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.
Reference
Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.
Shopping flow URLs
HCL Commerce shopping flow URLs are organized by subsystem.
Order Management subsystem URLs
The Order Management subsystem includes all logic and data relevant to placing, processing, and managing orders. The Order Management subsystem also deals with returns.
Order status transition flow diagrams
The four diagrams are comprised of one overall view and three simplified diagrams each showing a particular flow process. The status transition in each shopping flow diagram applies to all business models.
Main order status in ATP shopping flow diagram
A simplified view of an ATP shopping flow order status.

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.
- 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 HCL Commerce Version 9.1
    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.
  - 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.
  - 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.
    - Catalog subsystem URLs
      Catalog subsystem URLs include all logic and data relevant to a catalog, including categories, products and their attributes, items, and groupings of each, and any associations or relationships among them.
    - Member subsystem URLs
      The Member subsystem includes all logic and data relevant to registration, authentication, and grouping of all members. A member can be a user, an organization or organizational entity, or a member group.
    - Order Management subsystem URLs
      The Order Management subsystem includes all logic and data relevant to placing, processing, and managing orders. The Order Management subsystem also deals with returns.
      - Order abbreviations
        Several order URLs accept order abbreviations such as "*" and "." to indicate one or more values for some of their parameters that specify order identifiers. URLs that accept order abbreviations generally accept any of the following abbreviations, although "**" and ".**." (which involve creating a new order) may not be applicable for some URLs. Refer to each URL's documentation to understand which abbreviations are accepted by each URL. Many URLs accept the following order abbreviations for parameters that specify order reference numbers.
      - Error codes for error views
      - Overall shopping flow diagram
        A diagram showing various scenarios including the service calls, optional commands, controller commands and views.
      - Order status transition flow diagrams
        The four diagrams are comprised of one overall view and three simplified diagrams each showing a particular flow process. The status transition in each shopping flow diagram applies to all business models.
        Order Status Transition flow diagram
        In the overall view, all the order statuses of HCL Commerce are listed.
        Main order status in non-ATP shopping flow diagram
        A simplified view of a main order status in a non-ATP shopping flow.
        Main order status in ATP shopping flow diagram
        A simplified view of an ATP shopping flow order status.
        Order status related to order approval process diagram
        A simplified view that shows the order status that is related to order approval process.
      - Order task commands
        The Order Management subsystem uses many task commands. Each task command performs one function.
      - Orders URLs
        The following URLS are related to orders:
      - Order item URLs
        The following URLs are related to order items:
      - Order fulfillment URLs
        The following URLs are related to order fulfillment:
      - Order quotation URLs
        The following URLs are related to order quotations:
      - Returns and refunds
        The following URLs are related to Returns and refunds.
      - Scheduled orders URLs
        The following URLs are related to scheduled orders:
      - Currency
        The following URL is related to currency.
      - Requisition lists
        A requisition list is a list of items that is used to create orders at a later date. Users can create requisition lists of items that they order frequently and use it to periodically re-order the items. Each item on a requisition list is associated with a catalog entry and has the following attributes: SKU, Quantity, Last update time, Owner, Store, Type: private or shared. Private requisition lists can be viewed and modified only by a certain user, typically the creator. A shared requisition list can be read and used by the users in the same organization.
    - Request for Quote (RFQ)
      A Request for Quote (RFQ) is a type of trading mechanism available in HCL Commerce. You can maintain and administer RFQs using the HCL Commerce Accelerator. When you publish the advanced B2B starter store provided with HCL Commerce, you get the RFQ request tool.
  - 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.

Main order status in ATP shopping flow diagram

A simplified view of an ATP shopping flow order status.

The order flow from order creation, through order submission, fulfillment, backorder processing, confirmation, and finally completion. The diagram also outlines the alternate flows for order cancellation and CSR order editing.

Note: The major status of the order processing flow is indicated in bold. This flow begins with order creation and flows through pending order (P), backorder (B), approval (M), release (R), and shipping (S) status to process an order. Finally, the flow goes through the payment deposit (D) status to close out the order status in the shopping flow.

For a description of each individual status, see Order and order item status.