Home
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.
Customizing
The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
Web services
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 In Version 9, it is largely superseded by the Java Persistence API (JPA).
Business logic layer design patterns
The BOD programming model in HCL Commerce Version 6 Feature Pack 3 introduces four advanced BOD processing patterns: Get, Change, Process, and Sync. These patterns use abstract commands to handle the processing of Business Object Documents. The patterns also use a common OAGIS processing model that uses the BODs directly rather than transforming them into name-value pairs.

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 9.1, 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.
  - Customizing Management Center for HCL Commerce
    HCL Commerce allows you to pull the GIT bundle of Management Center source code and start the application locally to customize the Management Center.
  - 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.
  - 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.
  - GraphQL for HCL Commerce
    The GraphQL markup language is available for any API. It is a server-side interpreter for processing queries using a data type system you design. With GraphQL, your data and code are independent of any database or storage system.
  - 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).
      - Business logic layer design patterns
        The BOD programming model in HCL Commerce Version 6 Feature Pack 3 introduces four advanced BOD processing patterns: Get, Change, Process, and Sync. These patterns use abstract commands to handle the processing of Business Object Documents. The patterns also use a common OAGIS processing model that uses the BODs directly rather than transforming them into name-value pairs.
        Business Object Document Get processing pattern
        The Business Object Document Get processing pattern describes the design pattern used to perform searching for and retrieving of data.
        Business Object Document Change processing pattern
        The Business Object Document Change processing pattern adds, changes, or deletes a business object. This processing pattern is similar to the SOI Change pattern. In the SOI Change pattern implementation, Change requests map to existing HCL Commerce controller commands. The request Business Object Document is converted into the name-value pair parameters that are passed to the controller command. This enables reuse of existing business logic as a service. One limitation of this implementation is that the SOI Change request can only have one action. Because this design pattern uses BOD processing commands, the limitation of one action in the Change request is lifted. The other major difference is that the BOD Change pattern uses service data objects (SDO) to pass data, instead of name-value pairs.
        Business Object Document Process processing pattern
        The Business Object Document Process pattern performs a single action on a single noun. Based on the information within that noun, a Process controller will control the actions of the business logic. This Process controller will read common data across the actions within the request, instantiate the task command implementations for those actions, and execute them.
        Business Object Document Sync processing pattern
        The Business Object Document Sync processing pattern is used by systems that contain master data records to push out notifications when their data has changed. The Sync request contains the updated version of the business object and the request is sent out to all other listening systems to update their version of the business object.
      - BOD versions in HCL Commerce
        In order for the Transaction server to be able to differentiate between different levels of client libraries, which may have different versions of the HCL Commerce nouns, the versionID attribute of the OAGIS BusinessObjectDocumentType is populated with the HCL Commerce version associated with the noun.
      - Service module configuration
        Configuration data for BOD service modules is organized into base, and custom configuration. Configuration files are loaded before the service module can process service requests. The configuration class loader automatically discovers the configuration directories, by following certain naming conventions.
      - Error handling in the BOD command framework
        There are two types of exceptions that service modules can throw, application errors and system errors. You will usually be throwing the first type of exception, an application exception. This is a service module typed exception that represents a business logic problem, such as input validation, authorization issues, or other business reasons. The second type of exception is a system application error, which is an unchecked exception which does not need to be explicitly caught by clients. These system exceptions indicate an internal problem which the framework would catch and handle and not the service module. If you want to throw system exceptions, extend the abstract system exception class for common logging and other quality of service reasons.
      - Cache invalidation in the BOD command framework
        Unlike Get services, which do not make changes to business objects, the Change, Process and Sync services will change the business objects within the system and may need to invalidate existing cache representations of the business objects they service. For example, when a particular CatalogEntry is changed, any JSP or cached service that is referencing that object needs to be invalidated. When you are using the BOD command framework with a tool, such as the Management Center, or integrating with external systems, you need to make noun and related noun invalidation policies. When you are using the BOD command framework with a storefront, you need to make service command invalidation policies to invalidate the views in the storefront.
      - SOI and BOD service modules
        SOI and BOD service modules are both used in the HCL Commerce Web 2.0 store, and the Management Center.
    - 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.
    - 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. Starting with Version 9.1, HCL Commerce Search with Elasticsearch microservices manage indexing and other crucial tasks, with no performance impact on the storefront or transaction server.
- 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.

Business logic layer design patterns

The BOD programming model in HCL Commerce Version 6 Feature Pack 3 introduces four advanced BOD processing patterns: Get, Change, Process, and Sync. These patterns use abstract commands to handle the processing of Business Object Documents. The patterns also use a common OAGIS processing model that uses the BODs directly rather than transforming them into name-value pairs.

The new versions of the design patterns are: