In the Catalog Manager the term Product refers to items that are either for sale or that you purchase for the company's use in resale, or by consumption. The Catalog Manager provides a page for defining each product, plus an extensive set of tabed pages that further describe how the business deals with that particular product. There are several distinct types of products that are handled by the DWA Commerce system in unique ways, including these:

• Physical Products -- Items that require inventory and shipping such as books, or clothes.
• Virtual Products -- An abstract item that you can purchase after specifying items like the size, color, or other details which then define the actual physical item that is delivered. The abstract Virtual item will have a set of Features defined for use in specifying the exact physical item to be sold. Thus the underlying Virtual Product has no inventory, but when further defined by the features it points to a Physical items which does have inventory.
• Digital Products -- A Digital product is like a music download, or an electronic book download, which can be fulfilled over the internet, and has no inventory other than its master digital file(s) which are stored somewhere.
• Configurable Products -- Products which must be defined during the ordering process, based upon a predefined set of components available in various forms, some of which are required and some of which may be optional. An example would be a personal computer with configurations for the RAM memory, the disk drive, and several other components.
• Service Products -- A Service product is delivered as the performance of a task, procedure, or work effort agreement that often has a specific product description, price, and agreement regarding terms of service. Examples of this kind of service product include equipment maintenance or repair, a landscaping contract, or a personal service agreement.