Management Center Web application

The Management Center Web application is a Struts web application that facilitates communication between the Management Center and WebSphere Commerce services.

The Management Center sends URL requests and receives XML responses, while the WebSphere Commerce Server uses BOD messages to retrieve Nouns and invoke business logic. The Management Center Web application acts as a mediator between the Management Center and WebSphere Commerce services by converting requests and responses into the appropriate type of data. More specifically, the Management Center Web application provides Struts actions to:

  • Send data from the Management Center to WebSphere Commerce by converting URL requests into BOD messages
  • Return data to the Management Center from WebSphere Commerce by converting BOD messages into an XML response that the Management Center understands
The data transferred between the Management Center and the WebSphere Commerce server are called Management Center objects. A Management Center object is an entity that can be created, changed, deleted, retrieved, and so on, using the Management Center. Examples of Management Center objects are:
  • A category
  • A product
  • A kit
  • A promotion

The Management Center Web application also contains a business context filter to include default business context information in all service requests. The purpose of this filter is to create a business context object and place it in the request. The business context object created by the filter is the standard business context parameters that are included in any service request. The filter has a parameter called businessContext.intent which represents the intent of the business context. This attribute should only be set by the Web application and cannot be changed using a URL parameter. The purpose of this configuration parameter is to declare the intent of the service request to ensure the proper processing environment.

The flow of an URL request from the Management Center to the WebSphere Commerce server differs slightly when retrieving Management Center objects (get) and when processing Management Center objects (create or write), as described in the following sections.

Retrieving Management Center objects

The Management Center Web application uses two types of JSP pages to retrieve Management Center objects: Get controller JSP pages and Serialization JSP fragments. These JSP pages facilitate the mediation between the Management Center Web application and WebSphere Commerce services. These JSP pages are not intended to display data to the end user, for example, through the store front.

Get controller JSP pages
When the Management Center retrieves Management Center objects from the WebSphere Commerce Server, the Get controller JSP pages are invoked. The Get controller JSP page invokes the get-data tag library to retrieve the Noun that is used for the Management Center object. The serialization JSP fragments convert the Noun into the XML representation that is expected by the Management Center.
Serialization JSP fragments
When returning a response, these JSP fragments transform the OAGIS Noun into the appropriate XML representation that is expected by the Management Center. These JSP fragments are included by the Get controller JSP pages.

Get request process diagram

The lifecycle of an URL request to retrieve Management Center objects is as follows:

  1. The Management Center issues an URL request. The URL request enters the identity token servlet filter to resolve the authentication information for the request.
  2. The Struts servlet resolves the request into an action forward.
  3. The Struts action forward immediately forwards to the Get controller JSP page indicated in the Struts configuration.
  4. The Get controller JSP page uses the get-data tag to construct and invoke the appropriate Get service to retrieve the list of Nouns that matches the expression, and then calls the serialization JSP fragment.
  5. The serialization JSP fragment formats the Nouns into the XML format that is expected by the Management Center. This is the response of the URL request.

Processing and changing Management Center objects

The Process service and Change service are services that correspond to Process requests and Change BOD requests. These services are represented by a Struts action that builds the request, and then issues the service request. Once the request is issued, the JSP file communicates the result of the request to the Management Center.


Change request process diagram

The lifecycle of an URL request to process and change Management Center objects is as follows:

  1. The Management Center issues an URL request. The URL request enters the identity token servlet filter to resolve the authentication information for the request.
  2. The Struts action runs, building the appropriate change or process request that matches the specific URI invoked.
  3. The client library is used to issue the BOD request and receive the BOD response.
  4. The BOD response is parsed into a flattened java.util.Map. The java.util.Map and Nouns in the response are forwarded to the Struts forward. Based on the result of the BOD request, the resulting Struts forward is either success, failure, or error.
  5. The appropriate JSP page creates the response for the request. This response contains the information related to the result of the request, including any changed information that the Management Center requires as a result of the request.