Roadmap: WebSphere Commerce services

WebSphere Commerce Web services enable you to provide business logic to external clients, tools, and integration partners. Updates and enhancements to WebSphere Commerce V6 have enabled different ways to implement services. This section describes the release version, and appropriate use of each implementation.

A Web service, often referred to simply as a service, is an interface that describes a collection of operations that are accessible through the network by using standardized XML messaging. Services are described using a standard, formal XML notation, called a service description.

WebSphere Commerce includes code and documentation that allow you to enable WebSphere Commerce business operations as services. You can allow WebSphere Commerce to be the service provider by enabling its business functions as services that can be accessed by external systems. You can also allow WebSphere Commerce to be the service consumer by enabling it to invoke services that are hosted by external systems.

WebSphere Commerce introduced the following implementations of services in version 6 and subsequent WebSphere Commerce Enhancements for version 6:

 

WebSphere Commerce services with JSP pages

WebSphere Commerce version 6 was released with support for Web services, using JSP pages as the mechanism for returning responses.

While still fully supported, this approach to services has been improved upon by free updates to WebSphere Commerce in Feature pack 2 and Feature pack 3.0.1. For more information, see:

These two tutorials for this approach to implementing services are provided:

WebSphere Commerce outbound services and back office integration in Feature Pack 1

WebSphere Commerce Feature Pack 1 introduced outbound service capability and reference applications that enable you to integrate sales channels served by WebSphere Commerce to your back-end systems. Two scenarios are enabled:

  1. The ability to integrate WebSphere Commerce with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

  2. The ability to integrate WebSphere Commerce with your order management system (OMS).

To read more about outbound services and back office integration, see the SOA Logical Architecture and WebSphere Commerce back-office integration topic.

 

WebSphere Commerce services and WebSphere Portal integration in Feature Pack 2

WebSphere Commerce continued to develop its approach to services in Feature Pack 2. The component facade replaced JSP pages as the mechanism for both interpreting and responding to Web service requests, and many new services were added to support your integration efforts. In addition, integration with WebSphere Portal was offered. For more information, see:

These four tutorials demonstrate the different implementations of services, with both Portal and Web 2.0 integration:

Tip: The first two tutorials can be performed back to back. The first tutorial covers the creation of a sample service module, and the second tutorial uses the services it provides in a WebSphere Portal sample store.

 

WebSphere Commerce Business Object Document command framework in Feature Pack 3.0.1

In WebSphere Commerce Feature Pack 3.0.1, the Business Object Document command framework is introduced. This command framework centers on your business objects, or nouns, as the value object used in all of your Java business logic. Persistence of these value objects is supported by the introduction of the data service layer. The documentation for this approach is found in the following topics:

To learn how to use the BOD command framework, see: