WebSphere Commerce Enterprise

Organizations

An organizational entity is a type of member in WebSphere Commerce. An organizational entity is classified into one of three types: an organization, an organization unit, or an authorization domain. For site administrators, one of your first tasks after installing and configuring WebSphere Commerce is setting up and managing access to your e-commerce site. This process involves creating organizations that participate at your site, and defining users that are members of those organizations. After an instance is created, you can publish a starter store that defines the organization structure. Sometimes, organizations joining your site might be buyer organizations. In other cases, you might have customers registering at your site who are engaged in a business-to-consumer relationship with your business. Defining the organizational structure of site is an important step in managing the types of access that members have to your system.

organization
Typically, you create organizations directly under the Root Organization, for example, "o=ibm,o=root organization".
organization unit
Organization units represent lower level organizational entities under a top-level organization, for example, "ou=software division,o=ibm,o=root organization".
authorization domain
The authorization domain classification is only relevant when WebSphere Commerce is configured to store member attributes in an LDAP server. Authorization domains are used when the organizational entity exists in the WebSphere Commerce database, and is not replicated to the LDAP server. Organizations and Organization units own most of the assets in WebSphere Commerce, for example other organizational entities, users, stores, and contracts. Authorization domains, however, own other authorization domains, and other non-member assets.
Organizational entities are often referred to as organizations for simplicity.