Member assets

WebSphere Commerce provides a Member subsystem, which includes members or users, and organizations. WebSphere Commerce member assets include data for participants of the WebSphere Commerce system. A member can be a user, a group of users, or an organizational entity. An administrator, such as a Site Administrator, assigns roles to users and organizational entity members. Once a member is assigned a role, the access control component authorizes the member to participate in activities. For example, an organization can be a Buyer or a Seller, or both. A user can also be assigned multiple roles. An administrator can create member groups, which are groups of users that are categorized for various business reasons. Use the Administration Console to create and work with organizations, users, roles, and member groups.

Business logic for the member assets provides member registration and profile management services. Other services which are closely related to the member assets include access control, authentication, and session management.

The following diagram illustrates the WebSphere Commerce member assets.

Member

A member in WebSphere Commerce can be:

• An organizational entity. This entity can be an organization, such as "IBM" or an organizational unit within a large organization, such as the "Electronic Commerce Division" within IBM.
• A user (either registered or non-registered). A registered user has a unique identifier, and a password, and is required to provide profile data for registration purposes. Registered users can be classified according to their profile type: type 'B' denotes a business user (or a B2B direct customer) and type of 'C' denotes a retail user (or a consumer direct customer).
• A member group. This group is a group of users that are categorized for various business reasons. The groupings can be used for access control purposes, for approval purposes, and for marketing purposes (such as calculating discounts, prices, and displaying products).

Store entity

Each store entity (that is, a store or store group) is owned by a member. A WebSphere Commerce online store consists of a set of HTML and JavaServer Pages files, and consists of tax, shipping, payment, catalog, and other database assets. These assets are contained in a store archive. A store also contains store data, which is the information that is populated into the WebSphere Commerce database to allow a store to function.

Member attribute and member attribute value

A WebSphere Commerce member has a set of attributes and each attribute has a value associated with it. A basic user profile for a member incorporates registration information, demographics, address information, purchase history, and other miscellaneous attributes.

A business user profile contains the same information as a basic user profile, and contains employment information. For example, an employee number or a job title, or a job description. During registration, business users can identify the business organization to which they belong. Profiles for organizational entities include this additional information, such as organization name and business category.

Access control rules enforce user authority for performing profile management. Member profiles can contain various personal and business-related attributes (such as roles, payment information, addresses, preferred languages and currencies, and pervasive computing devices). Attributes can be store-sensitive. These attributes are supported for users and organizational entities, but not member groups.

Role

The WebSphere Commerce system provides the following set of default role types:

• Business relationship roles
• Customer service roles
• Marketing roles
• Operational roles
• Organizational management roles
• Product management and merchandising roles
• Technical operations roles

A Site Administrator can assign these roles, as well as any new roles created by the Site Administrator, by organizational entity. Users who belong to an organizational entity can assume roles that are assigned to that organizational entity.

Member role

Each user can perform one or more roles in an organization. A Site Administrator assigns a role or roles to each member. For example, as a member of an organization, an individual can have a role as both a Customer Service Representative and a Customer Service Supervisor.

When a user is assigned a role, the role is scoped to an organizational entity. This entity can be any organizational entity; it does not need to be one of the user's ancestors. However, since roles are inherited, the user can play the assigned role in any descendant of the organization for which the role is assigned. For example, if a user is given a role in the Root Organization, then the user can play that role for all organizational entities.

WebSphere Commerce roles can be assigned manually through the Organization Administration Console, and automatically through the registration and session management commands. This automated role assignment is based on the configuration that is specified in the MemberRegistrationAttributes.xml file. WebSphere Commerce provides the MemberRegistrationAttributes.xml file, which can be modified to suit particular registration requirements.

Organizational entity, organization, and organizational unit

A member in WebSphere Commerce can be an organizational entity. This member can be an organization, such as "IBM". This member can also be an organizational unit within a large organization, such as the "Electronic Commerce Division" within IBM.

User

A member in WebSphere Commerce can be either a registered or non-registered user. A registered user has a unique identifier, and a password, and is required to provide profile data for registration purposes. Registered users can be classified according to their profile type: type 'B' denotes a business user (or a B2B direct customer) and type of 'C' denotes a retail user (or a consumer direct customer).

Member group, member group member, and member group type

A member in WebSphere Commerce can be a member group, which is a group of users that are categorized for various business reasons. The groupings types can be used for access control purposes, for approval purposes, as well as for marketing purposes. For example, calculating discounts, prices, and displaying products.