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WebSphere Commerce integration with WebSphere Portal
WebSphere Commerce provides integration code and support for WebSphere Portal Server. This integration allows to you aggregate WebSphere Commerce services and other content in a portal interaction environment.
This diagram illustrates the recommended practice for integrating WebSphere Commerce, a Business Application Service, with WebSphere Portal, an Interaction Service. The Interaction Service provides core portal services (WebSphere Portal) that aggregate applications and content and deliver them as role-based applications. This architecture is described in detail in the Logical Architecture Model section of IBM's SOA Foundation - An Architectural Introduction and Overview. The enterprise service bus (ESB) pattern is used for communication, mediation, transformation, and integration with external systems. If you use an ESB to integrate the Web services, the ESB manages the interactions between the WebSphere Commerce services and the presentation layer.
The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) resembles a pattern, rather than an implementation. As both WebSphere Commerce and WebSphere Portal use the same OAGIS message format for communication, there is no mediation required between these two server tiers. The underlying invocation service layer acts as a service binding platform. Therefore, WebSphere Commerce integration with WebSphere Portal does not require an ESB product such as WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (or WESB), however the concept of making use of a logical bus is still present. You do not need to alter the presentation layer to support the protocol and format used by the WebSphere Commerce services. Instead, you rely on the ESB to perform tasks such as message transformation and protocol mediation. Neither WebSphere Commerce nor WebSphere Portal needs to change in order to communicate with one another. The ESB acts as an interpreter between the two systems and translates the messages into a format that the receiving system understands.
WebSphere Commerce and WebSphere Portal integration
The WebSphere Commerce and WebSphere Portal service-oriented integration support gives you an aggregated presentation of WebSphere Commerce services and non-WebSphere Commerce services. There are several benefits:
- WebSphere Portal provides the ability to aggregate and to present contents delivered from services, whether they are provided by WebSphere Commerce or a vendor-acquired software application.
- Single sign-on from WebSphere Portal provides a secure method of authenticating a user one time within an environment and using that single authentication (for the duration of the session) as a basis for access to WebSphere Commerce Services.
- Portlets that render WebSphere Commerce content are JSR-168 compliant, enabling them to work with other vendors' portlets in a single portlet container. JSR-168 compliance also allows you to leverage tools that are designed for JSR-168.
- Have the WebSphere Commerce portlets communicate with the other portlets to deliver a rich user experience.
- Leverage the portlet tag library from WebSphere Portal.
- WebSphere Commerce Portal Integration site architecture
The WebSphere Commerce Portal Integration sample site architecture includes relationships between the Internet, Internet DMZ, Production DMZ, and Intranet.
- Plan the WebSphere Commerce Portal site
There are a number of portal page layout design considerations when planning the WebSphere Commerce Portal site. These considerations include using volume of user traffic as the primary driving factor, performing updates in action phase only, and avoiding the following practices: too many portlets on a single page, overloaded themes, unnecessary portlet wires, large JavaScript, unnecessary drag-and-drop operations, and improperly planned caching.
- Single sign-on (SSO) and WebSphere Commerce Portal
When integrating with a WebSphere Portal, there are multiple types of authentication available to you to use.
- WebSphere Portal integration prerequisites
To enable WebSphere Portal with WebSphere Commerce, meet the prerequisites listed on the following pages:
- Configure WebSphere Portal with WebSphere Commerce
To configure WebSphere Commerce with WebSphere Portals complete configuration tasks on each machine.
- Install the WebSphere Commerce portlet application on the WebSphere Portal server
Before completing the configuration of the WebSphere Portal machine, install the WebSphere Commerce MVCPortlet application. The MVCPortlet application is an implementation of the MVC pattern that allows WebSphere Portal administrators to set up one or more portlets, each with its own configuration, to call various WebSphere Commerce services.
- Create a WebSphere Commerce sample portal page on WebSphere Portal
This list highlights the main tasks involved for creating a WebSphere Commerce sample portal page on WebSphere Portal. This sample portal page consists of a set of portlets that demonstrate some of the WebSphere Commerce capabilities through WebSphere Portal. These WebSphere Commerce portlets, when working together using cooperative portlet wires, provide online shoppers with a similar shopping experience to that of the WebSphere Commerce Madisons starter store, while providing merchants with additional online business sales channels to other portal environments. Each of these portlets provide a unique set of WebSphere Commerce functionality that can be further customized by business partners, integrators and customers.
- Maintain the WebSphere Commerce portlet application
There are two ways to apply fixes or updates to the MVC Portlet application which is already installed and deployed to the WebSphere Portal server:
Related concepts
Single sign-on (SSO) and WebSphere Commerce Portal
Maintain the WebSphere Commerce portlet application
WebSphere Commerce Portal Integration site architecture
WebSphere Commerce Portal integration architecture
WebSphere Commerce and service-oriented architecture (SOA)
WebSphere Commerce Web services
WebSphere Commerce services functional architecture
Customize WebSphere Commerce Portal integration
Related tasks
Configure WebSphere Portal with WebSphere Commerce
Configure the sample portlets in the server environment
Configure the sample portlets in the development environment
Install the WebSphere Commerce portlet application on the WebSphere Portal server
Configure WebSphere Portal with WebSphere Commerce using basic authentication
Configure WebSphere Portal with WebSphere Commerce using simulated single sign-on
Related reference
WebSphere Commerce portlet samples
WebSphere Portal integration prerequisites
WebSphere Portal integration prerequisites for the WebSphere Commerce machine
WebSphere Portal integration prerequisites for the WebSphere Portal machine