Mastering List Logic: Designing Effective B-End Product Lists

Designing List Logic for B-End Products

In B-end systems, lists are ubiquitous. Whether it's a list page or individual listings within a system, understanding and designing list logic is crucial. This article aims to guide you through the process.

Understanding the Scope:

This article focuses on backend systems, where typical pages include:

• Form Pages: Used for adding and modifying data objects, containing various form controls.
• Detail Pages: Display detailed information about a specific data object.
• List Pages: Show numerous entries of the same type, offering sorting, filtering, viewing, and deletion options.
• Dashboard Pages: Visualize data and charts, also known as dashboards for data analysis.

Designing Effective List Logic:

1. Define the Purpose: Start by clarifying what each list page aims to convey. In a WMS system, you'd have lists like "Inventory," "Inbound," "Outbound," and "Warehouse Management." The names themselves reveal the intended content.

2. Establish Relationships: Understand how different lists relate to each other. For example:

   • The "Inbound" list in a WMS connects to the "Inventory" list through the product (commodity) as the linking factor. The "Inventory" list focuses on inventory statistics by commodity, while the "Inbound" list records individual inbound entries. This creates a one-to-many relationship.

3. Database Structure: Think about how these relationships translate into database structure:

   • 1:1 Relationship: One table represents both entities.
   • 1:N Relationship: Two tables are needed, placing the primary key from the "one" table as a foreign key in the "many" table.
   • N:N Relationship: Three tables are required, using composite keys formed by primary keys from the two original tables as the key for the third table.

Example: Let's consider a self-study exam center with teachers, admissions personnel, and students.

• Teachers & Admissions Personnel: Basic attributes include name, gender, and title.
• Students: Attributes include name, gender, entrance score.
• Admissions Personnel: Responsible for recruiting students and recording enrollment numbers.
• Teachers: Guide student learning based on their titles and tutoring time, generating tutoring fees.

Based on this information, an E-R diagram reveals a one-to-many relationship between Admissions Personnel and Students, and a many-to-many relationship between Students and Teachers. This necessitates two tables for Admissions Personnel and Students, and three tables for Students and Teachers. Combining these, we arrive at four tables after eliminating duplicate student tables.

Mapping Lists to Data:

Remember that list pages display vast amounts of data. Product designs should remain flexible as technical expertise evolves.

Avoid treating each list page as a single database table. Instead, think of list pages as queries that combine data from multiple tables to present specific information to the user. This dynamic approach allows for more tailored and informative lists.

Bridging the Gap:

While product managers don't necessarily need deep technical knowledge, understanding fundamental concepts like database structure and relationships is beneficial for effective communication with developers.