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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.
Customizing
The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
Web services
Developing the business logic layer using the BOD command framework
Business layer can be designed and programmed using the BOD programming model introduced in HCL Commerce Version 6 Feature Pack 3.0.1. This command framework revolves around using Business Object Documents, and the Java representation of those objects, logical service data objects.
Using HCL Commerce service modules
HCL Commerce service modules contain the definitions for the nouns, generated code, and other information about the services that are supported. That is, a service module is a collection of related business objects for some business purpose.
Reloading the configuration of a BOD service module
During development, you may want to modify and reload configuration, without having to restart the server. This is supported through the use of a .reloadconfig file.

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.
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  - Managed asset deployment
    Managed assets are files that are uploaded by business users to be used for store marketing, or to supplement products. They are added to HCL Commerce through the Assets tool or the Marketing tool in Management Center. By default, managed assets are extracted and deployed through the HCL Commerce EAR. To maintain performance in a large-scale production environment, site administrators must switch to alternative extraction and deployment methods for managed assets.
  - What's new for developers
    Learn about the new features and functions HCL Commerce offers developers.
  - HCL Commerce development environment
    HCL Commerce Developer is the development toolkit for customizing a HCL Commerce application.
  - 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
    HCL 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.
  - Creating your custom store
    After you install and set up your programming environment, you can create your custom store and customize your storefront. You must ensure that the store server is properly configured, and that your store assets are moved to the Store server.
  - Presentation layer
    HCL 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.
  - 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. HCL 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 HCL Commerce, you need to determine the business model supported by HCL Commerce that best represents the purpose of your site. Usually sites created with HCL 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 Transaction 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 HCL Commerce
    You can extend the HCL 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 HCL Commerce Developer to take tutorials that guide you step-by-step through various customization scenarios.
  - Run Engine command framework
    The Run Engine command framework provides predefined commands, that you can use to change environment parameters or container configurations. This framework is built into the HCL provided Docker images.
  - Representational State Transfer (REST) services
    HCL Commerce uses Representational State Transfer (REST) services to provide a framework that can be used to develop RESTful applications on several platforms. These platforms can include web, mobile, kiosks, and social applications.
  - Web services
    - Working with HCL Commerce SOI services
      Working with HCL Commerce services involves developing client libraries, new commands, and business logic. The Java Emitter Template (JET) is documented to assist you with these tasks.
    - Creating HCL Commerce services
      Creating HCL Commerce services involves setting up the development environment, creating and extending client libraries, and setting an EMF genmodel. The Java Emitter Template (JET) is provided and documented to assist you with these tasks.
    - HCL Commerce BOD command framework
      The Business Object Document (BOD) command framework encapsulates the business logic layer of HCL Commerce. In Version 9, it is largely superseded by the Java Persistence API (JPA).
    - Developing the business logic layer using the BOD command framework
      Business layer can be designed and programmed using the BOD programming model introduced in HCL Commerce Version 6 Feature Pack 3.0.1. This command framework revolves around using Business Object Documents, and the Java representation of those objects, logical service data objects.
      - Using HCL Commerce service modules
        HCL Commerce service modules contain the definitions for the nouns, generated code, and other information about the services that are supported. That is, a service module is a collection of related business objects for some business purpose.
        Creating an HCL Commerce service module
        The HCL Commerce service module contains all the assets that are used by an HCL Commerce service. If you are planning on providing new HCL Commerce services, you must create a new service module, then further customize and extend the assets that it creates.
        Implementing the service commands in the BOD command framework
        Creating the service commands for a BOD service module consists of running the Design Pattern Toolkit and then customizing and extending the template code that is generated.
        Implementing access control in the BOD command framework
        In the BOD programming model, the resources that services act upon are nouns, which are represented by generated logical SDOs. However, these SDOs do not implement the Protectable interface, which is required in order for the PolicyManager to verify that a service has the rights to work with these nouns. A wrapper class must be implemented for each noun to extract the information required by the PolicyManager to perform its checks. This mapping is defined in the wc-component.xml file.
        Adding a custom user or error message to a BOD service module
        Adding custom messages to your BOD framework commands involves creating your properties file with a specified naming convention and location. The logging framework is configured to traverse up the package hierarchy and find and load any resource bundles (properties files) with names matching the naming convention.
        Configuring a BOD service module
        Configuration files get loaded when their component is first called. The class loader automatically discovers the configuration directories, by following the naming conventions. When resolving configurations, custom configuration always takes precedence over the base configuration. At runtime, command developers can retrieve the configuration information by using the ComponentConfigurationRegistry Java class, which retrieves the class responsible for parsing and providing an interface to retrieve the information. There are two ways add configuration data to a service module. The first way is to extend the default HCL Commerce configuration XSD. This allows you to quickly add name-value pairs to the configuration data of an existing component. The second way is to define your own configuration file structure, and provide your own configuration file parser. This approach, while more complex, is quite flexible – everything from the structure of the configuration file itself to the implementation of the parser, can be changed.
        Reloading the configuration of a BOD service module
        During development, you may want to modify and reload configuration, without having to restart the server. This is supported through the use of a .reloadconfig file.
      - Developing BOD Get services
        The Business Object Document Get processing pattern describes the design pattern used to searching for and retrieve data.
      - Developing BOD Process, Change, and Sync services
        Developing BOD Process, Change, and Sync services follow a common pattern.
      - Deploying customizations made using the BOD command framework and the data service layer
        Deploying customizations to the data service layer to a production environment is handled using WebSphere Application Server deployment.
    - HCL Commerce BOD command framework
      The Business Object Document (BOD) command framework encapsulates the business logic layer of HCL Commerce. In Version 9, it is largely superseded by the Java Persistence API (JPA).
    - Data service layer
      The data service layer (DSL) provides an abstraction layer for data access that is independent of the physical schema.
    - HCL Commerce Web services with JSP pages
      A Web service is an interface that describes a collection of operations that are accessible through the network by using standardized XML messaging. A Web service is described using a standard, formal XML notation, called a service description. The service description includes all the details necessary to interact with the service, including its message formats (that detail the operations), transport protocols, and location. The interface hides the implementation details of the service, allowing it to be used independently of the hardware or software platform on which it is implemented and also independently of the programming language in which it is written. The foundation for Web services are standards such as simple object access protocol (SOAP), the Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) registry.
    - Workspaces support for BOD service modules
      There are two user interfaces that use workspaces in HCL Commerce, HCL Commerce Accelerator, and Management Center. The Management Center uses Get services from BOD service modules to retrieve many of its business objects, and along with the business objects, change control metadata is also included in the response. The change control metadata is returned to the Management Center, where it is used to determine whether the object can be modified by the current user.
    - Location-based services
      HCL Commerce uses location-based services to target customers using Global Positioning System (GPS)-enabled mobile devices.
  - Search
    HCL Commerce comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in HCL Commerce provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on industry standards, HCL Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization.
- 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.

Reloading the configuration of a BOD service module

During development, you may want to modify and reload configuration, without having to restart the server. This is supported through the use of a .reloadconfig file.

Procedure

To enable volatile reloading:

Option	Description
For all components	Create an empty `.reloadconfig` file in `xml/config/com.ibm.commerce.foundation/`. This will cause every service module to check the timestamps on its configuration files, each time it is called. Configuration files that have changed from the time that they were last loaded will get re-parsed. Also, if a configuration file was added or removed, all the files in the same directory is reloaded.
For a particular component	Create an empty `.reloadconfig` file under the component configuration directory . For example, `xml/config/com.myco.myservicemodule`. Volatile reloading will only be enabled for that component. In the case of an existing HCL Commerce service module, place the file in `workspace_dir`\WC\xml\config\`servicemodulename`-ext\.

Put the .reloadconfig file in the directory before the server is started.