Distributed Order Management (DOM) with Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite (SSFS)

WebSphere Commerce can interact with an external Distributed Order Management (DOM) solution. You can use WebSphere Commerce DOM integration with Sterling Commerce and Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite (SSFS) as a starting point and as building blocks for your integration scenarios.

Important: Review the following information for your version of WebSphere Commerce:

Review information about APAR fixes for integration of IBM WebSphere Commerce and IBM Sterling Order Management. For more information about integrating IBM WebSphere Commerce Version 7 Feature Pack 8 (or later) with IBM Sterling Order Management Release 9.3, see WebSphere Commerce integration with Sterling Order Management. For more information about integrating IBM WebSphere Commerce Version 7 Feature Pack 5 (or later) with IBM Sterling Order Management Release 9.2.1 (or later), see WebSphere Commerce integration with Sterling Order Management.
You can integrate Sterling Order Management with WebSphere Commerce using either Direct Integration or IBM® WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (WESB) integration. With Direct Integration, the functions to convert message content and format are performed by services in the Sterling Order Management Service Definition Framework (SDF). For information about using Direct Integration to integrate Sterling Order Management with WebSphere Commerce, see Direct Integration with WebSphere Commerce.

Integration between WebSphere Commerce and the DOM system is handled in a WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus mediation module. This mediation module translates the BOD OAGIS messages that WebSphere Commerce uses into API calls expected by SSFS.

The main flow of data between WebSphere Commerce and SSFS is the same as with any other DOM system. Data flows through the two systems as shown in the following diagram:
Sterling flow

The mediation module that sits in between WebSphere Commerce and SSFS provides the necessary mapping for steps 2, 4, 6 and 7 in the diagram.

When you integrate any two systems, they must have similar data for the integration to work. For example, when a shopper places an order in WebSphere Commerce, the products that are ordered must exist in both WebSphere Commerce and SSFS.
Sterling flow

As seen in the diagram, for transports, the mediation module uses SOAP over HTTP(S) to communicate with WebSphere Commerce and JMS to communicate with SSFS.

Payment integration

Both WebSphere Commerce and Sterling DOM share a similar set of rules that control the payment processing flow. WebSphere Commerce with Sterling DOM can be customized to tokenize account numbers for payment integration.

For more information, see Payment integration.

Inventory cache push synchronization

The Sterling Commerce Real-time Availability Monitor (RTAM) is used to generate both inventory availability data load CSV files for batch updates, and SyncInventoryAvailability service requests for further adjustments. The Real-time Availability Monitor enables better control for synchronizing the WebSphere Commerce inventory cache, and reduces the dependency on polling.

For more information, see Inventory cache push synchronization.

Asynchronous order transfers

In the transfer order integration flow, WebSphere Commerce does not have to wait for a synchronous response from Sterling Commerce before the flow completes. There is no dependency on a synchronous response from Sterling Commerce. The JMS implementation is sufficient to guarantee the delivery of the createOrder API requests to Sterling Commerce. Asynchronous messages between WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Commerce are supported.

For more information, seeTransfer order.

Prebuilt kits

The interim fix for the following WebSphere Commerce APAR is required for Sterling Order Management and Sterling Configure, Price, Quote to work together. For example, for dynamic kit integration:

JR41313

Note: If your are integrating WebSphere Commerce with both Sterling Order Management and Sterling Configure, Price, Quote, you must deploy Sterling Order Management on a different WebSphere Application Server instance than Sterling Configure, Price, Quote. The WebSphere Commerce integration with both Sterling Order Management and Sterling Configure, Price, Quote does not work if they are deployed on the same WebSphere Application Server instance.

When you work with prebuilt and static kits, the SKUs and their configurations are populated in both the WebSphere Commerce catalog and the Sterling Commerce catalog. WebSphere Commerce checks inventory availability and updates or cancels their inventory reservations by passing the kit SKUs to Sterling Commerce, since Sterling Commerce is already aware of their configurations.

Prebuilt and dynamic kits are enabled for the following integration flows:

WebSphere Commerce fetching and caching the inventory availability of prebuilt and static kits from Sterling Commerce at the kit level.
WebSphere Commerce reserving inventory from Sterling Commerce for prebuilt and static kits at the kit level.
Passing dynamic kit configurations (BOM XMLs) from WebSphere Commerce to Sterling Commerce during order transfer.

For more information, see Reserve inventory.

Kit mappings

The following mappings exist between WebSphere Commerce kits and Sterling DOM kits:

Kit mappings
WebSphere Commerce	Sterling DOM
Dynamic kit	Bundle (with configuration model)
Static kit	Bundle (without configuration model)
Prebuilt kit	Physical Kit