What you need to know first:
WebSphere Commerce is a Java and J2EE compliant application. To successfully customize WebSphere Commerce you should have knowledge and skills in the following: programming SQL, Java, JavaScript, HTML, XML. You should also be develop and deploy Java servlets and JavaServer Pages in dynamic Web applications. In addition, you should have a basic understanding of WebSphere Studio Application Developer.
Recommended reading
Before beginning to customize WebSphere Commerce you should read the following topics. The goal of these reading topics is to:
Understand the business models that WebSphere Commerce supports.
Understand the WebSphere Commerce architecture and development tools including the information model, data model, and programming model.
- Understand the business processes that WebSphere Commerce supports. The business process model shows where you can extend processes and provides implementation details for all tasks within the business process.
Understand common WebSphere Commerce programming techniques and learn useful scenarios for extending the base WebSphere Commerce functionality.
All store programmers should review the following topics:
- WebSphere Commerce software components: Introduces how the WebSphere Commerce development environment interacts with the Web server, Database server and WebSphere Application Server.
- WebSphere Commerce runtime architecture: Describes the major components of WebSphere Commerce and how they interact.
- Model-View-Controller design pattern: Describes how the data model, presentation information, and control information are separated into different objects.
- WebSphere Commerce development environment: Introduces the main features of the development environment.
If you will develop Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs), read the following topics:
If you will develop WebSphere Commerce commands, read the following topics:
Tutorials
WebSphere Commerce provides tutorials that are designed to introduce the various tasks related to creating customized code for WebSphere Commerce applications. The development-related steps are to be performed in either a WebSphere Commerce Developer Business Edition, a WebSphere Commerce Developer - Express Edition, or a WebSphere Commerce Developer Professional Edition. The deployment steps are to be performed on WebSphere Commerce (either Business, Express, or Professional edition, corresponding to your development environment) running on Windows 2000.
- Creating new business logic
This tutorial guides you through the steps of creating the following asset types: a new view, a new controller command, a new task command, new data beans, and a new entity bean. - Extending an existing WebSphere Commerce entity bean
This tutorial guides you through the steps of modifying an existing WebSphere Commerce entity bean. You also learn how to create a database table, and an implementation class. This tutorial also demonstrates how to modify existing JSP files. - Extending the object model and modifying an existing task command
This tutorial guides you through the steps to create a new database table, and create a new entity bean. This tutorial also demonstrates how to extend a task command and instantiate a new data bean. - Modifying an existing controller command
This tutorial guides you through the steps to create a new implementation for an existing controller command; update the command registry so that the new implementation gets used in your application; and deploy a modified controller command to an existing WebSphere Commerce application.
Samples
- WebSphere Commerce JSP preview environment
- Using WebSphere Commerce as a Web service
- Sample access control policies for development purposes
Examples
WebSphere Commerce provides a flexible, generic framework that can be used to implement different kinds of calculations and apply them to the applicable business objects. The framework can handle a wide variety of business and legal requirements without programming. WebSphere Commerce provides a number of overridable method implementations from which you can select to do the calculations. If business or legal requirements require a programming change, many such changes can be limited to programming additional overridable method implementations without having to make any changes to existing programming. This framework is referred to as the calculation framework.