B2BCMarket Connected Entity Architecture (BCEA)
A Connected Architecture for Businesses, Companies, Branches, and Products
The B2BCMarket Connected Entity Architecture (BCEA) is the core architectural model used by B2BCMarket to organize its public marketplace entities.
BCEA connects businesses, companies, branches, and products through stable public identifiers, independent public pages, and contextual catalog URLs.
Each public entity can be identified and accessed independently while remaining connected to the entities that provide its business context.
What Is BCEA?
B2BCMarket Connected Entity Architecture is the model through which B2BCMarket represents relationships between its major public entities.
The primary entity relationship is:
Business
↓
Company
↓
Branch
↓
Product
This relationship does not mean that the entities lose their individual identity. Instead, each entity remains independently identifiable and accessible while maintaining relationships with related entities.
Core Principles of BCEA
1. Independent Identity
Every public entity has its own public sharing identifier.
Internal database identifiers such as private GUIDs are not used as the primary public identity of an entity.
Public identifiers provide stable references to publicly accessible marketplace entities.
2. Independent Accessibility
Every public entity has its own catalog page and can be accessed directly.
A visitor does not have to begin at the Business level in order to reach a Product.
A Product, Branch, Company, or Business can be reached through its own public catalog URL.
3. Contextual Relationships
Although each entity is independently accessible, entities remain connected through contextual relationships.
Catalog URLs allow users and machine-readable systems to move between related entities.
For example:
- Business can lead to Company.
- Company can lead to Branch.
- Branch can lead to Product.
- Product can lead back to Branch.
- Product can identify its Company.
- Product can identify its Business.
4. Hierarchical Navigation
The marketplace can be naturally explored through the hierarchy:
Business → Company → Branch → Product
The relationships can also be followed in reverse:
Product → Branch → Company → Business
This creates a connected navigation graph rather than a collection of isolated marketplace listings.
5. Consistent Representation
The same underlying relationships are represented across the B2BCMarket website, catalog pages, XML catalogs, and future public interfaces.
The XML catalog does not create a separate relationship model. Instead, it represents the relationships that already exist within the B2BCMarket architecture.
This allows different public representations of B2BCMarket to remain consistent with the same underlying entity structure.
The B2BCMarket Entity Hierarchy
BCEA organizes the primary marketplace entities into four connected levels.
Business
↓
Company
↓
Branch
↓
Product
Business
A Business represents the broader business context within B2BCMarket.
A Business can contain one or more Companies.
Company
A Company represents a company-level presence within a Business.
A Company can contain one or more Branches and can maintain its own profile, branding, contact information, and marketplace status.
Branch
A Branch represents a company's branch or operational location.
A Branch can contain geographic information, address information, service-area information, contact information, and marketplace Products.
Product
A Product represents a marketplace offering connected to its Branch, Company, and Business context.
A Product can contain product information, classification, countries, packaging, inventory, images, and marketplace status.
Public Identity
BCEA distinguishes between an entity's internal database identity and its public marketplace identity.
Internal database identifiers are used by the application internally. Public identifiers are used to identify entities in public URLs, catalog pages, and machine-readable representations.
Business Public Identity
A Business currently uses its public PageID as its public identifier.
Company Public Identity
A Company public identifier combines a company slug with its CompanyShareidentifier.
CompanySlug-CompanyShareidentifier
Branch Public Identity
A Branch public identifier combines a branch slug with its CompanyDetailShareidentifier.
BranchSlug-CompanyDetailShareidentifier
Product Public Identity
Product navigation generally uses a Product slug combined with the ProductShareIdentifier.
ProductSlug-ProductShareIdentifier
Connected Public URLs
Public URLs are an important part of BCEA because they provide direct access to entities while also maintaining their contextual relationships.
Business URL
↓
Company URL
↓
Branch URL
↓
Product URL
The URLs are not merely addresses to pages. They also provide navigational relationships between public entities.
Bidirectional Entity Navigation
One of the important characteristics of BCEA is that relationships can be navigated in more than one direction.
Business to Product
Business
↓
Company
↓
Branch
↓
Product
A visitor can begin with a Business and progressively discover its Companies, Branches, and Products.
Product to Business
Product
↓
Branch
↓
Company
↓
Business
A visitor can also begin with a Product and discover the Branch, Company, and Business associated with that Product.
This makes the marketplace a connected entity graph rather than a one-directional hierarchy.
Product-to-Branch Relationship
Products are connected to Branches through their marketplace assignment.
The relationship is represented by the BranchAssignedProduct mapping.
Branch
↓
BranchAssignedProduct
↓
Product
This relationship allows a Product to be associated with a specific Branch and allows the marketplace to determine where that Product is available.
BCEA and Machine-Readable Catalogs
The relationships represented by BCEA are also reflected in the B2BCMarket machine-readable catalog architecture.
The catalog system provides XML representations for:
- Business
- Company
- Branch
- Product
These XML representations use the same public identities and relationships that are used by the marketplace's public entity architecture.
The XML therefore represents the existing marketplace relationship model rather than defining a separate one.
One Relationship Model, Multiple Representations
B2BCMarket can represent the same connected entities through different public interfaces.
Underlying Entity Relationships
↓
Website Catalog Pages
↓
XML Catalogs
↓
Future Public Interfaces
Each representation can provide information in a format appropriate for its purpose while maintaining the same underlying relationships.
This consistency is a fundamental characteristic of BCEA.
The B2BCMarket Entity Graph
The architecture can be viewed as a connected graph:
Business
↓
Company
↓
Branch
↓
Product
At the same time, each lower-level entity maintains relationships with the entities above it.
Product → Branch
Product → Company
Product → Business
Branch → Company
Company → Business
This provides contextual information regardless of where a visitor enters the marketplace.
Why BCEA Matters
A connected entity architecture provides more than a hierarchy of pages.
It provides a consistent way to understand the relationships between businesses and their marketplace offerings.
For buyers, this provides additional business context when discovering products.
For merchants and marketplace participants, it provides a structured representation of the businesses, companies, branches, and products involved in marketplace activity.
For machine-readable systems, the same relationships can be represented consistently through structured catalog data.
BCEA Architecture Summary
The core model can be summarized as follows:
Business
↓
Company
↓
Branch
↓
Product
Each entity has:
- An independent public identity.
- An independent public catalog page.
- Relationships to its parent entities.
- Relationships to its child entities where applicable.
- Public URLs connecting related entities.
The resulting architecture is:
Independently identifiable entities connected through a consistent public relationship model.