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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.
Developing
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
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.
Search relevancy and merchandising
Search relevancy and merchandising is the process of controlling the search results that are returned to shoppers in the storefront, and the order in which they appear. There are several techniques that can be used to influence search relevancy, which lets you return products in the order that best suits your business needs.
Influencing relevancy for keyword search
Relevancy for keyword search applies as a shopper searches the store. Site administrators and business users can influence relevancy for keyword search by controlling which products are returned to shoppers in search results, and the order in which they appear. Search relevancy helps present relevant search results in the storefront to suit your shopper's needs.
Search relevancy
Search relevancy determines the products and the order that those products are displayed on the search results page. Relevant useful results are dependent upon several factors: descriptive product descriptions, properly indexed data, and the implementation of search features appropriate to the business. Search relevancy directly affects the store's revenue and conversion rate, as shoppers are more likely to purchase products that they are looking for.
Wildcard searching
To increase the number of search results, search queries can include a wildcard character (*) in the middle, or at the end of the search query. The wildcard indicates that all items that contain partial search term must be returned in search results. For example, the search query coff* returns search results for all items that contain the term coff, such as coffee or coffee maker.

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.
  - Functional architecture
    Functional architecture provides both the set of patterns used to implement the business functionality and the frameworks in which these business functions execute.
  - Persistent object model
    WebSphere Commerce deals with a large amount of persistent data. There are numerous tables defined in the current database schema. Even with this extensive schema, however, you might need to extend or customize the database schema for your particular business needs.
  - 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.
  - Controller layer
    The Controller layer is the conductor of operations for a request. It controls the transaction scope and manages the session related information for the request. The controller first dispatches to a command and then calls the appropriate view processing logic to render the response.
  - Business logic layer
    The business logic layer is the business components that provide OAGIS services to return data or start business processes. The presentation layer uses these OAGIS services to display data, or to invoke a business process. The business logic provides data required by the presentation layer. The business logic layer exists because more than just fetching and updating data is required by an application; there is also additional business logic independent of the presentation layer.
  - Persistence layer
    The interaction between the business objects and persistence layer is isolated in an object called the Business Object Mediator. Business object document (BOD) commands interact with the Business Object Mediator to handle the interaction with the logical objects and how they are persisted.
  - Business model information model
    A business model, a representation of the business processes used throughout the site, provides a sample commerce solution which includes an organization structure, default user roles and access control policies, one or more starter stores, administration tools, and business processes that demonstrate best practices. A business model can be customized to support business requirements and scenarios. WebSphere Commerce provides sample business models that show some common commerce solutions. These business models are created by setting up an organization hierarchy structure, access control policies, stores, and contracts that help satisfy the necessary business requirements.
  - Business models
    Before starting to develop your site with WebSphere Commerce, you need to determine the business model supported by WebSphere Commerce that best represents the purpose of your site. Usually sites created with WebSphere Commerce will be implemented based on of one of these business models.
  - Store data information model
    Store data is the information that is loaded into the WebSphere Commerce Server database, which allows your store to function. The URL Registry Entries and View Registry Entries packages are included in the diagram, but they are not database assets. These entries are presentation configuration (that is, struts actions and forwards) that must be deployed. URL registry entries are shown in the diagram to illustrate the entire store data information model. To operate properly, a store must have the data in place to support all customer activities. For example, in order for a customer to make a purchase, your store must contain a catalog of goods for sale (catalog data), the data associated with processing orders (tax and shipping data), and the inventory to fulfill the request (inventory and fulfillment data).
  - Customizing WebSphere Commerce
    You can extend the WebSphere Commerce product to fit your business needs. This topic describes the prerequisite skills and required knowledge that you need to customize business logic. After you have the required knowledge, use WebSphere Commerce Developer to take tutorials that guide you step-by-step through various customization scenarios.
  - WebSphere Commerce development environment
    WebSphere Commerce Developer is the development toolkit for customizing a WebSphere Commerce application.
  - Web services and WebSphere Commerce
    A web service is an interface that describes a collection of operations that are accessible through the network by using standardized XML messaging.
  - 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.
    - Search terminology
      WebSphere Commerce Search uses a number of specialized terms. A concise list of the most commonly used terms is provided to get you started.
    - Search services and interactions
      WebSphere Commerce Search includes several key services and interaction areas, including the search interface, programming model, and its interactions with other WebSphere Commerce components.
    - Search index
      The WebSphere Commerce Search index is built from temporary tables that read from a search index schema, and build structured and unstructured site content.
    - Deployment topologies and scenarios
      WebSphere Commerce Search indexes are created separately based on a specific master catalog. After you deploy the WebSphere Commerce Search index, you can separately manage and rebuild each index to refresh its data.
    - Search relevancy and merchandising
      Search relevancy and merchandising is the process of controlling the search results that are returned to shoppers in the storefront, and the order in which they appear. There are several techniques that can be used to influence search relevancy, which lets you return products in the order that best suits your business needs.
      - Enabling Manual sequencing and featured image features for Commerce Insights
        To manually change either the sequence of your products or the featured image in Commerce Insights, you must take steps to enable these options before you can use them.
      - Enabling Intelligent sequencing and featured image features for Commerce Insights
        To change either the sequence of your products or the featured image in Commerce Insights, you must take steps to enable these options before you can use them.
      - Influencing relevancy for keyword search
        Relevancy for keyword search applies as a shopper searches the store. Site administrators and business users can influence relevancy for keyword search by controlling which products are returned to shoppers in search results, and the order in which they appear. Search relevancy helps present relevant search results in the storefront to suit your shopper's needs.
        Search relevancy
        Search relevancy determines the products and the order that those products are displayed on the search results page. Relevant useful results are dependent upon several factors: descriptive product descriptions, properly indexed data, and the implementation of search features appropriate to the business. Search relevancy directly affects the store's revenue and conversion rate, as shoppers are more likely to purchase products that they are looking for.
        Relevancy scores
        Whether you tune search results for search relevancy or search merchandising purposes, you are working with their relevancy scores.
        Search relevancy and merchandising features in the Management Center
        Business users can manage product information and search term associations to influence search relevancy in the storefront. Business users can manage search rules, analyze search results, and filter the catalog to influence search merchandising in the storefront.
        Minimum match and phrase slop
        Influence search relevancy by using minimum match and phrase slop.
        Auto suggestions menu
        The Automatic Suggestion menu, which is displayed before a shopper submits a search, suggests keywords, categories, brands, site content, and search history. If the store uses contracts, the Automatic Suggestion menu displays products that the shopper is entitled to purchase.
        Automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction
        The search results page displays results that match the shopper's search query. If there are no matching results, the search results page shows possible spelling corrections and search results for the closest matching search term.
        Wildcard searching
        To increase the number of search results, search queries can include a wildcard character (*) in the middle, or at the end of the search query. The wildcard indicates that all items that contain partial search term must be returned in search results. For example, the search query coff* returns search results for all items that contain the term coff, such as coffee or coffee maker.
        Changing the default search type
        The search type controls the search scope of different catalog entry types to be searched and displayed in the storefront. It also controls the search operation that is used for multiple keyword search terms such as the AND operator, OR operator, and exact match.
        Changing the relevancy of search index fields
        Depending on your store catalog, some search index fields might be more relevant than others for when shoppers search in the store. You can fine-tune the relevancy of search index fields to improve search results that are based on your store catalog. The relevancy can be scoped to either the site level or to the category level.
        Tuning multiple-word search result relevancy by using minimum match and phrase slop
        Tune multi-keyword search relevancy by using minimum match and phrase slop when ALL or EXACT search types are too restrictive, or when ANY search types return too many results.
        Combining minimum match and search term associations
        You can enable minimum match with search term associations by using the Solr synonym expansion algorithm, or the query-time expansion algorithm. You cannot use the default search algorithm that is provided by WebSphere Commerce to combine minimum match with search term associations.
        Product grouping
        The Solr product grouping feature enables grouping parent catalog entries with their underlying SKUs at query time. Products can be chosen to represent the group that is returned in search results to provide visual relevancy.
        Managing keyword suggestions
        Manage keyword suggestions so that you can change the scope and types of keyword suggestions that appear in the storefront search field.
        Managing spell correction
        Spell correction (Did you mean?) is automatically triggered when a shopper searches for misspelled words. When a query with misspelled words returns no results, a second query that contains the top suggested terms is run by default.
        Limiting search terms and characters from the search query
        You can limit search terms and characters from the search query, such as unimportant words, stemming, or disabling wildcards and other characters.
        Making the expansion of search term associations case-sensitive
        Search term association expansion is not case-sensitive by default. You can make the expansion case-sensitive by adding a column to the SRCHTERM table and modifying an attribute in the Solr schema.xml file of each core.
      - Influencing relevancy for site navigation (search merchandising)
        Relevancy for site navigation applies as a shopper navigates the store. Site administrators and business users can influence relevancy for site navigation by controlling which products are returned to shoppers in store pages, and the order in which they appear. Search merchandising promotes, boosts, and sorts products in the storefront to suit your business needs.
      - Enabling custom facet value sequencing
        You can order facet values based on the browsed category. For example, you can ensure that one computer manufacturer’s products top the search results list when the customer searches under Electronics. When the same customer does the same search under the Baby/Kids category, a different manufacturer can top that list.
    - Search configuration
      WebSphere Commerce Search is configured using several files. These files contains properties that control certain search features, and can be extended to meet your business requirements.
    - Extension points and customization tasks
      WebSphere Commerce Search contains extension points that can be used for customization. There are mandatory and optional areas to work with, depending on the customization to your WebSphere Commerce Search implementation.
- 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

Wildcard searching

To increase the number of search results, search queries can include a wildcard character (*) in the middle, or at the end of the search query. The wildcard indicates that all items that contain partial search term must be returned in search results. For example, the search query coff* returns search results for all items that contain the term coff, such as coffee or coffee maker.

For example, submitting a search for coff* returns search results for all items that contain the term coff, including any terms that follow it, such as coffee or coffee maker.

Note: Wildcard searching is not case-sensitive by default in WebSphere Commerce Search.

The following screen capture shows wildcard searching in the store:
Screen capture for wildcard searching

Wildcard searching is enabled by default, but if necessary, you can disable it for runtime performance or security reasons.