Home
User Guide
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.
Developing
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
Customizing WebSphere Commerce
You can extend the WebSphere Commerce product to fit your business needs. This topic describes the prerequisite skills and required knowledge that you need to customize business logic. After you have the required knowledge, use WebSphere Commerce Developer to take tutorials that guide you step-by-step through various customization scenarios.
Catalog subsystem
The catalog subsystem is a component of the WebSphere Commerce Server that provides online catalog navigation, partitioning, categorization, and associations. In addition, the catalog subsystem includes support for personalized interest lists and custom catalog display pages. The catalog subsystem contains all logic and data relevant to an online catalog, including catalog groups (or categories), catalog entries, and any associations or relationships among them.
Catalog search methods
WebSphere Commerce offers two search options to address the different needs of customers and administrators. Each of the search formats is based on underlying technology that uses the Catalog Search data bean. The search methods are provided primarily by a search engine and an abstraction layer API from which you can build search features and search tools.
Simple catalog search
The basic Catalog Search allows the customer to navigate the catalog quickly to find items of interest. Customers enter one input criteria as the complete search expression. By specifying one or more words into a single expression, items from the catalog that match those words are returned in the search results. Boolean support returns results that contain any one word from the expression. This type of search is typical of those offered as one part of a panel on any Web page.

Simple catalog search

The basic Catalog Search allows the customer to navigate the catalog quickly to find items of interest. Customers enter one input criteria as the complete search expression. By specifying one or more words into a single expression, items from the catalog that match those words are returned in the search results. Boolean support returns results that contain any one word from the expression. This type of search is typical of those offered as one part of a panel on any Web page.

Once implemented, the basic version of the catalog search feature adds a text entry field to the page and a button that launches the search. Text strings that are entered into this field are compared against the database to find matches. Search results are then displayed in the results page. If the search string is multiple words separated by spaces, the search engine treats each space as a logical 'and' operator.

The basic Catalog Search interface requires minimal Web page real estate. To provide this convenient feature to your customers, consider including a simple Catalog Search data bean on most of your store pages.

For an example of an implementation of the simple catalog search, refer to the CachedHeaderDisplay.jsp file in the Consumer Direct and B2B Direct starter stores.

Note: During development, it is useful to enable tracing on the component WC_SEARCH. By looking at the trace log, you can see the generated SQL.