WebSphere Commerce framework overview

In WebSphere Commerce, the server runtime defines the framework for handling system and user requests, and performs the appropriate business logic to process the requests. The framework is built by using an MVC design pattern and provides an environment that hosts business logic and handles persistence. It performs such tasks as transaction management and session management.

WebSphere Commerce supports various security mechanisms that can be used to protect access to data and other assets of the server. The access control framework in WebSphere Commerce prevents users for running particular business logic. The access control framework provides fine grained control on business logic, and flexibility to restrict access on what data the user can view and modify. With access control we can group commands by access groups, assign different customer commands to different owners, and assign access to all owners and global site administrator access. By using WebSphere global security, access to Web resources such as servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSP) files, and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) methods can be controlled for an extra layer of security.

The command framework, an architectural component of the Transaction Server runtime, provides the ability to execute commands that represent different business processes in the system. The command framework defines Java interfaces and abstract implementation that business logic extends and implements. Also provided is a set of base classes that commands can extend to simplify implementation.

The interactions between WebSphere Commerce components are shown in the following diagram.


Presentation layer


WebSphere Commerce command model layer

WebSphere Commerce commands are beans that contain the programming logic associated with handling a particular request. The main commands types are controller commands, and task commands.


Persistence layer

Entity beans are the persistent, transactional commerce objects that are provided by WebSphere Commerce. If we are familiar with the commerce domain, entity beans represent WebSphere Commerce data in an intuitive way. That is, rather than having to understand the whole the database schema, we can access data from an entity bean which more closely models concepts and objects in the commerce domain. We can extend existing entity beans. In addition, for our own application-specific business requirements, we can deploy entirely new entity beans.

JPA entities are implemented according to the JPA component model.


Related concepts
WebSphere Commerce application layers
Design patterns
WebSphere Commerce data beans
WebSphere Commerce framework interaction
WebSphere Commerce common architecture
Command types
WebSphere Commerce enterprise beans
WebSphere Commerce useBean tag


Related reference
JSP programming best practice: Use the StoreErrorDataBean data bean for error handling
JSP programming best practice: Use JSTL in place of Java code
WebSphere Commerce JSP programming best practices
JSP programming best practice: Use the Commerce-specific tag for bean activation