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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 promotions
Customizing promotions can involve the customization of the promotion business user tools and the underlying promotion engine, which features a clean architecture supporting rich functionality, as well as a wide array of customization possibilities.
Promotions customization: WebSphere Commerce Accelerator
If the default promotion types supplied with WebSphere Commerce Accelerator do not meet your business needs, you can create custom promotion types. Business users can then use the custom promotion types in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to create promotions for the store.
Overview of implementing a custom high level promotion element
You can perform a highly complex customization of the promotion engine by creating new promotion engine components. For example, you might want to create a new promotion agenda builder.

Overview of implementing a custom high level promotion element

You can perform a highly complex customization of the promotion engine by creating new promotion engine components. For example, you might want to create a new promotion agenda builder.

About this task

To create a new promotion engine component, there are 3 steps.

Procedure

Determine what kind of promotion engine changes your store requires.
The WebSphere Commerce promotion engine provides a number of customization points for engine components, such as the agenda builder, the sequence builder, and promotion code managers. However, customizing these components is an involved process.
Understand the default promotion engine components and build the Java code that supports your new promotion engine component.
Where possible, you should design your components such that they extend existing classes to benefit from the default methods where applicable.
Update the user interface as needed.
This step should be done once you have a promotion XML that represents your business logic. To customize the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, so that it generates XML according to your requirements, refer to Adding support for a custom promotion type as a guideline.