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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.
Customizing WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, Organization Administration Console, or Administration Console
The WebSphere Commerce browser-based tools (WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, Organization Administration Console, Administration Console) can be extended or changed. In addition to customizing the tools you can also create a new browser-based tool that uses the same underlying framework. A new tool based on the tools framework is referred to as a WebSphere Commerce tools user interface center.
Customizing product management tools for WebSphere Commerce Accelerator
You can customize the product management tools within WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to add enhancements to help business users work more efficiently.
Creating a merchandising association type
By default, WebSphere Commerce displays four merchandising association types: cross-sell, up-sell, accessory and replacement. You can create your own merchandising association types, based on your business needs. The following instructions work for both the development and production environments. You should test your changes in the development environment before propagating them to your production environment.

Creating a merchandising association type

By default, WebSphere Commerce displays four merchandising association types: cross-sell, up-sell, accessory and replacement. You can create your own merchandising association types, based on your business needs. The following instructions work for both the development and production environments. You should test your changes in the development environment before propagating them to your production environment.

Procedure

Create a merchandising association type using one of the following methods:

If you are inserting a small number of merchandising association types, add the merchandising association type information into the database.
If you are inserting a large number of merchandising association types, use the loading utilities to load the merchandising association type information into the database. Use the following XML tag as a guide when creating an XML file for the Loader utility:
```
<massoctype massoctype_id='yourCustomMAType' description='yourCustomMATypeDescription' />
```
Where:

yourCustomMAType

is the new merchandising association type and yourCustomMATypeDescription is the new merchandising association type description.