data model book uses Good Ident to define product Ids see page 75 of volume I Product Identification codes. also note that ofbiz uses product.internaName VARCHAR(255) for display and searches. this leave the productID free to just be internally for Database relationships. Note ProductID is part of the primary key so there are limitations to the index for certain databases. One of the reasons not to change it.
You will find Data Model Handbook vol I invaluable to the Data modeling of ofbiz, even though some liberties have been taken. I also recommend vol II James McGill sent the following on 10/16/2009 1:18 PM: > Product identifiers in our industry are commonly longer than 20 characters. > id and id-ne fields are defined as 20 character fields for all the databases > I have looked at, and there seems to be some tight binding to the 20 > character length in forms and screen templates. We are wondering how much > work we would need to do, in order to change Product id's to id-longs. That > sounds pretty big at first glance, since there is so much going on with > Product in so many applications. Another option would be to standardize > some kind of SKU and cross reference that to a domain-specific product ID > but that would be much less convenient for the users. > > Please advise. > -- BJ Freeman http://www.businessesnetwork.com/automation http://bjfreeman.elance.com http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=1237480&locale=en_US&trk=tab_pro Systems Integrator.
