Deploying

The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.

Important:

Use standardized deployment strategies to deploying custom assets. Improperly deploying custom assets can result in data loss.

When you update to your application you must either follow the steps to deploy custom Java EE assets, or you must use a deployment tool, such as the WebSphere Commerce Build and Deployment tool. If you update the WebSphere Commerce application directly on the file system, under the installedApps directory, your changes will be lost any time updates are made to the master copy of the application, which is a collapsed version of the WebSphere Commerce application that is used by the WebSphere Application Server application management utilities.

In addition to the deployment of custom code, a number of other WebSphere Commerce tasks also update the master copy of the application. Some of these tasks are:
  • Applying a WebSphere Commerce fix pack
  • Applying a WebSphere Commerce APAR
  • Enabling or disabling a feature
  • Publishing a store

Therefore, it is important that you make any updates to the WebSphere Commerce application using only the WebSphere Application Server tools provided.