As projects tend to develop specific meanings for specific terms, and they may be slightly different for each system, this document tries to bring a little clarity on how they relate.
With so many slightly different terms, it is hardly avoidable to create a new set of terms for describing all of them. Terms in italics refer to those 'defined' in this document.
Suppliers sell products. They may have a name, description, image, and probably a unit and price (these may also be specified in a product variant instead).
- Foodsoft: Article
- Open Food Network: Product
Some systems may use product variants to describe variations on the same product. Different classes of apples, for example, or different package sizes.
- Foodsoft: not present (uses different products)
- Open Food Network: Variant
Suppliers sell products. They would typically have profile information like a name, address, logo, description, web links.
- Foodsoft: Supplier
- Open Food Network: Producer (who produces something new) and Hub (who sells products from other suppliers in the system)
Often products can only be bought during a certain timeframe. Order cycles have a start date, and end date, and a number of products. It is probably only referring to products from a single supplier.
- Foodsoft: Order
- Open Food Network: Order cycle
Consumers buying products (probably in an order cycle) do this by placing an order, which contains a number of products.
- Foodsoft: Group order with Group order articles
- Open Food Network: Order with Line items
Plenty :) including:
- Categories / taxonomies / tags
- Customers / order groups / users / enterprises
- Transporter, processors, storage, (re)packaging, ...
Let's add and expand on the basis of concrete examples. And feel free to edit, clarify, add terms for another project, etc.
Part of food-dashboard.