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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.
Reference
Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.
Docker container start up logic for HCL Commerce Version 9.1
When you deploy a container from an HCL provided image, an Entrypoint.sh helper script determines the configurations to use while starting up the container. Review the following information to learn about what the helper script does, and how you can customize the configurations.
Starting containers by retrieving parameters from container environment variables
If you do not use Vault, you can retrieve parameters from container environment variables (CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables). For example, if you are using docker run, you can pass all parameters through command line, or if you are setting up a pipeline, you can set your pipeline to provide the parameters.

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.
- 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.
  - HCL Commerce API reference
    HCL 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 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.
  - Run Engine commands
    The following Run Engine commands are available by default for you to configure the applications that are running inside the containers.
  - Entering Docker containers
    To enter a Docker container you can complete the following steps.
  - Docker container start up logic for HCL Commerce Version 9.1
    When you deploy a container from an HCL provided image, an Entrypoint.sh helper script determines the configurations to use while starting up the container. Review the following information to learn about what the helper script does, and how you can customize the configurations.
    - Starting containers with default configurations
      Learn how to start the containers with the default configurations. That is without specifying the CONFIGURE_MODE parameter. There are mandatory and optional parameters that you can specify depending on how you want to start your container.
    - Starting containers by retrieving parameters from Vault
      You can use Vault (CONFIGURE_MODE=Vault) as a configuration management center and set your parameters in Vault. This method is best used in a multiple tenant environment by using an orchestration platform such as Kubernetes.
    - Starting containers by retrieving parameters from container environment variables
      If you do not use Vault, you can retrieve parameters from container environment variables (CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables). For example, if you are using docker run, you can pass all parameters through command line, or if you are setting up a pipeline, you can set your pipeline to provide the parameters.
      - Starting the Transaction server Docker container
        Learn about how to start Transaction server Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting the Search server Docker container
        Learn about how to start the Search server Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting Store server Docker container
        Learn about how to start Store server Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting the Web server Docker container
        Learn about how to start the Web server Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting the Customization server Docker container
        Learn about how to start the Customization server Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting the Must-Gather Docker container
        Learn about how to start the Must-Gather server Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting the GraphQL Docker container
        Learn about how to start the GraphQL Docker container by specifying  CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting the Tooling Web Docker container
        Learn about how to start the Tooling Web Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting the Approval Server Docker container
        Learn about how to start the Approval Server Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
      - Starting the PostgreSQL Docker container
        As a third party Docker container, configuration via environment variables with PostgreSQL is not supported.
      - Starting the Nextjs (Ruby) store Docker container
        Learn about how to start the Nextjs (Ruby) store Docker container by specifying CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables.
    - Optional: Using Vault as a certificate authority
      You can use vault as a certificate authority by specifying VAULT_CA=true. This is an optional configuration and can be used with any of the configuration mode supported to handle internal certification between your containers.
  - HCL Commerce database schema
    The HCL Commerce database model was designed for data integrity and optimal performance. HCL Commerce provides several hundred tables that store HCL 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 HCL 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.
  - HCL Commerce store pages properties
  - Cache-entry elements
    The root element of the cachespec.xml file, <cache>, contains <cache-entry> elements. The WebSphere dynamic cache service parses the cachespec.xml file during start-up, and extracts a set of configuration parameters from each <cache-entry> element.
  - 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.
  - HCL Commerce web services
    HCL Commerce provides many web services.
  - Utilities
    In HCL Commerce utilities are scripts that perform operations such as loading access control policies, loading store data, and cleaning the database of obsolete objects. In runtime environments, run utilities from the Utility server Docker container. In the development environment, run utilities from the bin directory.
  - Shopping flow URLs
    HCL Commerce shopping flow URLs are organized by subsystem.
  - Messaging system URLs
    The following URLs relate to the Messaging system.
  - Scheduler URLs
    The server subsystem consists of functions that are associated with URLs that are run by the scheduler.
  - jQuery Enhancements API
    The Aurora starter store in HCL Commerce is completely written in jQuery, which is one of the most commonly used JavaScript libraries used in dynamic websites. The jQuery AJAX and events API provides an easy to use framework that meets most AJAX requirements for storefront development.
  - HCL Commerce foundation tag library
    The HCL Commerce foundation JSTL tag library is a collection of custom tags that are provided to you to support the authoring of HCL Commerce JSP files. HCL Commerce stores use the JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) to perform logic, instead of Java code. At the same time, business logic is moved into data beans. The combination of these steps allows for less Java code in a JSP page.

Starting containers by retrieving parameters from container environment variables

If you do not use Vault, you can retrieve parameters from container environment variables (CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables). For example, if you are using docker run, you can pass all parameters through command line, or if you are setting up a pipeline, you can set your pipeline to provide the parameters.

By using this approach, you need to:

Be familiar with HCL Commerce Docker configuration logic and Docker parameters.
Configure the host names and certifications of related components.

If you are going to manage a multi-tenant environment, it is suggested you use start Vault configuration mode (CONFIGURE_MODE=Vault).

To start EnvVariables configuration mode, edit preConfigure.sh to include the following:

docker run -it -e LICENSE=accept  \
    -e CONFIGURE_MODE=EnvVariables    
    -e <Parameter1>=<Value1>
    -e <Parameter2>=<Value2>
    <Docker image>

Note: If you use this method and do not use the default host names, ensure that your custom host name matches the SubjectAlternativeNames in related certifications in other containers.