The user goes through the fields of the source database, matching each of them to a field in the destination catalog system. In the process, the system shows a list of all the values in that particular field in the source database. The user can check for unforeseen values and decide whether the values are to be carried over to the catalog system or whether they must be converted to some other value. This happens before any import activity occurs. Dealing with fields and their values prior to processing heads off the most common reason that records get rejected in a database conversion.
Hierarchies are implicit in most catalog data.
But if the hierarchy in the incoming data doesn't match the hierarchy in the catalog, it can be a big headache. For example, a hardware distributor's catalog might have all saw blades together, regardless of type. But the incoming database from a vendor might have circular saws grouped with their blades, saber saws grouped with their blades, and so on. The xCat Import Manager has tools to specify a new hierarchy based on values found in various fields. This minimizes the work required to get the data into the catalog system.