I'm starting work on a product catalog built in Django for a client that needs:
1- a variable depth category / subcategory structure, so the tree could look like:
cat 1 > subcat 1 > subsubcat 1 > product 1
cat 2 > subcat 2 > product 2
cat 3 > product 3
2- the products of any category or subcategory can have an arbitrary set of attributes, so for example the products under 'plotter' could have 'speed', 'size' and 'paper type' attributes, whereas the products under 'cad software' could have 'version', 'license type' and 'number of seats'.
3- An easy to use backend, hopefully allowing drag and drop ordering and categorizing of products.
So, I've looked into Satchmo and it has 'product attributes', which looks similar to what I need, and Mezzanine which doesn't have a Product model but otherwise seems fairly hackable and has a nice backend.
I haven't used either project, and am wondering if they're overkill (I don't need shopping cart, payment, etc, or the full blog thing of Mezzanine), perhaps there's a simpler application or aplications for the specific needs I have?