Best practice for comparing product specs

Thursday 01 April 2004 5:10:06 am

Hi,

What's the best way to store specs for products when these are to be compared?

When I recently created a web site for a our web hosting service, I solved the problem by creating one product class and one product spec class. The product spec class attributes were the name of the spec as well as one attribute for the spec value of each product.

This worked fine since there were only 4 "products" (hosting packages) and new products are rarely added. If new products were to be added, however, one would have to edit the product spec class to add a new attribute. Also, there would be no physical relation between the spec and the product, and one would have to edit each product spec object when adding a product to include the value of the product spec for the new product.

Now I have encountered the same problem yet again with a client site, and I'm looking for suggestions/ideas on how to best store product specs for comparison.

Thanks in advance !

Sincerely,

Eirik Johansen

Sincerely,

Eirik Alfstad Johansen
http://www.netmaking.no/

Wednesday 07 April 2004 1:58:56 am

Hi Alex,

<i>I have fallen back on standard Text Lines, which isn't a good solution either[...]</i>

Do you mean that you store them as class attributes?

Sincerely,

Eirik Johansen

Sincerely,

Eirik Alfstad Johansen
http://www.netmaking.no/

Wednesday 07 April 2004 7:31:17 am

Eirik, I do indeed store them as a class attribute which is a Text Line.

Bård, that is a good point. When I set up my first site, which was the one with the large amounts of product specifications I wasn't familiar with the system, so that never ocurred to me. I like your idea and may very well use it with the next site I create.

Alex

Alex
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