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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.
Developing
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
Controller layer
The Controller layer is the conductor of operations for a request. It controls the transaction scope and manages the session related information for the request. The controller first dispatches to a command and then calls the appropriate view processing logic to render the response.
Management Center web application
The Management Center web application is a Spring web application that facilitates communication between Management Center and WebSphere Commerce services.
Customizing the Management Center web application
To meet your business user needs, you can customize the Management Center web application. You can extend existing objects to add data or change messages, create objects, and map error reason codes to existing objects.
Extending existing Management Center objects
You can customize objects, actions, and error messages in the Management Center web application. When you are customizing Management Center objects and error messages, identify the message or object that you want to customize, and then complete one or more of the following procedures.

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
- 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.
  - Functional architecture
    Functional architecture provides both the set of patterns used to implement the business functionality and the frameworks in which these business functions execute.
  - Persistent object model
    WebSphere Commerce deals with a large amount of persistent data. There are numerous tables defined in the current database schema. Even with this extensive schema, however, you might need to extend or customize the database schema for your particular business needs.
  - 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.
  - Controller layer
    The Controller layer is the conductor of operations for a request. It controls the transaction scope and manages the session related information for the request. The controller first dispatches to a command and then calls the appropriate view processing logic to render the response.
    - Management Center web application
      The Management Center web application is a Spring web application that facilitates communication between Management Center and WebSphere Commerce services.
      - Management Center web application file locations
        The files that are used to define the Management Center web application are found within the LOBTools web project for IBM WebSphere Commerce Developer environments. In other WebSphere Commerce environments, these files are within the LOBTools web module.
      - Mapping between Management Center and WebSphere Commerce nouns
        The Management Center web application mediates requests that are made between the Management Center client and the WebSphere Commerce services by transforming requests and responses.
      - Customizing the Management Center web application
        To meet your business user needs, you can customize the Management Center web application. You can extend existing objects to add data or change messages, create objects, and map error reason codes to existing objects.
        Extending existing Management Center objects
        You can customize objects, actions, and error messages in the Management Center web application. When you are customizing Management Center objects and error messages, identify the message or object that you want to customize, and then complete one or more of the following procedures.
        Management Center business object UserData
        Use the UserData element in the request and response BODs for an existing Management Center object to add data to the object. By using the built-in UserData support for objects, you can quickly customize Management Center to display and use custom data for objects.
        Overriding a retrieve service for a Management Center object
        If you need to include more information for an object or change how the information for an object is retrieved, you can override an existing retrieval service. To override the service, create your own custom controller JSP file to retrieve and mediate the Management Center object and register the JSP file within the Spring framework.
        Overriding a process service for a Management Center object
        If you need to include process more information for an object or change how information for an object is processed, you can override an existing process service. To override the service, you must create a custom controller configuration for the service within the spring-extension.xml file to change how the Spring framework handles the service request.
        Overriding an existing validation error message
        If the error message that displays for a validation error for a Management Center object does not include the details that you want to display, you can change the message text. To change this message, you must add or edit the properties file entry for the validation error message code within your custom resource bundle properties file for the component.
        Creating Management Center objects
        If business users need to vmanage custom objects in Management Center, you can create objects and create validation errors for the objects.
        Defining server-side error messages for validation errors
        When server validation fails for a Management Center object, you can display an error message to provide more details about the error to users. To display the server-side error message, you must create or change the validation error mapping by defining error reason codes for the validation errors that can occur for a Management Center object. You can then define an error message for the reason codes to provide users with details about the validation errors and potential solutions.
    - Payments subsystem
      In WebSphere Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.
  - Business logic layer
    The business logic layer is the business components that provide OAGIS services to return data or start business processes. The presentation layer uses these OAGIS services to display data, or to invoke a business process. The business logic provides data required by the presentation layer. The business logic layer exists because more than just fetching and updating data is required by an application; there is also additional business logic independent of the presentation layer.
  - Persistence layer
    The interaction between the business objects and persistence layer is isolated in an object called the Business Object Mediator. Business object document (BOD) commands interact with the Business Object Mediator to handle the interaction with the logical objects and how they are persisted.
  - Business model information model
    A business model, a representation of the business processes used throughout the site, provides a sample commerce solution which includes an organization structure, default user roles and access control policies, one or more starter stores, administration tools, and business processes that demonstrate best practices. A business model can be customized to support business requirements and scenarios. WebSphere Commerce provides sample business models that show some common commerce solutions. These business models are created by setting up an organization hierarchy structure, access control policies, stores, and contracts that help satisfy the necessary business requirements.
  - Business models
    Before starting to develop your site with WebSphere Commerce, you need to determine the business model supported by WebSphere Commerce that best represents the purpose of your site. Usually sites created with WebSphere Commerce will be implemented based on of one of these business models.
  - Store data information model
    Store data is the information that is loaded into the WebSphere Commerce Server database, which allows your store to function. The URL Registry Entries and View Registry Entries packages are included in the diagram, but they are not database assets. These entries are presentation configuration (that is, struts actions and forwards) that must be deployed. URL registry entries are shown in the diagram to illustrate the entire store data information model. To operate properly, a store must have the data in place to support all customer activities. For example, in order for a customer to make a purchase, your store must contain a catalog of goods for sale (catalog data), the data associated with processing orders (tax and shipping data), and the inventory to fulfill the request (inventory and fulfillment data).
  - Customizing WebSphere Commerce
    You can extend the WebSphere Commerce product to fit your business needs. This topic describes the prerequisite skills and required knowledge that you need to customize business logic. After you have the required knowledge, use WebSphere Commerce Developer to take tutorials that guide you step-by-step through various customization scenarios.
  - WebSphere Commerce development environment
    WebSphere Commerce Developer is the development toolkit for customizing a WebSphere Commerce application.
  - Web services and WebSphere Commerce
    A web service is an interface that describes a collection of operations that are accessible through the network by using standardized XML messaging.
  - WebSphere Commerce Search
    WebSphere Commerce comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in WebSphere Commerce provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on open standards, WebSphere Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization. A key feature of Search is that sales personnel can create and manage search term associations, and search-based merchandising rules, from within the Management Center and Store view.
- 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

Extending existing Management Center objects

You can customize objects, actions, and error messages in the Management Center web application. When you are customizing Management Center objects and error messages, identify the message or object that you want to customize, and then complete one or more of the following procedures.