Property Description [Default Value] Collapsed Horizontal Pivot Value

Style The style to use for the layout item value when the item is used as a collapsed horizontal pivot [Default Style].

Vertical Pivot Name Style The style to use for the layout item name when the item is used as a vertical pivot [Default Style].

Vertical Pivot Value Style The style to use for the layout item value when the item is used as a vertical pivot [Default Style].

Footnote and Legend Style The style to use for the layout item when it appears as footnotes or a legend [Default Style].

Character Styles Name The character style to use for item

names: New Style

[None]

Value The character style to use for item values: New Style

[None]

Borders and Separators Common Information Border The thickness of the text box

border when the layout item appears as common information [<None>].

Stack Pivot Row Bottom The thickness of the border beneath the stack pivot value row when the layout item appears as a stack pivot [1/2 pt].

Stack Pivot Name/Value Row Separator

The thickness of the border that separates the stack pivot name and value rows when the layout item appears as a stack pivot [1/2 pt].


Property Description [Default Value] Horizontal Pivot Row Bottom The thickness of the border

beneath the horizontal pivot values row when the layout item appears as a horizontal pivot [1/2 pt].

Horizontal Pivot Name/Value Row Separator

The thickness of the border that separates the horizontal pivot name and values rows when the layout item appears as a horizontal pivot [1/2 pt].

Horizontal Pivot Value Column Separator

The thickness of the border that separates the horizontal pivot values when the layout item appears as a horizontal pivot [1/2 pt].

Vertical Pivot Inner Column Separator

The thickness of the inner border of the vertical pivot column when the layout item appears as a vertical pivot [1/2 pt].

Vertical Pivot Value Row Separator

The thickness of the border that separates the vertical pivot values when the layout item appears as a vertical pivot [1/2 pt].


Style Properties

Property Description [Default Value] Name The style name. Font The text font [Helvetica]. Font Size The text font size [8 pt]. Text Format The text format (overridden by

Item Name Font Style and Item Value Font Style layout item properties): [Regular]

Bold

Italic

Bold Italic

Text Position The vertical text alignment: [Normal]

Superscript

Subscript

Horizontal Alignment The horizontal text alignment: [Left]

Center

Right

Justify

Character

Alignment Character The character on which align the character horizontal alignment (where the value of ‘.’ creates decimal alignment) [<None>].

Character Indent The amount to indent the alignment character from the right indent [10 pt].


Property Description [Default Value] Vertical Alignment The vertical alignment within the

text box: [Top]

Center

Bottom

Left Indent The amount to indent from the left side of the text box [0 pt].

Right Indent The amount to indent from the right side of the text box [0 pt].

Text Color The text color [Black]. Background Color The color of text box behind text

[None]. Shade The shading percentage of the

background color [0]. Leader Dots The string to use as leader dots

[<None>]. Leader Dot Size The font size of the leader dots

(Font Size override) [0 pt]. Leader Dot Format The format of the leader dots

(Text Format override): [None]

Regular

Bold

Italics

Bold Italic

Leading The amount of space between lines of text [0 pt].


Property Description [Default Value] Change Case The case to use:

[None]

UPPER CASE

lower case

Sentence case

Title Case

tOGGLE cASE

Tracking The amount of space between characters [0]

Locked Row Height The fixed row height to use [0 pt]


Glossary The following is a set of selected MDM terms that are directly relevant to the work that you perform in MDM Publisher.

absolute property A property – such as Page Width -- whose value is applied globally in all circumstances.

attribute A subfield that applies to a specific category rather than to the entire collection of records.

attribute rating A weighted ranking of a numeric attribute compared with other similar numeric attributes.

base table A subtable that results from pivoting a main table. See also “pivot table”.

conditional property A property whose value is applied only when specific conditions are met for the layout item in the particular family.

family A group of main-table records that are related by one or more common fields and/or attribute values (also called “product family”).

Families table A table that stores data about the product family, such as images, text blocks, and other information applicable to the product family as a whole, rather than to individual product records.

family hierarchy A tree that represents a product family, with each individual family appearing as a leaf node in the tree. This hierarchical structure is important for organizational purposes and for inheritance reasons. It is linked directly to the MDM repository.

hierarchy Information organized in a hierarchical tree in which each record is related to a parent record and may be related to a sibling record and/or child records.


inheritance The automatic transfer of properties in a hierarchy. Multi-level inheritance within the family hierarchy is extended with two-dimensional item-level and property-level granularity, so that each property can be overridden for each individual item, or inherited from the node above it in the hierarchy.

items The fields, attributes, and qualifiers that belong to the records of a specific family or presentation. Items – or “layout items” -- are compiled by MDM from the main, qualified, and Families tables in the MDM repository. Items work on the metadata level.

mask A kind of filter defined to block all main-table records from view except the defined subset of records included in the mask.

object model The application of layout specifications to layout items at the metadata level rather than directly to the product data. This guarantees publishing consistency when changes are made not only to the data but also to the set of product records itself.

object snapshot A recording of the presentation objects after they are initially generated. MDM Publisher stores these snapshots with the presentation and uses them – not the dynamic repository data – to populate the spread in the publication. In this regard, snapshots serve as a firewall between the ongoing changes that occur in the repository and the static spreads in the publication.

object The layout element displayed on the actual spread of a publication. This is in contrast to an item, which refers to the schema information originating in the MDM repository.


pagination The division of the laid-out families into pages of the spreads, after layout and template creation.

partitioning The division of a set of records in one or more product families into subsections. You partition the product records into families.

perspective A feature in MDM Publisher that lets you save and reuse different configurations of visible and hidden panes.

pivot table A tool that divides tables in a number of different ways. The spreadsheet-style table of product records within each product family can be dynamically restructured to eliminate redundant data values and create the stylized and densely-structured table layouts that are standard in paper catalogs.

presentation The leaf-node item in a publication hierarchy. A presentation can represent either a family or an individual record, and contains the actual product information that is published in the catalog.

presentation hierarchy The actual hierarchical structure of the presentations within a publication.

product family See “family”.

promotion Selected product information, relevant for most or all records of a family, which can be selected – or “promoted” -- to be displayed above the family data table. This simplifies the data display and makes the data more understandable.

property The defining characteristics of a field. Each collection of related layout specifications is grouped into a single set of object properties. The property values are stored as publishing metadata within MDM, rather than in the DTP page layout, to ensure consistent and predictable published results.


publication The set of catalog documents created by MDM Publisher. You can create, open, close, and print the publication just like any document in a word processing or desktop publishing program. It can be a “flyer” of one or two items, a book of an entire catalog, or any selected subsection(s) of the entire record set.

qualified table A versatile lookup table that can be used to efficiently store complex relationships between a main table record and one or more lookup table records that contain different types of additional information.

rating See “attribute rating”.

runaround anchor Locking a family to a page.

section A discrete part of a publication represented by a section node in the presentation hierarchy. Each section, in turn, is made up of individual, discrete pages and spreads (a combination of two facing pages). Each page and spread can contain one or more presentations.

spread A combination of two facing pages in a publication.

style A set of properties defined within MDM to control all of the formatting of the final published output.

sap nw mdm 7.1 sp08 publisher reference guide - oct 2011

Documents

arranged base

master data

qualified

prices qualified

unencrypted

mdm data manager

resulting

mdm repository