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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 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.
Solr configuration files
Solr configuration files control search indexes, cores, and interactions with WebSphere Commerce. You cannot extend Solr configuration files. Ensure that you track the changes you make to the files, so that you can reapply your changes when you update WebSphere Commerce search.

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.
    - 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.
      - WC EAR
        The WebSphere Commerce Search configuration on the WebSphere Commerce EAR includes files that contain properties that control certain search features, and can be extended to meet your business requirements.
      - Search EAR
        The WebSphere Commerce Search configuration coexists on both the WebSphere Commerce and Search EAR files. They include files that contain properties that control certain search features, and can be extended to meet your business requirements.
      - STORECONF table
        The STORECONF table contains properties to configure various WebSphere Commerce Search application features.
      - Solr configuration files
        Solr configuration files control search indexes, cores, and interactions with WebSphere Commerce. You cannot extend Solr configuration files. Ensure that you track the changes you make to the files, so that you can reapply your changes when you update WebSphere Commerce search.
        Solr schema file (schema.xml)
        The schema.xml file contains information about the Solr fields and how they are analyzed and filtered during searches. Different field types can contain different types of data. Solr uses the schema.xml file to determine how to build indexes from the input documents, and how to perform index and query time processing.
        Solr XML file (solr.xml)
        The solr.xml file specifies configuration options for each Solr core, including configuration options for multiple cores. The file also contains mappings for request URLs, and indicates which cores to load when the server starts.
        Solr configuration file (solrconfig.xml)
        The solrconfig.xml controls how Solr behaves by mapping requests to different handlers. One index can be represented as one core. If you want to use multiple indexes, for example, a book of recipes and a book of countries, these different indexes or books represent different cores. The solrconfig.xml contains most of the parameters for configuring Solr. It defines how search requests are managed, and how to manipulate data for the user.
        Extending the schema.xml file
        The schema.xml file defines the default index schema structure. The default index schema can be extended using a separate XML file. The most common customizations of the index schema is defining new index fields.
        Extending the solrconfig.xml file
        The solrconfig.xml file defines Solr properties with default values. The default file can be extended using a separate XML file. The most common customizations of the Solr configuration file is defining new values for replication and caching.
        Extending the wc-data-config.xml file
        The wc-data-config.xml file defines the default indexing queries, and the corresponding field mapping between the database column names and the index field names.
    - 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

Solr configuration files

Solr configuration files control search indexes, cores, and interactions with WebSphere Commerce. You cannot extend Solr configuration files. Ensure that you track the changes you make to the files, so that you can reapply your changes when you update WebSphere Commerce search.

Note: You cannot directly modify or extend Solr configuration files, such as the schema.xml, solrconfig.xml, or wc-data-config.xml files. Instead, you can work with customizable files to extend Solr configuration files:

The schema.xml file can be extended using the x-schema.xml file.
The solrconfig.xml file can be extended using the solrcore.properties file.
The wc-data-config.xml file can be extended using a combination of the solrcore.properties and x-data-config.xml files, depending on the scope of the customization.