Creating XML Taxonomies - Our Parents

(Page 3 of 4 )

 

What information might we need for our reports? For starters, let's look at all of the information we can obtain about the objects we are selling, albums. Here is a list of data we could obtain from each: 

Artist – Who is the album made by/who are the musicians playing on the album?

Genre – What type of music is it? Is it rock, country, rap?

Format – Is the album a vinyl album? Is it a CD? Is it a digital format?

Price – How much does it cost?

Unique ID – Every album we sell must have a unique key to identify it and ensure there is no duplication. For instance, there may be many albums by the Rolling Stones, and many albums named Tooty Fruity. How do we differentiate them using only one field? A unique key is required. Real world examples of unique keys are social security numbers, bank account numbers, or the ISBN of a book.

Label – Which record label put out the album?

Length – How long is the album in terms of minutes?

Release – When was the album released? 

We will stop there. As you can see, the list can get out of hand quickly. And that is just a list of categories/parents for the albums. 

In our taxonomy we will also want to know things about the person buying our albums. We could use the information to send them newsletters, or suggest music based off of previous purchases. It would also help to prevent transaction fraud. Here are some fields of data that we may wish to collect: 

First Name – The first name of the buyer

Last Name – The last name of the buyer

Address – The address of the buyer

Email – The buyer’s email address

Phone number – This will act as the user’s unique key. In the grand scheme of things, this could cause problems of course. If more than one person lives in the same house and uses the same number, for instance, or if the person abandons the phone number and someone else picks it up, there could be issues. We might actually want to create a customer number instead, so let’s go ahead and do so.

CustomerID – a unique number to identify the customer 

Again, we could have gone crazy and added more fields. Address could have been broken down to State, City, Zip Code, etc, and when developing your own application, you might wish to break it down in this manner. This would give you more of a geographical feel for your customers. If you ever wanted a list of everyone from a certain city for instance, you would need that City field. 

Lastly, we are going to want to know information about the transaction itself. Here are some fields:  

Unique ID – This is the same field we used in our first section. We will use it here to tie the album to the sale. 

Price – How much does it cost? 

Coupon – Is there a coupon being used or a special sale? 

Shipping – How much does shipping cost? 

TotalPrice – What is the total price after coupons/sales and shipping have been calculated? 

Date – Date the transaction occurred 

Type – Retail or Internet sale? 

Next: What's Next? >>
 

More XML Tutorials Articles
More By James Payne

Comments On: Creating XML Taxonomies

· Thanks for the great 3 parts so far James. I rated it a 4 star for now as I feel a...   >>> Post your comment now!