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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 IBM Sales Center
In the IBM Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce there is a set of user interface panels, views and dialogs that contain the most commonly used features. You can add to or configure the user interface to suit your needs, as well as changing the content and format of the data that is passed between the client and the server.
Deploying customizations to the IBM Sales Center
Depending on the number of clients and frequency of updates required, you have several choices for installing and updating the IBM Sales Center.
Building customizations for deployment in Rational Application Developer
All of the recommended mechanisms suitable for custom IBM Sales Center extension deployment and service depend on packaging those extensions as Eclipse update sites.

Building customizations for deployment in Rational Application Developer

All of the recommended mechanisms suitable for custom IBM Sales Center extension deployment and service depend on packaging those extensions as Eclipse update sites.

An Update Site consists at minimum of a plug-ins directory containing the Eclipse plugin and fragment JARs to be distributed, a features directory containing corresponding Eclipse feature JARs, and a site map file site.xml that describes the site and its contents. Additional optional content, such as HTML documents, can also be provided.

Rational Application Developer provides tools to create and test Update Sites.

An Update Site can be used to install Eclipse features, and the plugins contained in those features, but it cannot be used to install "orphaned" plugins that are not contained in any feature. For this reason, before you can create an Update Site project in RAD you must first create one or more feature projects that will refer to all of the plugins you want to deploy.