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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.
...extracting custom catalog entry data
The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer extracts a default set of catalog entry data for the EPCMF file. If you customize the CatalogEntry noun, you can customize the data extraction utility to extract the custom data that you define in the noun. You can extract the custom data into one or more of the 15 customer-defined "Static Attribute" columns of the EPCMF file.

Customizing the data extraction utility to extract custom catalog entry data

The data extraction utility for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer extracts a default set of catalog entry data for the EPCMF file. If you customize the CatalogEntry noun, you can customize the data extraction utility to extract the custom data that you define in the noun. You can extract the custom data into one or more of the 15 customer-defined "Static Attribute" columns of the EPCMF file.

Here is an example:

You customize the CatalogEntry noun to support the following custom warranty data for catalog entries:

The warranty term, for example, 30 days.
The warranty type, for example, limited or comprehensive.

Now you want to include this warranty data in the EPCMF file for your catalog entries so that the data is available to IBM Product Recommendations. You must customize the data extraction utility to output an EPCMF file that contains the two more columns of data that is shown in the following example. The column that is labeled 1 contains warranty term data and the column that is labeled 2 contains warranty type data:

Customized EPCMF file with warranty data

Before you begin

You must customize the CatalogEntry noun to contain your custom data.