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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.
Presentation layer
WebSphere Commerce uses Java Server Pages (JSP) to implement the view layer of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The view layer is in charge of retrieving data from the database through the use of data beans and formatting it to meet the display requirements. The view layers determines whether the request is sent to a browser or streamed out as XML. JSP files present a clean separation between data content and presentation.
Customizing marketing
Working with Product Advisor
Creating a metaphor XML input file
Create an XML input file to specify which store's metaphors you want to build, update, or delete with the create metaphor scheduler command.
Preparing a Guided Sell metaphor
The steps in this section explain how to prepare Guided Sell metaphor.
Linking Product Advisor pages
This section explains how to create links between Product Advisor pages.

Deprecated feature

Linking Product Advisor pages

This section explains how to create links between Product Advisor pages.

Procedure

Add the GenericLinkDataBean to your JSP file, as in the example below.


<jsp:useBean id="pcLink"
    class="com.ibm.commerce.beans.GenericLinkDataBean" 
        scope="request">
    <jsp:setProperty property="linkPage"
name="GenericLinkDataBean" 
        value="/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/pc51.jsp" />
    <jsp:setProperty property="image" name="pcLink" 
        value="/wcs/tools/pa/icons/
locale/prod_comp.gif "
    />
    <jsp:setProperty property="text" name="pcLink" 
        value="Product Comparison" />
    <jsp:setProperty property="*" name="pcLink" />
    </jsp:useBean>

Note: The sample JSP files automatically process the locale variable listed above by passing in a value based on the customer's locale.

Results

When you add the GenericLinkDataBean to a JSP file, a button is added to the page, and a link is created to the page specified in the linkPage property. In the example above, the link is to the pc51.jsp page. The button is the graphic, prod_comp.gif. The page should include a category_id as a parameter. The button will only be displayed if a metaphor exists for the specified category_id.