Home
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.
Payments subsystem
In WebSphere Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.

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.
    - Payments subsystem
      In WebSphere Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.
      - Merchant feature
        You can use the merchant feature to manage merchant information by storing and managing the store-specific properties from the Payment perspective.
      - Adding a new payment or refund method
        If you are adding a new payment method or refund method, you must update the WebSphere Commerce database tables that contain information about the payment methods or refund methods that your store will use. The business policy tables do not contain information about the type of payment or refund actions or rules the Payments subsystem will use. They identify the payment and refund methods. The payment and refund actions are defined by configuring XML files.
      - Customizing the business flow for payment processing
        If the business flow provided by payment rules does not meet your business needs, you can customize the business flow used for payment processing.
      - Using other payment protocol data to find orders
        As provided, WebSphere Commerce enables you to perform an advanced search for orders using the payment account information as the search criteria. For example, on the Find Orders page in the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, you can search orders and include the cardholder account number as part of the search criteria. To search on other types of payment protocol data, or to include other payment protocol data with the account number as part of the search criteria, you must modify the order search JSP file used to perform order searches. The following examples describe how to substitute some other field for account, and how to add a second field to be used in addition to the account field.
      - Bypassing the Payments subsystem in WebSphere Commerce
        If you want to bypass or disable the Payment subsystem for WebSphere Commerce, replace the Payment Rules task commands with void implementations.
      - Creating a payment plug-in
      - Payment financial transaction state
        When the Payment plug-in controller calls a payment plug-in to perform a financial transaction, the plug-in can return one of the three possible transaction states: Success, Failure, Pending. A pending state indicates that a particular transaction has not yet finished for a payment or credit transaction. It could mean that a plug-in uses an offline protocol to handle transactions, thereby some external intervention or action by a human must take place to move the payment or credit into another state. Offline processing typically requires human interaction to process transactions over the phone or by using a swipe machine. A payment or credit can also be in pending state for other reasons, such as when timeouts occur on the network or processing over the network is extremely slow. The pending state applies to both the payment and the payment transaction. If a pending approval transaction exists, then another payment approval cannot be issued until the prior pending approval transaction is successful.
      - Plug-in exception handling and transaction roll-back
        If a payment transaction fails, and that failure results in a WebSphere Commerce transaction roll back, then the payment transaction data is not in the WebSphere Commerce database.
  - 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

Payments subsystem

In WebSphere Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.

architecture — The following diagram describes payment processing using the Payments subsystem.

The Payments subsystem is included in the WebSphere Commerce Server. The WebSphere Commerce instance (Server1) contains payment information. The Payments subsystem connects to Payment Service Providers by using payment plug-ins.