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.

WebSphere Commerce uses entity beans that are based on the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) V2.1 component architecture as the persistent object layer. Most of the WebSphere Commerce entity beans are at EJB 1.1 level. All the EJB modules inside WebSphere Commerce are at EJB 2.x level. These entity beans represent WebSphere Commerce data in a manner that models concepts and objects in the commerce domain. This persistence layer provides an extensible framework.

WebSphere Commerce Developer provides sophisticated EJB tools and a unit test environment that support development for this framework.

The topics in this sections should be understood in the context of the WebSphere Commerce persistent object model implementation.

• WebSphere Commerce enterprise beans
  The persistence layer within the WebSphere Commerce architecture is implemented according to the EJB component architecture. The EJB architecture defines two types of enterprise beans: entity beans and session beans. Entity beans are further divided into container-managed persistence (CMP) beans and bean-managed persistence (BMP) beans.

Related concepts

WebSphere Commerce enterprise beans
Extending the WebSphere Commerce object model