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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.
WebSphere Commerce integration with WebSphere Portal
You can integrate WebSphere Commerce, a Business Application Service with WebSphere Portal, an Interaction Service. The Interaction Service provides core portal services (WebSphere Portal) that aggregate applications and content and deliver them as role-based applications. The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) pattern is used for communication, mediation, transformation and integration with external systems. Using an ESB to integrate the Web services exposed from WebSphere Commerce to the WebSphere Portal promotes a loosely coupled design where the ESB manages the interactions styles between the WebSphere Commerce services and the presentation layer. You do not need to alter your presentation layer to support the protocol and format used by the WebSphere Commerce services. Instead, you rely on the ESB to perform tasks such as message transformation and protocol mediation. Neither WebSphere Commerce nor WebSphere Portal needs to change in order to communicate with one another. The ESB is used to act as an interpreter between the two systems and will translate the messages into a format the receiving system understands.
WebSphere Commerce Portal caching
Caching is a technique that when applied properly can improve the overall system response time. It can therefore accelerate your machine to its maximum appropriate utilization while keeping your hardware costs low. That is, caching allows you to do repeatable computer tasks more rapidly.
Enabling existing JSR 168 portlet JSP files for JSP caching
To illustrate the usage of the cache tag on a JSP file, a WebSphere Commerce portlet JSP file is used as an example to demonstrate how you can replace WebSphere Portal's Portlet Caching configuration with this JSP file Caching.
Inspecting the ProductDisplay cache content in DynaCache
Once the cache configuration is completed, we can now test out the cache policy by accessing the Product portlet with two different users.

Inspecting the ProductDisplay cache content in DynaCache

Once the cache configuration is completed, we can now test out the cache policy by accessing the Product portlet with two different users.

We are going to start out by first verifying that a cache entry is indeed created in DynaCache. The following is a screen shot taken from Cache Monitor, showing that there is one entry in the cache pool which results from a cache miss when the user first hits the ProductDisplay JSP file.

WAS Cache Monitor

We can then check the cache contents from Cache Monitor and the following screen shot reveals the newly cached entry:


Template: /.MVCPortlet/jsp/html/catalog/ProductDisplay.jsp
Cache ID: /.MVCPortlet/jsp/html/catalog/ProductDisplay.jsp:renderName=ProductDisplay:catEntryId=10319:requestType=GET
Timeout: 180 seconds
Dependency ID: ProductDependency:10319
Replication: None
Priority: 1

By clicking on the Cache ID field, you can inspect the actual content that is in the cache pool:

Cache Entry

Next, another user is signed on to the web site and navigates to the same product. Checking on the Cache Monitor statistics again reveals the latest portlet request results on a cache hit:

Updated WAS Cache Monitor