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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.
WebSphere Commerce integration with WebSphere Portal
You can integrate WebSphere Commerce, a Business Application Service with WebSphere Portal, an Interaction Service. The Interaction Service provides core portal services (WebSphere Portal) that aggregate applications and content and deliver them as role-based applications. The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) pattern is used for communication, mediation, transformation and integration with external systems. Using an ESB to integrate the Web services exposed from WebSphere Commerce to the WebSphere Portal promotes a loosely coupled design where the ESB manages the interactions styles between the WebSphere Commerce services and the presentation layer. You do not need to alter your presentation layer to support the protocol and format used by the WebSphere Commerce services. Instead, you rely on the ESB to perform tasks such as message transformation and protocol mediation. Neither WebSphere Commerce nor WebSphere Portal needs to change in order to communicate with one another. The ESB is used to act as an interpreter between the two systems and will translate the messages into a format the receiving system understands.
Integrating WebSphere Commerce Extended Sites with WebSphere Portal
In a complex business environment, an enterprise needs to have multiple strategies to make its products available to customers. To ensure business success, an enterprise must present many faces to the market, and each face is perceived by customers as a unique site.
Extended site asset store in WebSphere Portal
An extended site asset store is one that contains collections of sharable resources, such as view templates, that can be leveraged in other stores.

Extended site asset store in WebSphere Portal

An extended site asset store is one that contains collections of sharable resources, such as view templates, that can be leveraged in other stores.There are two types of store assets that can be managed by a WebSphere Commerce portlet:

Dynamic view templates

To manage dynamic templates in an extended site, it is necessary to store files in a directory structure that allows for the quick and easy identification of the files and which stores they belong to. The file directory path is constructed based on a WebSphere Commerce store identifier, storeId.

Each URL reference defined on the WebSphere Commerce portlet JSP page is calculated using the following information and settings:

JSP_root_path/store_directory/asset_reference

Where:

JSP_root_path is the portlet JSP file location defined in the portlet preference (wps.markup.root.html).
store_directory is the calculated from the store Id that can be found in the business context stored in the portlet session.
asset_reference is the URI reference defined in the JSP file, such as images/something.jpg.

Static content asset files

All static content asset files, such as images and static HTML, can be included in the portlet application for ease of installation and deployment. The method of calculating the store relationship is the same as the one used for dynamic view templates.

In addition to this, external references to these static contents are also available using a URL reference. This URL reference is a programmatic name that is bounded to a URL object which can be set through the WAS administrative console, with a default JNDI name url/com/ibm/commerce/foundation/client/portal/ExternalContent. However, this JNDI name can be overridden by defining a portlet preference called .ExternalContentURLReference. See Defining references to static content in an MVCPortlet JSP file for more information.