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Overview
The topics in this category describe conceptual information about WebSphere Commerce.
Product overview
E-commerce is no longer simply about presenting and selling products online. It is about delivering a smarter shopping experience that is seamless and integrated across all customer touch points. It is about providing a rich, relevant, personalized experience across multiple channels of your business. But ultimately it is about doing more to leverage the power of your brand and present its value consistently to your customers.
Packaging and distribution
WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0 and WebSphere Commerce Developer Version 8.0 are distributed by HCL using the electronic software distribution (ESD) channel. Physical media is not provided. If you are entitled to the software, you can download it from HCL License and Delivery portal.
WebSphere Commerce Search
WebSphere Commerce comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in WebSphere Commerce provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on open standards, WebSphere Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization. A key feature of Search is that sales personnel can create and manage search term associations, and search-based merchandising rules, from within the Management Center and Store view.
Accessibility
Accessibility features help a user who has a physical disability, such as a visual impairment, hearing impairment, or limited mobility, to use software products successfully.
Conventions
Images denote information that is specific to particular edition, business model, database management system, or operating system.
Notices
What's new
What's new includes information about new functionality and changes in existing functionality from WebSphere Commerce Version 7 to WebSphere Commerce Version 8 release.
... in Version 8 Mod Pack 4
What's new includes information about new functionality and changes in existing functionality from WebSphere Commerce Version 8 to WebSphere Commerce Version 8 Mod Pack 4.
... in Version 8 Mod Pack 3
What's new includes information about new functionality and changes in existing functionality from WebSphere Commerce Version 8 to WebSphere Commerce Version 8 Mod Pack 3.
... in Version 8 Mod Pack 2
WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0.2 was released for IBM Commerce on Cloud only.
... in Version 8 Mod Pack 1
What's new includes information about new functionality and changes in existing functionality from WebSphere Commerce Version 8 to WebSphere Commerce Version 8 Mod Pack 1.
New features and functionality
This section describes the new features and functionality available with WebSphere Commerce.
IBM WebSphere Commerce Validated Technology Partner Solutions
IBM WebSphere Commerce Validated Technology Partners bring together innovative and relevant e-commerce services and solutions to help serve the global community of WebSphere Commerce customers across a wide range of industries. By leveraging prebuilt integrations, WebSphere Commerce customers can deliver additional value faster with complimentary capabilities that differentiate the customer experience.
Deprecated functionality
If you are migrating from an earlier version of WebSphere Commerce, be aware of the various features that are deprecated or removed from this and earlier releases.
Discontinued functionality
If you are migrating from an earlier version of WebSphere Commerce, be aware of the various features that are deprecated or removed from this and earlier releases.
User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
Planning
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.
Installing
Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
Migrating
Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
Deploying
The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
Operating
Integrating
Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
Administering
Tutorials
WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
Samples
Developing
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
Compliance
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.
Securing
These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.
Performance
Troubleshooting
WebSphere Commerce API reference
WebSphere Commerce exposes two main programming APIs. The first and newest API is a REST interface, and most new classes are exposed here. The legacy Java API also contains new classes not suitable for REST, and can be browsed in Javadoc format.
Cross-reference of data beans, EJB beans, and tables
Data beans are grouped into several component groups.
Cross-reference of commands, tasks, and tables
URL commands, controller commands, task commands, view commands and tables are related to each other.
Cross reference: Commands to beans to database tables
Use this information when you are customizing a command and you want to know which tables are affected. You should also use this topic if you are modifying a table and want to know which commands and beans are affected.
API changes between WebSphere Commerce Version 7.0.0.9 and WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0.0.0
If you are migrating version 7.0 of WebSphere Commerce, review the API changes between releases.
WebSphere Commerce database schema
The WebSphere Commerce database model was designed for data integrity and optimal performance. WebSphere Commerce provides several hundred tables that store WebSphere Commerce instance data. To maintain data integrity, and to ease maintenance referential integrity, constraints are widely used in the database model. Indexes are used carefully on tables to avoid over-indexing and to provide a good balance between data retrieval and data manipulation activities (insert and update). The business rules are implemented at the application level rather than by using database trigger. Triggers, however, are used to facilitate data staging and optimistic locking. A limited number of SQL-based database stored procedures are used for data intensive activities.
Payments subsystem
In WebSphere Commerce, payment processing uses the Payments subsystem.
Dynamic caching
In general, caching improves response time and reduces system load. Caching techniques are used to improve the performance of World Wide Web Internet applications. Most techniques cache static content (content that rarely changes) such as graphic and text files. However, many websites serve dynamic content, containing personalized information or data that changes more frequently. Caching dynamic content requires more sophisticated caching techniques, such as those provided by the WebSphere Application Server dynamic cache, a built-in service for caching and serving dynamic content.
Data Load utility configuration file schema
The Data Load utility contains several configuration files. You can use the configuration file schema to understand and customize the data load configuration files.
WebSphere Commerce web services
WebSphere Commerce provides many web services.
Utilities
Utilities help you to accomplish administrative or configuration tasks, for example, loading data, publishing a store.
Shopping flow URLs
WebSphere Commerce shopping flow URLs are organized by subsystem.
Ant targets
A WebSphere Commerce instance can be created from the command line. The command-line utility uses Apache Ant to create the objects required. The targets are divided into several high-level groups that correspond to the environment that is to be configured.
Glossary