The information contained in this section applies to IBM WebSphere Commerce Version 7.0.0.9 and Feautre Pack 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in new editions.
Every WebSphere Commerce installation requires at least one instance to function, and each WebSphere Commerce instance can contain one or more stores.
Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
Review this section for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
Before you migrate WebSphere Commerce, review this information for an overview of the migration process.
In WebSphere Commerce the person who performs administrative tasks is called a Site Administrator. The Site Administrator installs, configures, and maintains WebSphere Commerce and the associated software and hardware. The administrator responds to system warnings, alerts, and errors, and diagnoses and resolves system problems. Typically, this person controls access and authorization (creating and assigning members to the appropriate role), manages the Web site, monitors performance, and manages load balancing tasks. The Site Administrator might be responsible for establishing and maintaining several server configurations for different stages of development such as testing, staging, and production. The Site Administrator also handles critical system backups and resolves performance problems.
If you want to change any of the configuration settings for your WebSphere Commerce instance, you can do so from the Configuration Manager.
You can delete an instance when you no longer require any of the resources and services associated with the instance. You can also choose to delete the WebSphere Application Server profile and server associated with the instance. Deleting an instance that is not required can free up a significant amount of system resources and make the resources available for other purposes.
In the Instance creation wizard, you can specify the WebSphere Commerce tools ports to be different from the default values (8000, 8002, 8004, 8006). You can change the tools ports after the instance creation.
Ensuring that the database is started is done differently on each operating system on which a database runs.
The Web server associated with your WebSphere Commerce instance must to started to ensure you can access the WebSphere Commerce tools.
The SystemOut.log file should be reviewed when a WebSphere Commerce instance is started.
To access help while using WebSphere Commerce tools, ensure the help server is active.
The WebSphere Commerce instance is created and administered within a WebSphere Application Server profile. To start or stop a WebSphere Commerce instance you must start or stop the associated WebSphere Application Server profile.
To access the information center for your WebSphere Commerce environment, ensure that the help server is active.
The WebSphere Commerce Developer includes the tools you require to create customized code and perform Web development tasks.
To start or stop WebSphere Commerce search you must start or stop the solrServer instance.
If you federate your WebSphere Commerce environment, you can set up a cluster of WebSphere Commerce instances. In addition, having a federated environment enables you to manage multiple WebSphere Commerce application servers from a single WebSphere Application Server console.
After federating your WebSphere Commerce environment, you can configure clustering. Clustering provides failover protection and workload balancing.
WebSphere Commerce can be configured to use one or more LDAP servers as the master user repository instead of the WebSphere Commerce database. This is typically done when multiple applications need to share a common user repository.
An SSL Accelerator (or SSL Terminator) strips off HTTPS encryption at or before the Web server tier in a multitier setup. When you use an SSL Accelerator with WebSphere Commerce, you can use the SSL Accelerator option to configure WebSphere Commerce to correctly receive requests that require redirects.
WebSphere Commerce uses an XML directory to configure many different aspects of its behavior. Many different customization tasks will require you to modify the XML, template definition, template definition DTD, and DTD files in these directories.
If you want to change database settings, such as the database host name or the port number, on an existing WebSphere Commerce instance, you must manually complete the changes.
Applying limits on business operations reduces the risk of system attacks where unbound conditions might result in system failures.
You can administer the features for your store and site, such as attribute, catalog, promotion, marketing, order management features, and more. The administration tasks that you can complete differ depending on the type of feature and the tool that you use to administer your store and site.
WebSphere Commerce provides facilities for logging. For existing customers, ECTrace and ECMessage are still supported. For new implementations, use the WebSphere Application Server recommendation for logging and tracing.
Business auditing is the capturing of the business logic and objects during a WebSphere Commerce operation. You may want to audit your business for various reasons: generic, such as to review various tasks performed weekly; or specific, such as to track the steps involved in a particular Customer Service Representative's order. A report on business auditing is available in the Administration Console.
Each time that a command triggers a business event, a record is added to the BUSEVENT database table to persist data from the event. Event listeners and external systems (such as the Marketing component, a back end order management system, or an external analytics system) can use this data to perform further processing.
The WebSphere Commerce staging server is a part of the production environment where business and technical users can update and manage store data and preview changes. The changes can then be propagated to the production server.
As a site administrator, maintain the WebSphere Commerce database and ensure that any WebSphere Commerce utilities and processes that load and retrieve data from the database is configured to connect to the database properly.
In general, caching improves response time and reduces system load. Caching techniques are used to improve the performance of World Wide Web Internet applications. Most techniques cache static content (content that rarely changes) such as graphic and text files. However, many websites serve dynamic content, containing personalized information or data that changes more frequently. Caching dynamic content requires more sophisticated caching techniques, such as those provided by the WebSphere Application Server dynamic cache, a built-in service for caching and serving dynamic content.
WebSphere Commerce provides multiple utilities for preparing and loading data into a WebSphere Commerce database. The loading utilities are flexible and you can continue to use these utilities when you customize the WebSphere Commerce schema.
The extended sites business model provides scalability and manageability improvements for WebSphere Commerce sites where there are multiple stores which can share assets including non-ATP inventory. The sharing of non-ATP inventory reduces the complexity of managing inventory assets for all the stores in the site. All stores in extended sites can share inventory from a single asset store with distributed fulfillment centers.
In extended sites store model, tax assets can be shared between the extended site asset store and the extended site store. You can manage the tax assets in an extended site store in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.
The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
WebSphere Commerce provides a listener for WebSphere MQ (formerly MQSeries) for inbound requests and an adapter for WebSphere MQ for outbound requests to allow you to integrate back-end and external systems with WebSphere Commerce using WebSphere MQ.
Today's marketplace includes inbound call centers where Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) manage inquiries from potential customers. The IBM Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce manages stores, customers, organizations, orders, quotes, and payment information. The IBM Sales Center is a rich client interface which is installed on CSRs' systems.
WebSphere Commerce provides integration code and support for WebSphere Portal Server. This integration allows to you aggregate WebSphere Commerce services and other content in a portal interaction environment.
You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with Pinterest through Pinterest Buyable Pins that are available through the Pinterest iOS app. Use the WebSphere Commerce Pinterest Integration Accelerator to help with integration.
You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with an external content management system through a punch-out window from Management Center and through the web feed utility. You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with IBM Web Content Manager to provide Management Center users the ability to associate IBM Web Content Manager content with WebSphere Commerce objects.
Dynamic Pricing 16.4 is a cloud-based pricing system that analyzes real-time market data to provide suggestions on how merchandisers can react to competitor pricing and shifts in market conditions. Data can be fed to Dynamic Pricing from multiple sources, including WebSphere Commerce. You can configure WebSphere Commerce to export pricing data to Dynamic Pricing for pricing analysis and adjustment. The adjusted pricing data can then be imported from Dynamic Pricing to WebSphere Commerce, so the prices can be propagated to your live store front.
If your site is integrated with IBM Enterprise Marketing Management applications, such IBM Digital Analytics, IBM Product Recommendations, or IBM Marketing Center, you can administer the application features that your site uses. For example, you can administer IBM Digital Analytics based customer segments and import recommendations for IBM Product Recommendations.
For a fully functioning WebSphere Commerce search implementation, you must understand and complete the search administration tasks which include deployment, search index management, and ongoing maintenance.
A cloned virtual environment creates a separate copy of the original web server, application server, and database. After you clone a WebSphere Commerce virtual environment, you need to configure the clone to differentiate from the original environment.
Consider deploying a dual cell environment to achieve continuous availability and ensure that shoppers are minimally affected by planned or unplanned outages.
WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials.
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.