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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.
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.
Search
In keeping with HCL's commitment to current and open standards, HCL Commerce Search uses Apache Lucene as the basis of its Search framework. Lucene powers the Apache Solr search engine and the Elasticsearch search engine. The indexing pipeline is a more open, flexible and scalable and is tightly integrated with the data service. Using the underlying dataflow technology and architecture, you can easily customize the pipelines. This open-standards approach considerably eases the process of integrating Search with existing and third-party applications.
Elasticsearch-based solution
With HCL Commerce Version 9.1, HCL Commerce introduces a new service for inputting and organizing your data. This new version of HCL Commerce Search is a generic data management system that can be used by other Commerce subsystems, including but not limited to the Elasticsearch engine. Along with the Ingest service that brings in the data, the new Query service provides natural language processing, color recognition and more. For customers who need backwards-compatibility, the previous Apache Solr-based search solution is still available.
Configure Elasticsearch 8.x
When using Elasticsearch 8.x with Elasticsearch-based HCL Commerce Search, you may encounter issues such as indexing failures or connection problems. This happens because Elasticsearch 8 enables security by default, which is not currently supported by HCL Commerce Search.

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.
  - The HCL Commerce application
    Every time you deploy the HCL Commerce application, you are deploying a set of Docker containers that communicate with each other to run your HCL Commerce site. Each HCL Commerce application deployment can contain one or more stores.
  - Overview of administering an HCL Commerce site
    In HCL Commerce the person who performs administrative tasks is called a Site Administrator. The Site Administrator installs, configures, and maintains HCL Commerce and the associated software and hardware. The administrator responds to system warnings, alerts, and errors, and diagnoses and resolves system problems. Typically, this person controls access and authorization (creating and assigning members to the appropriate role), manages the Web site, monitors performance, and manages load balancing tasks. The Site Administrator might be responsible for establishing and maintaining several server configurations for different stages of development such as testing, staging, and production. The Site Administrator also handles critical system backups and resolves performance problems.
  - Staging environment
    an HCL Commerce staging environment is a runtime environment where business and technical users can update and manage store data and preview changes. The changes can then be propagated to the production environment.
  - Workspaces
    You can enable and manage workspace assets and determine policies such as locking rules and commit and publishing options.
  - HCL Commerce database
    As a site administrator, maintain the HCL Commerce database and ensure that any HCL Commerce utilities and processes that load and retrieve data from the database is configured to connect to the database properly.
  - 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.
  - Extracting and loading data
    HCL Commerce provides utilities for preparing and loading data into a HCL Commerce database. The loading utilities are flexible and you can continue to use these utilities when you customize the HCL Commerce schema.
  - Payment plug-ins
    To configure a payment plug-in define payment and refund methods; payment and refund rules; and the payment protocols that you intend to use.
  - Search
    In keeping with HCL's commitment to current and open standards, HCL Commerce Search uses Apache Lucene as the basis of its Search framework. Lucene powers the Apache Solr search engine and the Elasticsearch search engine. The indexing pipeline is a more open, flexible and scalable and is tightly integrated with the data service. Using the underlying dataflow technology and architecture, you can easily customize the pipelines. This open-standards approach considerably eases the process of integrating Search with existing and third-party applications.
    - Comparing Solr and Elasticsearch architectures
      The Solr and Elasticsearch systems behave similarly at the storefront level. Behind that layer are key differences in architecture.
    - Comparing Solr and Elasticsearch index lifecycles
      Apache Solr and Elasticsearch have different approaches to updating your search index. Solr does delta updates on a regular schedule, usually every five minutes. Elasticsearch performs an incremental update in near real-time.
    - Comparing Solr and Elasticsearch common business tasks and their impact on the search index
      There are impacts to the search index when certain business tasks are performed. This topic describes the Solr and Elasticsearch comparison for the common business tasks and their impact on the search index. The following table lists the common business tasks and reindexing types for Solr and Elasticsearch. The table groups business tasks and reindexing types by business components.
    - Migrating from Solr to Elasticsearch
      The following table describes the Solr-based and Elasticsearch-based search solutions and their concepts. A guideline is also presented for migrating from the Solr-based search solution to the newer Elasticsearch-based solution.
    - Upgrading to Solr 9.7.0
      HCL Commerce version 9.1.18 introduces a new Solr-based Search runtime built on Solr 9.7. Transitioning to this version impacts index compatibility and requires planning to ensure a smooth cut-over, particularly in live production environments. The following considerations should be reviewed before initiating the upgrade.
    - Running Solr 7.3.0 with HCL Commerce 9.1.19.0+
    - HCL Commerce Developer Solr-based Search environment
    - Orchestration service
      The Orchestration service enables the Ruby starter store to use Solr-based search. The Ruby store uses the V2 search REST API that is only compatible with Elasticsearch. With the Orchestration service, the ability to convert a JSON message from one format into another is introduced.
    - Elasticsearch-based solution
      With HCL Commerce Version 9.1, HCL Commerce introduces a new service for inputting and organizing your data. This new version of HCL Commerce Search is a generic data management system that can be used by other Commerce subsystems, including but not limited to the Elasticsearch engine. Along with the Ingest service that brings in the data, the new Query service provides natural language processing, color recognition and more. For customers who need backwards-compatibility, the previous Apache Solr-based search solution is still available.
      - Applying patches
        The following topics describe how to apply patches received from HCL Commerce to NiFi, the NiFi Registry, and the Query service.
      - Configure Elasticsearch 8.x
        When using Elasticsearch 8.x with Elasticsearch-based HCL Commerce Search, you may encounter issues such as indexing failures or connection problems. This happens because Elasticsearch 8 enables security by default, which is not currently supported by HCL Commerce Search.
      - Ingest Service
        The Ingest service is responsible for bringing data into HCL Commerce Search. This data, which can be in many different formats, is passed to Apache NiFi, which prepares it for use by Elasticsearch. To administer the Ingest service, you define a data specification to write NiFi descriptors. Each descriptor defines the behavior of a particular connector. Strung together, the connectors manage the data pipeline and that builds your index.
      - Query Service
        The Query service builds the search expressions and then hands the expression to Elasticsearch. It also takes the query results and translates them back into a form that can be used by the storefront. The storefront does not need to know that the response was generated by Elasticsearch rather than Solr.
      - The Elasticsearch index lifecycle
        The Elasticsearch index lifecycle describes the structure of Elasticsearch indices in HCL Commerce Version 9.1, highlights the advantages of the architecture, and explains the typical index lifecycle, including creation, updates, Push-to-Live processes, backup management, and optimisation techniques.
      - Indexing contract prices
        You can index prices in HCL Commerce Search. For example, you can build the HCL Commerce Search price index by issuing the Calculate Price RESTful call, and then indexing contract prices.
      - Storefront product/SKU data display logic
        This topic describes how the Elasticsearch index overrides the product/SKU data or inherits the product data for SKU and displays it accordingly on the storefront.
      - Performance tuning the Ingest service
        You can tune search performance at data ingest time by adjusting your NiFi settings, or at runtime by changing the memory options for Elasticsearch.
      - Fine-grained cache invalidation
        Live fine-grained cache invalidations are sent from the Push-to-live connector. Fine-grained cache invalidation allows scoping cache invalidation to individual products or categories to rebuild only the necessary cache. It helps to minimize the runtime impact at the time of cache invalidation. You can create a custom template for product and category invalidation. This means you can set the desired product and category cache invalidation and the place to send this custom invalidation.
      - Workspaces with HCL Commerce Search based on Elasticsearch
        Using workspaces in an authoring environment, business users can work on catalog-related changes in an isolated environment. They can then preview their changes in the storefront before submitting them for approval. Content approvers or workspace managers then use the Workspace Management tool in the Management Center to preview a workspace, undo submitted tasks, reject, cancel, or approve task groups.
      - Logging and troubleshooting
        Approaches and systems for troubleshooting your Ingest and Query services are discussed.
      - HCL Commerce Search limitations and restrictions
        Some features of the Commerce search environment are unsupported for the initial release of the HCL Commerce SearchVersion 9.1 only. These features will be restored in future point releases. Some features are deprecated because they have been or will be replaced by specific Ingest or Elasticsearch methods and interfaces.
    - Solr -based solution
      The Solr search index lifecycle includes tasks that you perform after HCL Commerce search is deployed. For example, building, replicating and propagating the search index, backing up and restoring the search index, and monitoring indexing activities across different search servers.
  - HCL Customer Service for HCL Commerce
    HCL Customer Service for HCL Commerce is a separately purchased product that provides a light-weight customer service solution that is embedded in the Aurora B2C and Aurora B2B storefronts. Even though this solution is a separately purchased product, it is not a separate application. Stores that are enabled with HCL Customer Service for HCL Commerce allow a customer service representative (CSR) to act on behalf of guest customers and registered customers. A CSR can manage customer accounts, cancel and reorder orders, and shop as customer. A CSR can also act on behalf of Buyer Administrators to help complete Aurora B2B tasks from the storefront, without having to access the Organization Administration Console.
  - HCL Commerce configuration file (wc-server.xml)
    Many aspects of the HCL Commerce runtime application are configured in an XML file. This XML file is located inside the HCL Commerce Java Platform, Enterprise Edition EAR.
  - Enabling the SSL Accelerator option
    An SSL Accelerator (or SSL Terminator) strips off HTTPS encryption at or before the Web server tier in a multitier setup. When you use an SSL Accelerator with HCL Commerce, you can use the SSL Accelerator option to configure HCL Commerce to correctly receive requests that require redirects.
  - Managing features
    You can administer the features for your store and site, such as attribute, catalog, promotion, marketing, order management features, and more. The administration tasks that you can complete differ depending on the type of feature and the tool that you use to administer your store and site.
  - Logging services
    HCL Commerce provides facilities for logging. For existing customers, ECTrace and ECMessage are still supported. For new implementations, use the WebSphere Application Server recommendation for logging and tracing.
  - Business auditing
    Business auditing is the capturing of the business logic and objects during a HCL Commerce operation. You may want to audit your business for various reasons: generic, such as to review various tasks performed weekly; or specific, such as to track the steps involved in a particular Customer Service Representative's order. A report on business auditing is available in the Administration Console.
  - Business events
    Each time that a command triggers a business event, a record is added to the BUSEVENT database table to persist data from the event. Event listeners and external systems (such as the Marketing component, a back end order management system, or an external analytics system) can use this data to perform further processing.
  - Business Object thresholds
    Applying limits on business operations reduces the risk of system attacks where unbound conditions might result in system failures.
  - Stores in HCL Commerce
    HCL Commerce supports several different types of entities that are defined as stores. The assets of these store entities may be edited using the HCL Commerce Accelerator.
  - Enabling registered users to access all stores in the Extended Sites business model
    HCL Commerce users can access storefronts by virtue of having the role of Registered Customer in the organization that owns the store, or in any organization above it. The roles a user has access to during registration are defined within the MemberRegistrationAttributes.xml file.
  - Hystrix on the Store server
    The Hystrix framework is used as a proxy for back-end resources such as the Transaction server and Search server by default. This can be disabled, but does have performance implications that must be considered.
- 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 Version 9.1.19.0 or later

Configure Elasticsearch 8.x for use with HCL Commerce Search

When using Elasticsearch 8.x with Elasticsearch-based HCL Commerce Search, you may encounter issues such as indexing failures or connection problems. This happens because Elasticsearch 8 enables security by default, which is not currently supported by HCL Commerce Search.

Configuration

To ensure HCL Commerce Search works correctly, you need to disable Elasticsearch security and update a cluster setting. Start by updating your Elasticsearch configuration.

If you are using a Docker-based setup, open your docker-compose template file (for example, docker-compose-elasticsearch-data-db2-template.yml). In the elasticsearch section, add the following under the environment configuration:

xpack.security.enabled: 'false'
xpack.security.http.ssl.enabled: 'false'
xpack.security.transport.ssl.enabled: 'false'

If you are using Kubernetes, apply the same configuration in your Elasticsearch Helm chart.

After disabling security, you may still see indexing errors in older HCL Commerce Search versions (9.1.19.0 and earlier) as "Error encountered while deleting index catalog". This happens because older HCL Commerce Search versions (9.1.19.0 and earlier) use wildcard-based index deletion, which Elasticsearch 8 blocks by default. To fix this, update the Elasticsearch cluster setting by running:


curl 
-X PUT "http://<Elasticsearch_hostname>:<port>/_cluster/settings" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
  "persistent": {
    "action.destructive_requires_name": false
  }
}'

Once these changes are applied, HCL Commerce Search can successfully connect to Elasticsearch 8.x and perform indexing without errors.