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Catalog source

Last update: June 10, 2026

CREATED FOR:

  • Admin
  • Developer

A catalog source represents an authoritative scope of products, attributes, and categories. Catalog sources typically map to language, audience, or system-of-origin boundaries and determine search, filter, and sort behavior.

Understanding how a catalog source relates to other Adobe Commerce Optimizer concepts helps you model your data correctly:

  • Catalog source - The underlying data context that supplies product information. A catalog source is typically a locale (for example, en-US, fr-CA) or an external system such as a PIM or ERP. Products, attributes metadata, and categories are all scoped per catalog source. Think of a catalog source as where the raw catalog data comes from and how it affects product discovery (search results, filtering, and sorting behavior).

  • Catalog view - A configured view of your catalog for a specific business need. When you create a catalog view, you select which catalog source (or locale) to use, then add policies to filter which products are visible and link price books to control pricing. A single catalog source can power many catalog views (for example, one en-US source with separate catalog views for different brands or regions). Think of a catalog view as how you expose that data to a storefront, channel, or audience.

  • Catalog layer - A layer applied on top of base catalog data to modify product attributes (name, description, images, metadata) without changing the source data. Use catalog layers when differences must affect storefront display only - not product discovery.

Rules and limitations

  • A catalog source is created by ingesting a product via the Data Ingestion API. See Developer Docs - Data Ingestion for more information.
  • Product uniqueness is determined by SKU + catalog source.
  • Shoppers do not access catalog sources directly. Catalog data is exposed to the storefront via catalog views.

Modeling guidance

Use the following guidance when deciding how to structure your catalog sources:

  • Create a separate catalog source per different catalog language.
  • Use separate catalog sources when product and attribute differences must affect search, filtering, or sorting behavior (for example, different searchability, filterability, or facet configuration for the same attribute).
  • Use catalog layers when product and attribute differences must affect storefront display only, not product discovery.
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