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.
A sample store is for learning purposes and some tutorials can use a sample store. Do not use a sample store as the base for building your site. Sample stores might not be accessible or translated.
A demand chain is composed of the enterprises that sell a business's goods or services. For example, a demand chain may be composed of buyers who initiate the sales transaction, the resellers who sell the manufacturer's goods, and the manufacturer who creates the goods. Or a demand chain may be composed of the resellers who sell a manufacturer's goods, the manufacturer who makes the goods, and the distributors who supply the manufacturer's goods to the resellers. Demand chains also support direct sales channels, in which the demand chain owner sells directly to consumers or business partners.
Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
Review this section for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
Before you migrate WebSphere Commerce, review this information for an overview of the migration process.
WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials.
A fully functional sample online store, provided in store archive format with WebSphere Commerce. Starter stores are samples designed to be used as a base from which a customized online store can be created. Starter stores are translated into several languages and support multiple Web browsers and platforms. Starter stores are fully accessible, with the exception of the Madisons mobile starter store. Accessibility guidelines for mobile devices are not well defined or well established.
The consumer direct sample store illustrates the tasks that a consumer can perform at a retailer's e-commerce site in the framework of the consumer direct business model.
This topic provides step-by-step instructions to publish and configure the advanced B2B direct starter store. The advanced B2B direct starter store supports direct selling to other businesses. This store highlights the tasks that a buyer can perform at a seller's e-commerce site. Some of the features included in this starter store are:
The Commerce Plaza store is a sample store and part of the demand chain B2B indirect business model. Commerce Plaza allows resellers to purchase products directly from their distributors by transferring their shopping carts to the distributor site. The demand chain business model sample includes the Commerce Plaza site, the catalog asset store, the reseller asset store, and the distributor proxy stores.
Use the Store Creation wizard to create stores.
You can change general store information, including store name and description, languages and currencies supported, contact and location information, using the Store Profile notebook in the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.
When you publish the demand chain starter store, many optional features are enabled. For example, there is a field on the store's Registration page that asks customers to specify their gender. If you do not want this field to be displayed in your store, you can remove it through the Change Flow notebook.
Before customers can access a store, the store must be opened. Only stores with a status of Closed can be opened. Closing a store prevents customers from accessing a store. Stores should be closed before making any changes to the store. The Channel Manager can open or close the store for the reseller allowing or preventing customers from accessing the store.
This step requires that an order has been placed in the store, and a simulated distributor. If you do not have a live distributor's site that you can connect to for your testing, you will need a distributor simulator to request a quote, and to submit a shopcart. When you request a quote, you are taken to a live distributor site and get a real-time quote from the distributor. You need something to simulate that process, otherwise, that request can't go anywhere. You will be able to transfer your shopcart, but nothing will happen afterward without a distributor or a simulated distributor.
Commerce Supplier Hub is the new sample store of a Supply chain site provided with WebSphere Commerce. The main site includes the Commerce Supplier Hub, an aggregate or master catalog, and the assets required to publish supplier stores. The Hub is a place where suppliers, and buyers come together. Use this sample to get started on setting up a site where you will be able to host sellers with an aggregate catalog, or to create a sort of a marketplace, where buyers and sellers can come together in one environment.
A JSP code snippet is a code sample that shows you how to add WebSphere Commerce functionality to your store. JSP code snippets may be added to a starter store, or to a store previously published and migrated. JSP code snippets are intended to help you: Quickly add a feature to your store, or add a feature that is not included in one of the starter stores. JSP code snippets use the JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL). Each JSP code snippet is well commented, easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to customize.
WebSphere Commerce object snippets are reusable pieces of JSP code that represent display properties of business objects, such as an address, a price, or a catalog entry.
The IBM Sales Center samples give you access to a wide range of files that can help you get started in developing your own Sales Center solution.
The following access control policy samples show you how some basic access control policies can be used in the development environment, so that you can quickly test new resources. They are not designed to be used as-is on a WebSphere Commerce production environment, as they do not provide adequate resource protection.
The WebSphere Commerce portlets, when working together using cooperative portlets, can provide customers with a similar shopping experience to that of the WebSphere Commerce consumer direct storefront, while providing merchants with additional online business sales channels to other portal environments.
The Catalog programming model provides a consistent service-oriented architecture (SOA) based programming model for WebSphere Commerce storefronts. It uses the WebSphere Commerce search framework and the CatalogNavigationView search noun to move storefront catalog services from Java beans and service-oriented integration (SOI) to SOA.
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.
This diagram shows the checkout flow in the Commerce Plaza.
