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HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
Reference
Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.
HCL Commerce database schema
The HCL Commerce database model was designed for data integrity and optimal performance. HCL Commerce provides several hundred tables that store HCL Commerce instance data. To maintain data integrity, and to ease maintenance referential integrity, constraints are widely used in the database model. Indexes are used carefully on tables to avoid over-indexing and to provide a good balance between data retrieval and data manipulation activities (insert and update). The business rules are implemented at the application level rather than by using database trigger. Triggers, however, are used to facilitate data staging and optimistic locking. A limited number of SQL-based database stored procedures are used for data intensive activities.
Database tables
E
EXTERNAL_CONTENT_TYPE
This table holds information about supported external content types which HCL Commerce business objects can use. The data in this table must be in sync with the predefined HCL Commerce content types created in the Watson Content Hub.

Documentation
HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
- Getting started
  HCL Commerce has different advantages for business users, administrators and developers. HCL Commerce targets each of these roles with a tailored set of offerings so that each of your users can get maximum benefit.
- Installing and deploying
  Learn how to install and deploy HCL Commerce development environments and HCL Commerce production environments.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to HCL Commerce Version 9, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Operating
  Topics in the Operating category highlight tasks that are typically performed by business users, customer support representatives, to complete their day-to-day tasks in the operation of the HCL Commerce site.
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using HCL Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
  Topics in the Administering category highlight tasks that are typically performed by the Site Administrator, to support daily operations of the HCL Commerce site.
- Customizing
  The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
- Tutorials
  HCL Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your HCL Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
  Topics in the Samples category highlight the various samples that are provided with HCL Commerce.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage HCL Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of HCL Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
  Topics in the Performance section describe the means by which to plan, implement, test, and re-visit the optimization of HCL Commerce site performance.
- Troubleshooting
  Topics in the Troubleshooting section highlight common issues that are encountered with HCL Commerce, and how they can be addressed or mitigated.
- Reference
  Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.
  - HCL Commerce API reference
    HCL Commerce exposes two main programming APIs. The first and newest API is a REST interface, and most new classes are exposed here. The legacy Java API also contains new classes not suitable for REST, and can be browsed in Javadoc format.
  - Cross-reference of data beans and tables
    Data beans are grouped into several component groups.
  - Cross-reference of commands, tasks, and tables
    URL commands, controller commands, task commands, view commands and tables are related to each other.
  - Cross reference: Commands to beans to database tables
    Use this information when you are customizing a command and you want to know which tables are affected. You should also use this topic if you are modifying a table and want to know which commands and beans are affected.
  - Run Engine commands
    The following Run Engine commands are available by default for you to configure the applications that are running inside the containers.
  - Entering Docker containers
    To enter a Docker container you can complete the following steps.
  - Docker container start up logic for 9.0.0.0 and 9.0.0.1
    When you deploy a container from an HCL provided image, an Entrypoint.sh helper script determines the configurations to use while starting up the container. Review the following information to learn about what the helper script does, and how you can customize the configurations.
  - Docker container start up logic for HCL Commerce Version 9.0.0.2 or later
    When you deploy a container from an HCL provided image, an Entrypoint.sh helper script determines the configurations to use while starting up the container. Review the following information to learn about what the helper script does, and how you can customize the configurations.
  - HCL Commerce database schema
    The HCL Commerce database model was designed for data integrity and optimal performance. HCL Commerce provides several hundred tables that store HCL Commerce instance data. To maintain data integrity, and to ease maintenance referential integrity, constraints are widely used in the database model. Indexes are used carefully on tables to avoid over-indexing and to provide a good balance between data retrieval and data manipulation activities (insert and update). The business rules are implemented at the application level rather than by using database trigger. Triggers, however, are used to facilitate data staging and optimistic locking. A limited number of SQL-based database stored procedures are used for data intensive activities.
    - Column data type considerations
      Several column data types are available for you to use when you are creating new database table or columns.
    - Schema changes from Version 8 to Version 9
      Database tables and columns within the HCL Commerce Version 9 database schema can differ from the tables and columns in the database schema for HCL Commerce Version 8.
    - Deprecated tables and columns
      If a database table or column is marked as deprecated, then the table or column is outdated by newer constructs. Deprecated sections are supported for reasons of compatibility with an earlier version only. These tables or columns are obsolete or can become obsolete in future versions of HCL Commerce.
    - Data models
      Any given database data model displays the relationship among database tables in the schema.
    - Database tables
      - A
      - B
      - C
      - D
      - E
        ECEOUT
        Reserved for HCL internal use.
        ECETMPT
        Reserved for HCL internal use.
        ECTPTITM
        Reserved for HCL internal use.
        EDPATMPAY
        This table stores the value object Payment Instruction in HCL Commerce which contains the detailed information required by plug-ins to process financial transactions. The amount in the payment instruction can be used by plug-ins to determine what is the maximum target amount the payments subsystem intends to consume collectively.
        EDPATMREF
        This table stores the value object Payment Instruction in HCL Commerce which contains the detailed information required by plug-ins to process financial transactions. The amount in the payment instruction can be used by plug-ins to determine what is the maximum target amount the payments subsystem intends to consume collectively.
        EDPORDER
        This table stores the information of the value object container Credit for credit-related transactions in the payments subsystem.
        EDPPAYHIST
        This table keeps the payment activity history for all committed operations on payment instructions and financial transactions.
        EDPPAYINST
        This table stores the information of the value object container Payment Instruction in Payment Rules.
        EDPREFINST
        This table stores the information of the value object container Refund Instruction in Payment Rules.
        EDPRELEASE
        This table stores the information of the value object container Release in Payment Rules.
        EDPRELHIST
        This table keeps the history for all operations on releases in Payment Rules.
        EDPRMA
        This table stores the information of the value object container Refund in Payment Rules.
        EMLBADADDR
        This table records information about users with invalid e-mail addresses. Each row corresponds to a user that has an invalid e-mail address.
        EMLBOUNCED
        Records information about bounced messages for e-mail activities. Each row corresponds to a bounced message for a particular recipient of a particular e-mail activity.
        EMLCAMPREL
        This table is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibility only.
        EMLCFG
        This table stores the configuration information about the accounts used in support of e-mail activities. Each store can have one inbound (POP3) and one outbound (SMTP) server configured.
        EMLCONTENT
        Stores the content of the e-mail template.
        EMLGRPREL
        This table stores the relationship between an e-mail activity and its target customer segment.
        EMLMCREL
        Stores the relationship between EMLMSG and EMLCONTENT table.
        EMLMSG
        This table stores e-mail message templates. Each row corresponds to an e-mail message template which can be used within an e-mail activity.
        EMLPOLICY
        Stores bounce back e-mail retry policies.
        EMLPROMO
        This table stores e-mail activities. Each row corresponds to an e-mail activity which is sent to a given customer profile.
        EMLRCPTS
        This table records the recipients of an e-mail activity.
        EMLRPTEVTS
        This table records e-mail events for each recipient of a particular e-mail activity. If a row does not exist for a recipient of an e-mail activity, the user has not yet caused an event.
        EMLSTRPLCY
        Stores the relationship between a store and a bounced e-mail retry policy.
        EMLUSRRECV
        This table stores whether the user prefers to receive marketing e-mail and SMS messages or not.
        EMSPOT
        This table contains registered e-Marketing Spots.
        ESMAPOBJ
        This table is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibility only.
        ESMAPTYP
        This table is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibility only.
        EXCHORDERS
        Each row in this table represents a relationship between an exchanged Order and its associated return merchandise authorization (RMA).
        EXPERIMENT
        This table is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibility only.
        EXPLOG
        This table is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibility only.
        EXPRESSION
        Each row represents a precompiled search expression which could be catalog filter based or productset based.
        EXPRESULT
        This table is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibility only.
        EXPSTATS
        This table is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibility only.
        EXPTYPE
        This table is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibility only. This table stores all the available types of marketing experiment that a business user can choose.
        EXTERNAL_CONTENT
        This table holds the information about the external content.
        EXTERNAL_CONTENT_ASSET
        This table holds the information about the external content assets.
        EXTERNAL_CONTENT_TYPE
        This table holds information about supported external content types which HCL Commerce business objects can use. The data in this table must be in sync with the predefined HCL Commerce content types created in the Watson Content Hub.
      - F
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      - H
      - I
      - J
      - K
      - L
      - M
      - N
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      - P
      - Q
      - R
      - S
      - T
      - U
      - V
      - W
      - X
      - Y
      - Z
  - Payments subsystem
    In HCL Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.
  - 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.
  - HCL Commerce store pages properties
  - Cache-entry elements
    The root element of the cachespec.xml file, <cache>, contains <cache-entry> elements. The WebSphere dynamic cache service parses the cachespec.xml file during start-up, and extracts a set of configuration parameters from each <cache-entry> element.
  - Data Load utility configuration file schema
    The Data Load utility contains several configuration files. You can use the configuration file schema to understand and customize the data load configuration files.
  - HCL Commerce web services
    HCL Commerce provides many web services.
  - Utilities
    In HCL Commerce utilities are scripts that perform operations such as loading access control policies, loading store data, and cleaning the database of obsolete objects. In runtime environments, run utilities from the Utility server Docker container. In the development environment, run utilities from the bin directory.
  - Shopping flow URLs
    HCL Commerce shopping flow URLs are organized by subsystem.
  - Messaging system URLs
    The following URLs relate to the Messaging system.
  - Scheduler URLs
    The server subsystem consists of functions that are associated with URLs that are run by the scheduler.
  - jQuery Enhancements API
    The Aurora starter store in HCL Commerce is completely written in jQuery, which is one of the most commonly used JavaScript libraries used in dynamic websites. The jQuery AJAX and events API provides an easy to use framework that meets most AJAX requirements for storefront development.
  - HCL Commerce foundation tag library
    The HCL Commerce foundation JSTL tag library is a collection of custom tags that are provided to you to support the authoring of HCL Commerce JSP files. HCL Commerce stores use the JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) to perform logic, instead of Java code. At the same time, business logic is moved into data beans. The combination of these steps allows for less Java code in a JSP page.

EXTERNAL_CONTENT_TYPE

This table holds information about supported external content types which HCL Commerce business objects can use. The data in this table must be in sync with the predefined HCL Commerce content types created in the Watson Content Hub.

Column Descriptions:

Name	Type	Description
IDENTIFIER	VARCHAR (64) NOT NULL	The identifier of the external content type name, for example, 'ProductContent', 'CategoryContent', etc.
DESCRIPTION	VARCHAR (254)	The administrative description for the external content type.
USAGE	VARCHAR (64) NOT NULL	Usage associated with this type, e.g., images or attachments.
OPTCOUNTER	SMALLINT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0	The optimistic concurrency control counter for the table. Every time there is an update to the table, the counter is incremented.

Indexes:

Name	Column Names	Type
P_0051	IDENTIFIER	Primary Key

Referenced By Child Tables:

Constraint	Columns	Child Table	Child Columns	Type
F_3782	IDENTIFIER	EXTERNAL_CONTENT	TYPE	Cascade
F_3786	IDENTIFIER	CATENTRY_EXTERNAL_CONTENT_REL	TYPE	Cascade
F_3789	IDENTIFIER	CATGROUP_EXTERNAL_CONTENT_REL	TYPE	Cascade
F_3792	IDENTIFIER	ATTR_EXTERNAL_CONTENT_REL	TYPE	Cascade