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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.
Payments subsystem
In HCL Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.
Payments subsystem
In HCL Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.
Payment plug-ins
A payment plug-in is a self-contained software component that serves as a proxy for a payment back-end system.
SimplePunchout plug-in
The SimplePunchout plug-in is a sample plug-in that can be used by the Aurora starter store to demonstrate payment by using the punch-out model. When the SimplePunchout plug-in is used, a new browser window opens displaying the third-party payment website.

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.
    - Payments subsystem
      In HCL Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.
      - Payments subsystem architecture
        The Payments subsystem contains three main parts: Payment rules engine, Payment plug-in controller, and payment plug-ins.
      - Payment life cycle
        There are three stages to payment processing: validation, reservation, and finalization. The payment life cycle is related to the order life cycle stages: order capture, release to fulfillment, and shipping.
      - Payment plug-ins
        A payment plug-in is a self-contained software component that serves as a proxy for a payment back-end system.
        LOC (Line of credit) plug-in
        The LOC plug-in enables merchants to use lines of credit as a payment method. It enables buyers to delay the payment settlement for orders and is intended to integrate with accounts receivable systems used by customers. The LOC plug-in mimics the function of an actual line of credit. By default, it does not connect to an accounts receivable system. To connect to an account receivable system, you must write your own version of the plug-in.
        SimpleOffline plug-in
        The SimpleOffline plug-in enables payments to be processed offline, or manually. Offline payments do not involve any direct communication with a payment back-end system. Instead, the SimpleOffline plug-in records events that have already happened outside of HCL Commerce. Transactions are recorded and maintained in the HCL Commerce database.
        Paymentech plug-in
        The Paymentech plug-in allows the Payments plug-in controller to communicate directly with the Paymentech gateway by using the plug-in.
        SimplePunchout plug-in
        The SimplePunchout plug-in is a sample plug-in that can be used by the Aurora starter store to demonstrate payment by using the punch-out model. When the SimplePunchout plug-in is used, a new browser window opens displaying the third-party payment website.
    - Extended data in payments or credits
      Some payment plug-ins require extra protocol data or keywords to communicate with a back-end system. This extra protocol data called extended data is in addition to the standard attributes defined in the PaymentInstruction definition. Extended data is any data other than the currency, amount of the payment instruction, and the payment method name. For example, credit card number, expiration, and billing address are extended data.
    - Payment rules provided in HCL Commerce
      Payment rules specify the payment actions that should occur for the payment methods a store accepts for its goods or services. Payment actions and credit actions are determined in terms of current-to-target state movements. payment rules define what target state a payment should be in by defining the actions needed to move a payment from its current state to the target state.
    - Payment configuration files
      Use these files when configuring the Payments subsystem and payment plug-ins.
    - Payment plug-in specification
      Review the following overview of the payment plug-in specification to better understand how you can use payment plug-ins.
  - 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.

SimplePunchout plug-in

The SimplePunchout plug-in is a sample plug-in that can be used by the Aurora starter store to demonstrate payment by using the punch-out model. When the SimplePunchout plug-in is used, a new browser window opens displaying the third-party payment website.

Note: SimplePunchout plug-in can be used only to demo or sample punch-out payment support of IBM® HCL Commerce. It is used against a payment gateway simulator; it cannot be used to connect to real payment gateways such as PayPal.

Methods

The SimplePunchout plug-in follows the Payment plug-in specification and implements the PunchoutPlugin interface.

The SimplePunchout plug-in implements the following APIs:

Note: approveAndDeposit is classical payment API; the other methods are unique to the PunchoutPlugin interface.

approveAndDeposit(PluginContext, FinancialTransaction, boolean): This method is used to "approve and deposit" the amount for the order, it only locally set the payment processing to pending. Later in the PunchoutPaymentCallBackCmd, the payment status will be updated to success or fail according to the result from the third-party system.

getAuthenticationURL(PluginContext, PaymentInstruction): This method builds the URL for the third-party payment system that is used to punch-out (or to redirect to).

initAuthenticationSession(PluginContext, PaymentInstruction): This method is used to initialize the authentication session.
Note: Since SimplePunchout plug-in works with the simulator and does not need an authentication session, this method is not used by the SimplePunchout plug-in.

preprocessProviderResponseData(PluginContext, Map): This method is used to parse the unique ID - corresponding to the PPCPAYINST_ID on WebSphere Commerce side - from the third-party payment system's call-back URL.

processProviderResponse(PluginContext, PaymentInstruction, Map): This method is used to check whether this callback request is a real and valid request from the correct third-party payment system, and then parses the result of the payment processing.