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Member

ap - 11/26/2012 9:02:09 AM

Taxonomy Structure; use categories or document tree?

hello. I'm in the process of using the api to import data from our db into kentico.
the data is structured as parent/child/grandchild relationships.

The question is it best to use categories or the document tree for this solution?
It seems that categories are quite limited in their functionality whereas documents in the tree have much more functionality.

ex: versioning, workflow, translation, custom document form fields...

any suggestions?

Kentico Support

kentico_janh - 11/26/2012 9:34:19 AM

RE:Taxonomy Structure; use categories or document tree?

Hello,

It depends what type of data you want to import. However as you mentioned the document have more functionality than standard categories and as documents you have already hierarchical structure defined and you can define your own document type as well with fields (databases column) you want, so I would recommend you to specify a new document type which matches your needs and import those data to them.

Best regards,
Jan Hermann

Member

ap - 11/26/2012 9:45:07 AM

RE:Taxonomy Structure; use categories or document tree?

thank you for responding so promptly.
An issue I've encountered is how to associate a document to the taxonomy.

Using categories is very clear as far as the association is concerned (document -> properties -> categories), however what do you recommend for associating the document to the taxonomy if it the taxonomy is located within the document tree?
should it be done using (document -> properties -> related docs) ?

I'm just not sure how "Related docs" is used throughout the site, so using for a purpose other than it's original purpose might have consequences down the road.

As well, another negative to using "related docs" include:
-when doing an association, the full path is not shown, only the selected item.
-when associating, no way to select all child items.

your help is much appreciated, this is a very important topic for us.

thanks.

Kentico Support

kentico_janh - 11/27/2012 1:26:53 AM

RE:Taxonomy Structure; use categories or document tree?

Hello,

Ok, I've got your point. In this case it would be really easier to use categories instead of documents because you have already implemented the functionality to assign a document (actual data) to some category/taxonomy. However there are some limitation with your requirement. You can add new fields if the category name and description fields are not enough for your purposes and you can translate those fields as well, however the versioning/workflow module doesn't work with categories.

Best regards,
Jan Hermann


Member	ap - 11/27/2012 9:22:24 AM RE:Taxonomy Structure; use categories or document tree? Thank You. If we add fields to CMS_Category table and we upgrade in the future, will our changes be kept or will the db recreate some tables perhaps?


Kentico Support	kentico_janh - 11/30/2012 2:57:39 AM RE:Taxonomy Structure; use categories or document tree? Hello, Since the CMS_Category is a system table, then it is possible there could be issues with those extra custom columns, however standard patches (hotfixes) shouldn't cause any issue. Best regards, Jan Hermann