WCS Calculation Framework

WCS need to calculate monetary amounts and apply them to business objects. Business rules and legal requirements specify how and when these monetary amounts should be calculated. When these rules and requirements change,WCS can adapt to the changes with little or no programming changes.

WebSphere Commerce provides a flexible, generic framework that can be used to implement different kinds of calculations and apply them to the business objects. The framework can handle a wide variety of business and legal requirements without programming.  

WebSphere Commerce provides a number of method implementations from which you can select to do the calculations. If business or legal requirements require a programming change, you can make many such changes just by programming additional method implementations, without having to change existing programming. These implementations can be overridden.

The calculation framework is part of the WebSphere Commerce order subsystem. The order subsystem is a component of the WebSphere Commerce Server that provides shopping carts, order processing, and order management function support. The order system also includes related services, such as pricing, taxation, payment, inventory, and fulfillment.

Click the below link to know more about Calculation Framework.

http://wcs-tips.blogspot.in/p/calculation-framework-commerce-systems.html

WCS Payment Subsystem

The Payments subsystem helps us manage the payment information. It connects to Payment Service Providers by using payment plug-ins. Payment server concept in WCS 5.0, this has been replaced with payment subsystem. A new payment plugin can be created for interacting with external payment systems.

Click the following link to know more about Payment Subsystem.

http://wcs-tips.blogspot.in/p/payment-subsystem.html

Dynamic Kits

Configurable products are made-to-order products that are dynamically configured by the customer. This configuration (or grouping) of products is based on the customer's requirements and is sold as a single unit. In WebSphere Commerce, this type of configuration is called a dynamic kit and is one of the available catalog entries. The components of a dynamic kit are composed by an external product configurator through a set of predefined rules and user interaction. There are several product configurators available that can be used to configure dynamic kits.

Check the below link for more information:

http://wcs-tips.blogspot.in/p/dynamic-kits-data-model-and-order-flow.html

Persistent Sessions in WCS

WebSphere Commerce can be configured to enable persistent sessions. This enables some session-related information of the registered or guest user to be stored as permanent cookies. If persistent sessions are enabled, a customer at a WebSphere Commerce store will be recognized on subsequent visits to the store, even after the customer closes the browser. Sessions can be persisted for both guest and registered users.

Persistent sessions increase the ability of the store to monitor customer activities:

•     Analytic tools can correlate shopping activities that span multiple sessions, even if the user does not register.

•     Marketing experimentation can contain data from multiple sessions, which includes the sessions of guest customers.

Persistent sessions enhance the shopping experience:

•     It is easier for a customer to resume their existing shopping experience.

•     It is the only way for a guest customer to retrieve the pending shopping carts from a previous session.

To know more click the link below:

http://wcs-tips.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_73.html

Struts framework helps to develop web applications that utilize an MVC architecture. It helps separate the display logic from business logic.

Model = business logic (data model)
View = presentation
Controller = navigational code between model and view

The Flow

On receiving a HTTP request from the action servlet, the request processor, another key controller component, performs core request processing as follows:

1. Uses the module's Struts configuration file to determine the configured action mapping for the request.
2. Uses the module's Struts configuration file to locate or instantiate an appropriate action form for the request, if necessary, and populates and validates it.
3. Uses the module's Struts configuration file to locate or instantiate an appropriate action for the request.
4. Passes the request, action form, and action mapping to the action (step 3 in the preceding diagram).
5. Forwards the user to the appropriate view element when the action is completed

Lets see the important properties of Action Mappings.

Action mappings represent the information that the controller knows about the mapping of a particular request to an instance of a particular Action class. The request processor selects an appropriate action for each request based on the action mappings ( action-mapping elements) defined in the Struts configuration file.

To know more click here.

WCS Caching

Caching means temporary storing area for data. When we cache a data, the second request to fetch the data will not reach the server; it will fetch the data from the cache itself saving the time, network and the additional traffic. WCS provides a good support for dynamic caching. To know kore about the same, check the following link.

http://wcs-tips.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_23.html

WCS Subsystems

WCS framework is majorly used fo E-Commerce Sites development on basis of many subsystems, which helps in developing and integrating different functionalities of an e-commerce website like browse, checkout, and payment etc. For more details about the different subsystems in WCS, please read the following link.

http://wcs-tips.blogspot.in/p/blog-page.html