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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.
Integrating
Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
IBM Product Recommendations and WebSphere Commerce
IBM Product Recommendations is an IBM Digital Analytics solution that you can subscribe to that automatically generates personalized product recommendations on the storefront. The recommendations are based on the browsing, shopping, and purchasing behavior of individual customers. If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you can display recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations on your store pages.
Data extraction utility for dynamic recommendations in IBM Product Recommendations
The Intelligent Offer data extraction utility is a command-line utility that you can use to create the Enterprise Product Report (EPR) data for dynamic recommendations that is required by IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer. The utility extracts catalog data from your database and generates ECDF and EPCMF files in the correct format to load into IBM Product Recommendations. You can provide these two files to IBM Product Recommendations regularly for processing dynamic recommendations.
Customizing the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility
If the default EPCMF file output by the data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer does not meet your business needs, you can customize the utility.
Architectural overview of the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility
The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer consists of a series of components that extract catalog data from the WebSphere Commerce database, format the data, and write the data to CSV-format files. If you are customizing the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility, you should understand how the components work together to produce the EPCMF and ECDF files that IBM Product Recommendations requires.

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.
  - Integrating with back-end systems and external applications
    External systems integration is a key feature of the WebSphere Commerce solution. In WebSphere Commerce business logic is enabled for integration and built-in adapters and interfaces are provided for common integration points. Additionally, the WebSphere Commerce integration solution leverages integration standards by using various IBM connectivity solutions.
  - IBM Watson Campaign Automation integration
    You can integrate IBM Watson Campaign Automation with WebSphere Commerce so that transactional emails are sent by IBM Watson Campaign Automation.
  - Sterling Order Management integration
    The integration between WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Order Management combines the industry-leading front-end capabilities of WebSphere Commerce with the proven, back-end order and inventory management features of Sterling Order Management.
  - IBM MQ
    WebSphere Commerce provides a listener for IBM MQ for inbound requests, and an adapter for IBM MQ for outbound requests, to integrate back-end, and external systems with WebSphere Commerce.
  - Content management integration
    You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with an external content management system through a punch-out window from Management Center and through the web feed utility. You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with IBM Web Content Manager to provide Management Center users the ability to associate IBM Web Content Manager content with WebSphere Commerce objects.
  - Mobile applications that use IBM Worklight
    IBM Worklight is a mobile application platform that you can use to develop cross-platform hybrid applications for the Aurora starter store.
  - Facebook integration
    Facebook integration relies on several Facebook plugins to add the Connect to Facebook, Like, and Send buttons to the Aurora starter store.
  - Analytics for IBM WebSphere Commerce
    WebSphere Commerce provides a framework that you can configure to integrate your store with an external Web analytics solution. This framework includes a tag library that you can use in store page JSP files to provide appropriate analytics information to the external analytics system.
  - IBM Product Recommendations and WebSphere Commerce
    IBM Product Recommendations is an IBM Digital Analytics solution that you can subscribe to that automatically generates personalized product recommendations on the storefront. The recommendations are based on the browsing, shopping, and purchasing behavior of individual customers. If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you can display recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations on your store pages.
    - Task flow: Enabling
      Use the following step-by-step guide to set up Management Center and the Aurora starter store to support displaying recommendations in the storefront from IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer. The approach that you use to display recommendations differs depending on whether the store page is managed in the Commerce Composer tool.
    - Tracking IBM Product Recommendations for IBM Digital Analytics
      You can use an IBM Digital Analytics parameter to tag product URLs and send information about shopper selection of recommendations from IBM Product Recommendation to IBM Digital Analytics. By using this tag to send information to IBM Digital Analytics, you can track the performance of the recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations.
    - Data extraction utility for dynamic recommendations in IBM Product Recommendations
      The Intelligent Offer data extraction utility is a command-line utility that you can use to create the Enterprise Product Report (EPR) data for dynamic recommendations that is required by IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer. The utility extracts catalog data from your database and generates ECDF and EPCMF files in the correct format to load into IBM Product Recommendations. You can provide these two files to IBM Product Recommendations regularly for processing dynamic recommendations.
      - Configuring and running the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility
        Configuring and running this utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer involves modifying a set of sample configuration files and then running the utility from a command-line interface.
      - Customizing the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility
        If the default EPCMF file output by the data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer does not meet your business needs, you can customize the utility.
        Architectural overview of the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility
        The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer consists of a series of components that extract catalog data from the WebSphere Commerce database, format the data, and write the data to CSV-format files. If you are customizing the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility, you should understand how the components work together to produce the EPCMF and ECDF files that IBM Product Recommendations requires.
        Sample business object configuration file for EPCMF data
        If you are adding or changing the catalog entry attributes in the EPCMF file, you should be familiar with the XML in the business object configuration file, wc-dataextract-catalog-entry.xml.
        ...extracting custom catalog entry data
        The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer extracts a default set of catalog entry data for the EPCMF file. If you customize the CatalogEntry noun, you can customize the data extraction utility to extract the custom data that you define in the noun. You can extract the custom data into one or more of the 15 customer-defined "Static Attribute" columns of the EPCMF file.
        ...extracting non-attribute-dictionary attributes
        The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer can extract attributes that are defined in the attribute dictionary without the need for customization. If your catalog entries use non-attribute-dictionary attributes, however, you must customize the data extraction utility to include these attributes in the EPCMF file.
        ...extracting category-level SKUs
        If your catalog contains category-level SKUs, you can customize the data extraction utility to include these SKUs in the EPCMF file. This customization involves adding a custom query template file that defines a new SQL query to extract category-level SKUs, extending a Java class, and then updating configuration files to use your extended Java class.
        ...extracting prices from price rules
        If your store uses price rules to set catalog entry prices, you can customize the data extraction utility to extract price rule prices. By default, the data extraction utility uses the access profile IBM_Admin_DataExtract, which extracts prices directly from the OFFERPRICE table. To extract price rule prices instead, you can switch to a different access profile provided with the utility, IBM_Admin_DataExtract_with_PriceRule.
  - IBM Marketing Center integration
    You can integrate Management Center with IBM Marketing Center, a cloud-based, all-in-one solution that combines customer analytics with real-time marketing. To integrate with IBM Marketing Center, you must configure the WebSphere Commerce biConfig.xml file to enable the integration. You can also configure single-sign on between Management Center and IBM Marketing Center.
  - IBM Digital Data Exchange integration
    To simplify the process of collecting and sending customer shopping behavior data to analytics providers, integrate WebSphere Commerce with IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX). IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX) is offered as part of the IBM Digital Analytics solution.
  - Administering IBM Enterprise Marketing Management
    If your site is integrated with IBM Enterprise Marketing Management applications, such IBM Digital Analytics, IBM Product Recommendations, or IBM Marketing Center, you can administer the application features that your site uses. For example, you can administer IBM Digital Analytics based customer segments and import recommendations for IBM Product Recommendations.
  - IBM Dynamic Pricing
    Dynamic Pricing 16.4 is a cloud-based pricing system that analyzes real-time market data to provide suggestions on how merchandisers can react to competitor pricing and shifts in market conditions. Data can be fed to Dynamic Pricing from multiple sources, including WebSphere Commerce. You can configure WebSphere Commerce to export pricing data to Dynamic Pricing for pricing analysis and adjustment. The adjusted pricing data can then be imported from Dynamic Pricing to WebSphere Commerce, so the prices can be propagated to your live store front.
  - Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX) integration
    You can integrate Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX) with WebSphere Commerce so that you can import and export WebSphere Commerce customer segments as UBX audiences between third-party applications.
  - Watson Content Hub integration
    You can integrate Watson Content Hub with WebSphere Commerce, so that you can manage content in Watson Content Hub and then use the content in the Management Center Catalogs tool.
  - Integrating IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules BRMS with WebSphere Commerce for pricing
    IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules BRMS is a business rule management system that allows developers to easily build and deploy rule-based applications that automate fine-grained, variable decisions used by business systems. You can use WebSphere ILOG JRules to build pricing rulesets, and then reference those rulesets from WebSphere Commerce price rules you create in Management Center.
- Administering
- 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

Architectural overview of the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility

The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer consists of a series of components that extract catalog data from the WebSphere Commerce database, format the data, and write the data to CSV-format files. If you are customizing the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility, you should understand how the components work together to produce the EPCMF and ECDF files that IBM Product Recommendations requires.

The following diagram shows the flow of data from one utility component to the next:

Data extraction utility component diagram

The data extraction utility process is described here:

1 The data extraction utility calls the data reader. Two data reader classes are provided:
- For EPCMF (catalog entry) data: com.ibm.commerce.catalog.dataload.datareader.CatalogEntryReaderMediator
- For ECDF (category) data: com.ibm.commerce.catalog.dataload.datareader.CatalogGroupReaderMediator
The data reader invokes the CatalogEntry and CatalogGroup web services to retrieve objects from the database. The data reader returns a single logical service data object to pass to the business object builder.
2 The business object builder (com.ibm.commerce.foundation.dataload.businessobjectbuilder.BaseExtractBusinessObjectBuilder) passes the service data object to the business object mediator. The business object builder does not perform any additional functions.
3 The business object mediator (com.ibm.commerce.foundation.dataload.businessobjectmediator.BusinessObjectToCSVTransformMediator) transforms the logical service data object, which is highly structured, to a hashmap object that more closely matches the output file format. The hashmap object contains name-value pairs according to the XPath-to-column data mappings defined in the business object configuration file.
4 The business object mediator passes the hashmap object to the data writer (com.ibm.commerce.foundation.dataload.datawriter.CMDataWriter). The data writer writes the contents of the hashmap to a CSV file according to the column definitions in the business object configuration file.