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User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
Administering
Overview of administering a WebSphere Commerce site
In WebSphere Commerce the person who performs administrative tasks is called a Site Administrator. The Site Administrator installs, configures, and maintains WebSphere Commerce and the associated software and hardware. The administrator responds to system warnings, alerts, and errors, and diagnoses and resolves system problems. Typically, this person controls access and authorization (creating and assigning members to the appropriate role), manages the Web site, monitors performance, and manages load balancing tasks. The Site Administrator might be responsible for establishing and maintaining several server configurations for different stages of development such as testing, staging, and production. The Site Administrator also handles critical system backups and resolves performance problems.
Configuration Manager
To configure a WebSphere Commerce instance, use the Configuration Manager. The Configuration Manager interface shows mandatory fields and provides help.
Updating the WebSphere Commerce configuration file
Many aspects of the WebSphere Commerce runtime application are configured in an XML file. This XML file is inside the WebSphere Commerce Java Platform, Enterprise Edition EAR.

User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
- Planning
  Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
- Installing
  Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Deploying
  The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
- Operating
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
  - Overview of administering a WebSphere Commerce site
    In WebSphere Commerce the person who performs administrative tasks is called a Site Administrator. The Site Administrator installs, configures, and maintains WebSphere Commerce and the associated software and hardware. The administrator responds to system warnings, alerts, and errors, and diagnoses and resolves system problems. Typically, this person controls access and authorization (creating and assigning members to the appropriate role), manages the Web site, monitors performance, and manages load balancing tasks. The Site Administrator might be responsible for establishing and maintaining several server configurations for different stages of development such as testing, staging, and production. The Site Administrator also handles critical system backups and resolves performance problems.
    - Stores in WebSphere Commerce
      WebSphere Commerce supports several different types of entities that are defined as stores. The assets of these store entities may be edited using the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.
    - Enabling registered users to access all stores in the Extended Sites business model
      WebSphere Commerce users can access storefronts by virtue of having the role of Registered Customer in the organization that owns the store, or in any organization above it. The roles a user has access to during registration are defined within the MemberRegistrationAttributes.xml file.
    - Configuration Manager
      To configure a WebSphere Commerce instance, use the Configuration Manager. The Configuration Manager interface shows mandatory fields and provides help.
      - Opening Configuration Manager
        The steps for opening Configuration Manager change depending on the environment in which you are opening the Configuration Manager. Configuration Manager is not available in the WebSphere Commerce development environment. To open the Configuration Manager, follow the instructions for your environment.
      - Adding languages to the WebSphere Commerce instance in Configuration Manager
        To add languages to the WebSphere Commerce instance by using Configuration Manager.
      - Updating the WebSphere Commerce configuration file
        Many aspects of the WebSphere Commerce runtime application are configured in an XML file. This XML file is inside the WebSphere Commerce Java Platform, Enterprise Edition EAR.
        Updating WebSphere Commerce Developer configuration
        Many aspects of the WebSphere Commerce application are configured in an XML file. This XML file is inside the WebSphere Commerce JEE EAR.
        Updating WebSphere Commerce runtime configuration
        Many aspects of the WebSphere Commerce application are configured in an XML file. This XML file is inside the WebSphere Commerce JEE EAR.
      - Stopping the Configuration Manager server
        You can use the Configuration Manager client to connect to and shut down the Configuration Manager server.
    - Administration Console
      Site Administrators use the Administration Console to control a site or store by completing administrative operations and configuration tasks such as publishing stores, refreshing the registry, and scheduling jobs. You can access the Administration Console at a site-level, or for a particular store.
    - Organization Administration Console
      The Organization Administration Console enables administrators to manage organizations, business users and member groups. Access Control policies can also be managed and approval requests can be processed.
    - Common installation and administration tasks
      The following tasks are common tasks that you need to perform, often repeatedly, as part of WebSphere Commerce installation and administration duties.
  - WebSphere Commerce instance
    Every WebSphere Commerce installation requires at least one instance to function, and each WebSphere Commerce instance can contain one or more stores.
  - Managing features
    You can administer the features for your store and site, such as attribute, catalog, promotion, marketing, order management features, and more. The administration tasks that you can complete differ depending on the type of feature and the tool that you use to administer your store and site.
  - Logging services
    WebSphere Commerce provides facilities for logging. For existing customers, ECTrace and ECMessage are still supported. For new implementations, use the WebSphere Application Server recommendation for logging and tracing.
  - Business auditing
    Business auditing is the capturing of the business logic and objects during a WebSphere Commerce operation. You may want to audit your business for various reasons: generic, such as to review various tasks performed weekly; or specific, such as to track the steps involved in a particular Customer Service Representative's order. A report on business auditing is available in the Administration Console.
  - Business events
    Each time that a command triggers a business event, a record is added to the BUSEVENT database table to persist data from the event. Event listeners and external systems (such as the Marketing component, a back end order management system, or an external analytics system) can use this data to perform further processing.
  - Staging server
    The WebSphere Commerce staging server is a part of the production environment where business and technical users can update and manage store data and preview changes. The changes can then be propagated to the production server.
  - WebSphere Commerce database
    As a site administrator, maintain the WebSphere Commerce database and ensure that any WebSphere Commerce utilities and processes that load and retrieve data from the database is configured to connect to the database properly.
  - Dynamic caching
    In general, caching improves response time and reduces system load. Caching techniques are used to improve the performance of World Wide Web Internet applications. Most techniques cache static content (content that rarely changes) such as graphic and text files. However, many websites serve dynamic content, containing personalized information or data that changes more frequently. Caching dynamic content requires more sophisticated caching techniques, such as those provided by the WebSphere Application Server dynamic cache, a built-in service for caching and serving dynamic content.
  - Extracting, transforming, and loading data
    WebSphere Commerce provides multiple utilities for preparing and loading data into a WebSphere Commerce database. The loading utilities are flexible and you can continue to use these utilities when you customize the WebSphere Commerce schema.
  - Payment plug-ins
    To configure a payment plug-in define payment and refund methods; payment and refund rules; and the payment protocols that you intend to use.
  - WebSphere Commerce Search
    For a fully functioning WebSphere Commerce Search implementation, you must understand and complete the search administration tasks, which include search index management and ongoing maintenance.
  - Deploying a WebSphere Commerce dual cell environment
    Consider deploying a dual cell environment to achieve continuous availability and ensure that shoppers are minimally affected by planned or unplanned outages.
  - IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce
    IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce is a separately purchased product that provides a light-weight customer service solution that is embedded in the Aurora B2C and Aurora B2B storefronts. Even though this solution is a separately purchased product, it is not a separate application. Stores that are enabled with IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce allow a customer service representative (CSR) to act on behalf of guest customers and registered customers. A CSR can manage customer accounts, cancel and reorder orders, and shop as customer. A CSR can also act on behalf of Buyer Administrators to help complete Aurora B2B tasks from the storefront, without having to access the Organization Administration Console.
- Tutorials
  WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
- Developing
  The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
- Troubleshooting

Updating the WebSphere Commerce configuration file

Many aspects of the WebSphere Commerce runtime application are configured in an XML file. This XML file is inside the WebSphere Commerce Java Platform, Enterprise Edition EAR.

The WebSphere Commerce configuration file, wc-server.xml, is located within the following directory:

WC_eardir/xml/config/
workspace_dir\WC\xml\config\

Linux

AIX

Windows

For IBM i OS operating system

The Configuration Manager can be used to modify most WebSphere Commerce configuration parameters. However, some parameters must be changed through the WebSphere Commerce configuration file. To determine whether to configure an individual component through the Configuration Manager or through the WebSphere Commerce configuration file, see the documentation for that component.

Option A: Use the GUI. For instructions on how to use the GUI, see Modifying a WebSphere Commerce instance.

Option B: Edit manually.
1. Edit the file.
  Modify the master copy of the file per whatever instructions you are following. The master configuration file that is managed by the Configuration Manager can be found at the following location:
  - WC_installdir /instances/instance_name/xml/instance_name.xml
  - WC_userdir/instances/instance_name/xml/instance_name.xml
2. Deploy the file to the WebSphere Commerce EAR.
  After manually changing the master configuration file, ensure that you properly deploy it to the WebSphere Commerce Java Platform, Enterprise Edition application that is running on WebSphere Application Server. For detailed steps, see Propagating changes to the WebSphere Commerce configuration file.

Note:

Ensure server1 is started successfully before you modify instance-specific properties in Configuration Manager.
The wc-server.xml file is also updated if you run the setdbtype command to configure the database type that is used with WebSphere Commerce. The file is updated with the newest database information. If you are copying and moving files, you might need to rerun setdbtype to update the database information.

WebSphere Commerce Developer

For WebSphere Commerce Developer, there is one option:

Edit the file workspace_dir\WC\xml\config\wc-server.xml
Republish the WebSphere Commerce application.