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User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to IBM WebSphere Commerce Version 7.0.0.9 and Feautre Pack 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in new editions.
Developing
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
Presentation layer
WebSphere 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.
IBM Product Recommendations and WebSphere Commerce
IBM Product Recommendations is an IBM Digital Analytics solution that you can subscribe to that automatically generates personalized product recommendations on the storefront. The recommendations are based on the browsing, shopping, and purchasing behavior of individual customers. If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you can display recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations on your store pages.
Data extraction utility for dynamic recommendations in IBM Product Recommendations
The Intelligent Offer data extraction utility is a command-line utility that you can use to create the Enterprise Product Report (EPR) data for dynamic recommendations that is required by IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer. The utility extracts catalog data from your database and generates ECDF and EPCMF files in the correct format to load into IBM Product Recommendations. You can provide these two files to IBM Product Recommendations regularly for processing dynamic recommendations.
Customizing the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility
If the default EPCMF file output by the data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer does not meet your business needs, you can customize the utility.
Architectural overview of the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility
The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer consists of a series of components that extract catalog data from the WebSphere Commerce database, format the data, and write the data to CSV-format files. If you are customizing the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility, you should understand how the components work together to produce the EPCMF and ECDF files that IBM Product Recommendations requires.

Introduced in Feature Pack 3

Architectural overview of the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility

The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer consists of a series of components that extract catalog data from the WebSphere Commerce database, format the data, and write the data to CSV-format files. If you are customizing the IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility, you should understand how the components work together to produce the EPCMF and ECDF files that IBM Product Recommendations requires.

The following diagram shows the flow of data from one utility component to the next:

Data extraction utility component diagram

The data extraction utility process is described here:

1 The data extraction utility calls the data reader. Two data reader classes are provided:
- For EPCMF (catalog entry) data: com.ibm.commerce.catalog.dataload.datareader.CatalogEntryReaderMediator
- For ECDF (category) data: com.ibm.commerce.catalog.dataload.datareader.CatalogGroupReaderMediator
The data reader invokes the CatalogEntry and CatalogGroup web services to retrieve objects from the database. The data reader returns a single logical service data object to pass to the business object builder.
2 The business object builder (com.ibm.commerce.foundation.dataload.businessobjectbuilder.BaseExtractBusinessObjectBuilder) passes the service data object to the business object mediator. The business object builder does not perform any additional functions.
3 The business object mediator (com.ibm.commerce.foundation.dataload.businessobjectmediator.BusinessObjectToCSVTransformMediator) transforms the logical service data object, which is highly structured, to a hashmap object that more closely matches the output file format. The hashmap object contains name-value pairs according to the XPath-to-column data mappings defined in the business object configuration file.
4 The business object mediator passes the hashmap object to the data writer (com.ibm.commerce.foundation.dataload.datawriter.CMDataWriter). The data writer writes the contents of the hashmap to a CSV file according to the column definitions in the business object configuration file.