WebSphere Commerce integration with WebSphere Portal

WebSphere Commerce provides integration code and support for WebSphere Portal Server. This integration allows to you aggregate WebSphere Commerce services and other content in a portal interaction environment.

This diagram illustrates the recommended practice for integrating WebSphere Commerce, a Business Application Service, with WebSphere Portal, an Interaction Service. A full description is listed in the text of this page.

This diagram illustrates the recommended practice for integrating 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. This architecture is described in detail in the Logical Architecture Model section of IBM's SOA Foundation - An Architectural Introduction and Overview. The enterprise service bus (ESB) pattern is used for communication, mediation, transformation, and integration with external systems. If you use an ESB to integrate the Web services, the ESB manages the interactions between the WebSphere Commerce services and the presentation layer.
Note: The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) resembles a pattern, rather than an implementation. As both WebSphere Commerce and WebSphere Portal use the same OAGIS message format for communication, there is no mediation required between these two server tiers. The underlying invocation service layer acts as a service binding platform. Therefore, WebSphere Commerce integration with WebSphere Portal does not require an ESB product such as WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (or WESB), however the concept of making use of a logical bus is still present.
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 acts as an interpreter between the two systems and translates the messages into a format that the receiving system understands.

WebSphere Commerce and WebSphere Portal integration

The WebSphere Commerce and WebSphere Portal service-oriented integration support gives you an aggregated presentation of WebSphere Commerce services and non-WebSphere Commerce services. There are several benefits:

  • WebSphere Portal provides the ability to aggregate and to present contents delivered from services, whether they are provided by WebSphere Commerce or a vendor-acquired software application.
  • Single sign-on from WebSphere Portal provides a secure method of authenticating a user one time within an environment and using that single authentication (for the duration of the session) as a basis for access to WebSphere Commerce Services.
  • Portlets that render WebSphere Commerce content are JSR-168 compliant, enabling them to work with other vendors' portlets in a single portlet container. JSR-168 compliance also allows you to leverage tools that are designed for JSR-168.
  • Have your WebSphere Commerce portlets communicate with your other portlets to deliver a rich user experience.
  • Leverage the portlet tag library from WebSphere Portal.