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HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
Customizing
The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
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.
Business context service
The business context service manages contextual information used by business components. The information is encapsulated within different types of business contexts. This process formalizes the context infrastructure and fosters reuse between different business models.
Sequence diagram: Retrieving and updating business contexts
This diagram illustrates how a business component retrieves and updates context information. The following example shows how the preferred language of a user is set on the GlobalizationContext.

Documentation
HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
- Getting started
  HCL Commerce has different advantages for business users, administrators and developers. HCL Commerce targets each of these roles with a tailored set of offerings so that each of your users can get maximum benefit.
- Installing and deploying
  Learn how to install and deploy HCL Commerce development environments and HCL Commerce production environments.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to HCL Commerce Version 9.1, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Operating
  Topics in the Operating category highlight tasks that are typically performed by business users, customer support representatives, to complete their day-to-day tasks in the operation of the HCL Commerce site.
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using HCL Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
  Topics in the Administering category highlight tasks that are typically performed by the Site Administrator, to support daily operations of the HCL Commerce site.
- Customizing
  The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
  - Customizing Management Center for HCL Commerce
    HCL Commerce allows you to pull the GIT bundle of Management Center source code and start the application locally to customize the Management Center.
  - Managed asset deployment
    Managed assets are files that are uploaded by business users to be used for store marketing, or to supplement products. They are added to HCL Commerce through the Assets tool or the Marketing tool in Management Center. By default, managed assets are extracted and deployed through the HCL Commerce EAR. To maintain performance in a large-scale production environment, site administrators must switch to alternative extraction and deployment methods for managed assets.
  - HCL Commerce development environment
    HCL Commerce Developer is the development toolkit for customizing a HCL Commerce application.
  - 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
    HCL 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.
  - Creating your custom store
    After you install and set up your programming environment, you can create your custom store and customize your storefront. You must ensure that the store server is properly configured, and that your store assets are moved to the Store server.
  - Presentation layer
    HCL 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.
    - Business context service
      The business context service manages contextual information used by business components. The information is encapsulated within different types of business contexts. This process formalizes the context infrastructure and fosters reuse between different business models.
      - Sequence diagram: Initiating an activity
        To invoke a method on a business component, a client or a solution controller obtains an activity token by calling BCS begin method. In the process of obtaining this activity token the client may optionally supply initialization data. This initialization data is used to populate the contexts that are preloaded when a new activity is created. When a particular service method is invoked on a Business Component Service interface the client must pass the activity token.
      - Sequence diagram: Creating a new activity based on an existing one
        This diagram shows the interactions between BCS and the Context SPI when the Solution Controller creates an activity based on an existing activity. Creating a new activity could be initiated when a user switches from one store to another, or when an administrator performs a task on behalf of a customer.
      - Sequence diagram: Terminating an activity
        This diagram shows the interaction between the Solution Controller and BCS when an activity is terminated. Usually, an activity terminates when a user logs out of the site.
      - Sequence diagram: Pre-request and post-request processing
        This diagram shows the interaction between the BCS and Context SPI. Either interface can indicate that is about to start execution or has completed execution.
      - Sequence diagram: Retrieving and updating business contexts
        This diagram illustrates how a business component retrieves and updates context information. The following example shows how the preferred language of a user is set on the GlobalizationContext.
      - Business Context configuration file
        Default business contexts are defined in the xml/config/businessContext.xml file. The location of the file is defined in the BusinessContextService/BusinessContextConfigFile attribute in HCL Commerce configuration file (xml/wc-server.xml). Multiple file locations separated by commas are allowed for this attribute to support component-based development. That is, when creating a new business context, instead of modifying the default configuration file, you can define it in a separate file and append it to the end of the BusinessContextConfigFile attribute on the BusinessContextService element. This implementation allows for future upgrade to the businessContext.xml file without affecting the business context that you have registered.
      - Defining business context sets for a Web application
        Business contexts establish an execution environment that affects the output of a business component for the equivalent input based on the solution needs. The output produced by a component for a given input is always identical for the same set of contexts. Contexts are not directly invoked by clients of the business processes. Instead it is the business component that uses the services provided by the contexts during the execution of a request. A context provides a set of service methods and may optionally store session data that does not change very often over an activity lifespan. The lifespan of a context starts with the creation of an activity and ends with the completion of the activity.
      - Creating a new business context
        All business contexts are registered in a business context configuration file. In the file, you have to specify a business context factory class to create the business context. If the SimpleBusinessContextFactory class, the default factory class, is used to create the business context, you must provide the name of the implementation class as one of the parameters to the factory. To register a business context in the system, refer to the business context configuration file.
      - Using business context data in customization
        Some customization tasks involve writing business logic that must retrieve business context data about a user session. For example, this data might be the user ID, the store ID, the language ID, or the ID of the catalog the user is browsing. HCL Commerce provides a set of interfaces you can use to retrieve the specific business context data you need.
    - Name-value pair command framework
      The name-value pair command framework uses name-value pairs as input to the business logic layer, and returns the responses as name-value pairs.
    - HCL Commerce use of Open Applications Group (OAGIS) messaging
      HCL Commerce service interfaces are defined using the OAGIS message structure, from The Open Applications Group.
  - 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. HCL 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 HCL Commerce, you need to determine the business model supported by HCL Commerce that best represents the purpose of your site. Usually sites created with HCL 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 Transaction 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 HCL Commerce
    You can extend the HCL 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 HCL Commerce Developer to take tutorials that guide you step-by-step through various customization scenarios.
  - Run Engine command framework
    The Run Engine command framework provides predefined commands, that you can use to change environment parameters or container configurations. This framework is built into the HCL provided Docker images.
  - GraphQL for HCL Commerce
    The GraphQL markup language is available for any API. It is a server-side interpreter for processing queries using a data type system you design. With GraphQL, your data and code are independent of any database or storage system.
  - Representational State Transfer (REST) services
    HCL Commerce uses Representational State Transfer (REST) services to provide a framework that can be used to develop RESTful applications on several platforms. These platforms can include web, mobile, kiosks, and social applications.
  - Web services
  - Search
    HCL Commerce comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in HCL Commerce provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on industry standards, HCL Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization. Starting with Version 9.1, HCL Commerce Search with Elasticsearch microservices manage indexing and other crucial tasks, with no performance impact on the storefront or transaction server.
- Tutorials
  HCL Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your HCL Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
  Topics in the Samples category highlight the various samples that are provided with HCL Commerce.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage HCL Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of HCL Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
  Topics in the Performance section describe the means by which to plan, implement, test, and re-visit the optimization of HCL Commerce site performance.
- Troubleshooting
  Topics in the Troubleshooting section highlight common issues that are encountered with HCL Commerce, and how they can be addressed or mitigated.
- Reference
  Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.

Sequence diagram: Retrieving and updating business contexts

This diagram illustrates how a business component retrieves and updates context information. The following example shows how the preferred language of a user is set on the GlobalizationContext.

Business component calls startRequest() on BCS to have the contexts set up and cached for the request.
Executes the business logic to provide the requested service.
During the execution of the business operation, findContext() is called on BCS, usually by using the CommandContext object that is available for each command, to retrieve a business context. In the following, the GlobalizationContext for the request is returned.
The business logic then retrieves and updates information as required from the business context. In the following example, the preferred language ID is updated.
Once the service operation is complete, business component calls the endRequest() method on BCS.
During the endRequest() execution, BCS determines whether any business contexts is modified during the request and requires to be updated in the database. In this example, since the preferred language ID is modified, the GlobalizationContext will be updated.

How a business component retrieves and updates context information