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The words we use
A shared vocabulary prevents most integration misunderstandings. These definitions describe how the platform uses the terms.
Glossary
Commerce vocabulary
- Catalog
- An assortment boundary. A catalog contains products and is assigned to one or more stores.
- Category
- A node in the navigation hierarchy. Categories can be translated and can hold products at any depth.
- Product type
- A template for attributes shared by a group of products, such as a shirt or a camera.
- Variant
- A specific version of a product, distinguished by attributes such as colour, size or capacity.
- Bundle
- A group of products sold together as one commercial offer.
- Service
- An intangible product, such as installation, training or support.
- Price list
- The commercial prices attached to a catalog for a defined audience.
- Tier price
- A price that changes with quantity or customer agreement.
- Store
- A storefront configuration: domain, languages, currencies, theme and assigned catalogs.
- Warehouse
- A physical stock location. Inventory is tracked per warehouse.
- Tax zone
- A geographic area used to decide which tax rules apply.
- Tax category
- A product grouping used to apply the correct tax rate.
- Promotion
- A condition and action pair with a priority and date window.
- Basket
- The interactive selection before an order is created.
- Order
- The commercial record created from a basket and processed through a lifecycle.
- Scheduler
- The component that runs recurring jobs such as imports, exports and emails.
Use it
Where the terms appear
The console uses these terms in its screens. The services use them in requests and responses. The storefront uses them in navigation and content. A team that agrees on the definitions will spend less time reconciling reports.
One sentence rule
If a term needs a paragraph to explain in a meeting, add it to this glossary and use the same paragraph everywhere.
Primary sources
Terminology reference shelf
Standards, documentation and tools that are relevant to this topic. They open on the publisher's site.
- .NET platform Runtime, tooling and framework documentation from Microsoft.
- SQL Server Database engine documentation and editions.
- OData The open data protocol used by the WebStore services layer.
- NuGet Package distribution used by the .NET client and samples.
- Schema.org Structured data vocabulary for product and organization markup.
- W3C Web standards for markup, accessibility and internationalization.
- web.dev Performance, accessibility and Core Web Vitals guidance.
- Unicode Character encoding and script support.
- Unicode CLDR Locale data for dates, numbers and currencies.
- Microsoft Learn Reference material for the Microsoft development stack.
Next step
Translate the glossary into your own model
A short workshop with the catalogue, pricing and operations owners will settle more than a dictionary.