Stores

In order to conduct business online, you must have a place where business transactions occur. For example, banking transactions occur in a financial institution, purchases occur in a seller's retail operation, and government transactions occur in a government organization. WebSphere Commerce uses the generic term store to describe the online space where all of these business transactions take place.

Regardless of the type of business being conducted, an online store commonly uses Internet technologies to sell or exchange goods or services. It is composed of a collection of Web pages and other assets (such as catalogs of items for sale) that display your products or services and allows customers to purchase them. The home page brings customers into the store, and directs them to your products and services. Online catalog pages group products together, and direct customers to the product pages, where they can find detailed information about the product. In consumer direct stores, the Shopping Cart page fulfills the same role as a physical shopping cart: you add products you wish to purchase to it, and then pay for them in the Checkout pages.

Business Edition only In business to business sites, certain pages allow you to submit purchase orders and RFQs. For a list of common pages, see the WebSphere Commerce Sample Store Guide.

Supported store types

WebSphere Commerce supports several different types of entities that are all defined as stores. These store types include store, hosted store, asset store, and proxy store. Each of the store assets can be edited in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.

Customer facing store
An online site where users may obtain information regarding products, and conduct business transactions over these products. Business transactions may include retail purchases, transactions between businesses and transactions between a government organization and citizens or businesses. WebSphere Commerce uses the generic term 'store' to describe the online space where all of these business transactions take place. WebSphere Commerce supports the following customer facing stores:
Hub store
A store that enables partners or clients.
Direct sales store
A store that supports the exchange of products, services, or information directly between businesses and consumers, or between two businesses or parties.
Hosted store
A store that is hosted by the site operator for the owner of the store. The store owner may have the option of administering the store.
Asset store
A store that contains a collection of sharable resources (business artifacts, business processes, and storefront assets) that can be leveraged in other types of stores. For example, a catalog asset store is a collection of catalog artifacts that creates a virtual catalog. A storefront asset store is a collection of JSP files, commands, business processes (for example order processing), business policies and access control policies that create a virtual storefront. 

Asset stores do not perform or record business transactions. They are simply holders of assets that can be used by other stores.

Proxy store
A store that represents a business partner's operational assets. This store also handles the business logic that allows a WebSphere Commerce site to interact with an external business partner. For example, a proxy store may capture the orders transferred to a remote order capture system, as well as capturing the suppliers' inventory information or the information sent to a supplier's fulfillment centers. A proxy store does not include a storefront and can not be accessed by users. Administrators working on behalf of the external business may have administrative access to the proxy store through the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.

The type of store you are working with, as well as your user role determines what functions of the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator you can use to edit it.  For more information on what function is available for what store, see WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.

All sites or stores developed with WebSphere Commerce are an instance of one of the following supported business models:

For more information on each business model, see Business models supported by WebSphere Commerce.

Supported store type by business model

Business model Type of supported stores Sample
Consumer direct Store FashionFlow
B2B direct Store ToolTech
Hosting Hub store Commerce Hosting Hub
Store directory Store directory
Asset store Catalog asset store
Hosted storefront asset store
Hosted store not available
Value chain (Demand) Hub store Commerce Plaza
 
Asset store Catalog asset store Reseller storefront asset store  
Hosted store

(reseller store)

not available
Proxy store DistributorProxy.sar
Value chain
(Supply)
Store Commerce Supplier Hub
Asset store Catalog asset store
Supplier storefront asset store
Hosted store (supplier store) not available

Store assets

Online stores are composed of the following assets:

Storefront
The external portion of your store, or the portion that displays to your customers, is known as the storefront. The storefront is comprised of Web assets such as HTML pages, JSP files, style sheets, images, graphics and other multimedia file types. Store pages can be either static or dynamic. A static Web page contains content that displays the same way each time the page is requested from a browser, while a dynamic Web page contains content that is generated when the user requests the page. This dynamic content is typically extracted from a database, allowing the store to present information that is tailored to the customer's request. Dynamic store pages are created using JavaServer Pages technology. Each page contains HTML for static content, client-side JavaScript to handle input data, URLs to invoke WebSphere Commerce Server commands and other views, as well as JSP tags and Java code for generating dynamic content. A set of commerce data beans included with the WebSphere Commerce development environment and WebSphere Commerce are available for use by your JavaServer Pages files, allowing you to access information from the database, like the price of a product, or the product's attributes.
For more detailed information on the concepts and tasks involved in creating the JSP files that build your store pages, see the WebSphere Commerce Store Development Guide.
Back office
The portion of your store that customers do not see; the commands, customized code, and the implementation of business logic that allow customers to purchase a product in the storefront, is known as the back office.
For more detailed information on creating business logic or customized code see the WebSphere Commerce Programming Guide and Tutorials.
Store data
The data assets that compose your store. In order 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, a process to handle orders, the inventory to fulfill the request, and a shipping process in place. You must also have methods for processing and collecting payment.
For more detailed information on the concepts and tasks involved in creating store data, see the WebSphere Commerce Store Development Guide.

Note: A stand alone store contains all of the above assets as does a hosted store. Asset stores may or may not contain all of the above assets, but most likely will contain only a subset of these assets.

Store archive

A store archive file (.sar) is a compressed archive file (a ZIP file) that contains all the assets necessary to create a store. It is primarily used as a vehicle for packaging and delivering stores in a format that may be easily copied, and then used as a base upon which to create new stores. You only need to publish a store archive to the commerce server to create a functioning store that you can view, browse, and shop.

Business Edition onlyStore archive files are also used to package and deliver organization structures, predefined user roles, and access control policies necessary to create the environment for your store or site, as well as asset stores. For a list of the sample store archives available with WebSphere Commerce, see Sample store archives.

For more detailed information on the store archive concepts and tasks, see the WebSphere Commerce Store Development Guide. For examples of store archives, see the WebSphere Commerce Sample Store Guide.

Supplied sample stores

WebSphere Commerce provides several sample stores which you can use as a base for your own online store, or as tool to familiarize yourself with WebSphere Commerce feature and functionality. Sample stores are provided with WebSphere Commerce as store archives. In order to view or browse in a sample store, you only need to publish a sample store archive to the commerce server. For a list of the sample stores provided with WebSphere Commerce, see Sample stores.

For more detailed information on the samples stores provided with WebSphere Commerce, see the WebSphere Commerce Sample Store Guide.

Store development and creation

For information on how to create or develop stores (including stores, hosted stores, and asset stores) within WebSphere Commerce, see the WebSphere Commerce Store Development Guide.

For more information on creating hosted stores, see Creating a hosted store with the Store Creation wizard. For more information on creating proxy stores, see Creating a proxy store (distributor) service agreement (Business Edition).