TECHNO LOGS

Specify landing pages for search terms in WCS FEP2+

2013-05-22T12:41:00.001+10:00

Landing pages for Search Terms WCS FEP2+

From FEP2 onwards, IBM provides a feature in management center where the user can configure landing pages for search keywords. For example,

search term landing page
help HelpContactUsView

A specific requirement was to display the same view (ContentDisplayView) but with different parameters based on different search terms as in for search term "Terms and Conditions" the landing page should be ContentDisplayView?emsName=xxx where as for "privacy policy" it should be ContentDisplayView?emsName=yyy

Configuring this scenario using a relative path of the view by passing in the parameters doesn't work. However, landing page can be an absolute URL with query parameters like shown below

Instead of ContentDisplayView as the landing page, you can have http://hostname/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentDisplayView?storeId=nnn&catalogId=xxx&emsName=zzz

This fulfills the requirement of associating the same landing page with different search terms and different URL parameters.

Reference

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.commerce.developer.doc%2Fconcepts%2Fcsdsearchindexschema.htm

Displaying Search Facets in WCS FEP5

2013-02-26T17:26:00.001+11:00

Until about FEP4, the search facets data was in SRCHATTR and SRCHATTRPROP tables. SRCHATTR defines the search attributes and SRCHATTRPROPS defines the properties for the attributes (like facetable, displayable, searchable etc).

In Feature pack 5, two new tables for facets are available namely, FACET and FACETDESC.

As an example, to make price facets work for a different currency that is not supported out of the box, like AUD, we first need to create a search attribute (SRCHATTR table) with IDENTIFIER _cat.OfferPrice_AUD

For the above search attribute, create a search attribute property name “facet” and property value “price_AUD:{* 100} 100;{100 200} 200;{200 300} 300;{300 400} 400;{400 500} 500;{500 *}” (adjust the range of facet as required)

Now add a row in FACET table with a reference to SRCHATTR_ID created in previous steps. Add appropriate descriptions to FACETDESC table.

Update registry and clear cache and should be able to view the facet on the storefront.

Ref: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.commerce.developer.doc%2Ftasks%2Ftsdsearchenableattr.htm

Loading Attribute Dictionary Attributes

2013-02-26T17:01:00.001+11:00

Create two csv files as below

AttributeDictionaryAttributeAndAllowedValues.csv

This contains the attribute name and allowed values AttributeDictionaryAttributeAndAllowedValues,,,,,,,,,,,,
Identifier,Type,AttributeType,Sequence,Displayable,Searchable,Comparable,Name,AllowedValue1,AllowedValue2,AllowedValue3,AllowedValue4,AllowedValue5,Delete

DRColour,STRING,AllowedValues,1.0,true,true,true,Colour,Black,Silver,,,,
DRTuner,STRING,AllowedValues,2.0,true,true,true,Tuner,Single tuner USB HDD PRV,,,,,

The first two lines constitute the header.
The first column is an identifier for the attribute.
The 2^nd column defines the type of the attribute value (STRING, DECIMAL, WHOLE NUMBER)
The 3^rd column specifies the attribute type. Two types are possible (AllowedValues, AssignedValues). Using AllowedValues, business user can select one of the available values for an attribute. Using AssignedValues, business users can enter the value for the attribute. AllowedValues can be reused and assigned to a different catentry. This column will in most cases be AllowedValues.
The 4^th Column is Sequence which defines the ordering of attributes. (1.0, 2.0, etc)
The 5^th, 6^th and 7^th columns are the displayable, searchable and comparable field which is set to either true/false.
The 8^th column defines the name of the attribute (like Colour, Size, etc)
Columns from 9 onwards to 13 represent the possible allowed values for an attribute.
Column 14 defines if the attribute has to be deleted by setting the Delete to 1

CatalogEntryAttributeDictionaryAttributeRelationship.csv

CatalogEntryAttributeDictionaryAttributeRelationship,,,,,,
PartNumber,AttributeIdentifier,ValueIdentifier,Value,Usage,Sequence,Delete
P_NZ40006688,DRColour,Black,,Descriptive,1,
P_NZ40006688,DRTuner,Single tuner USB HDD PRV,,Descriptive,2,

The first two lines constitute the header.
The 1^st column defines the partnumber of the catentry to which an attribute is to be associated
The 2^nd column is an identifier that identifies the attribute that needs to be associated with the catentry
The 3^rd column is the identifier that identifies the value (an attribute can have multiple values) that needs to be associated with a catentry
The 4^th column represents the value. (can be same as value identifier or empty)
The 5^th Column defines the usage which can either be “Descriptive” or “Defining”. For SKU’s use Defining
The 6^th column defines whether the association has to be deleted. Specifying 1 will delete any existing row. This can be 0 or empty for loading attributes.

TABLES AFFECTED

ATTR – Contains the attribute definition
ATTRVAL – contains the attribute values
CATENTRYATTR – Contains the link between the catentry and the attribute

Note: These attributes are loaded to the store that owns the master catalog. In case of extended sites store it is the ExtendedSites CAS (Master catalog store entity)

Viewing and publishing Madisons Store in v7 FEP 5 (Developer Environment)

2013-02-22T12:06:00.001+11:00

By default, in WCS Feature pack 5, the Madisons Store archives are not displayed in the publish wizard in administration console. These can be made available by following the steps below

Create a folder structure “conf/sar” inside WCDE_installdir/

Go to the starterstores folder in WCDE_installdir/starterstores and copy over any sar that is not available for publish in the wizard (like MadisonsStorefrontAssetStore-FEP.sar) from ExtendedSites folder to the conf/sar folder created above

Open the administration console and use the publish wizard and you should be able to see the sar file in the “Default” option of the publish wizard.

NoSuchMethodError for getBIProvider()

2013-02-21T09:17:00.003+11:00

After migrating from version 6 to version 7 of IBM Websphere Commerce, an exception is generated during the invocation of a getBIProvider() method when business user selects a store in Management Center.

The getBIProvider() method was introduced in version 7 of WCS. After the migration from v6 to v 7 of WCS, the coremetrics.jar file doesn’t get removed from the Stores/WEB-INF/lib directory. Once removed, the latest coremetrics related class files are loaded.

Reference

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21503410

Registering a Websphere Application Server instance as a windows service.

2012-07-20T14:53:00.004+10:00

By default, the default profile of the WAS is registered as windows service during installation. Any new app server profiles that you create can be registered using the following command
WASService.exe -add <<serviceName>> -serverName <<serverName>> -profilePath <<profilePath>> -startType automatic

where <<serviceName>> is the name of the service that appears in the component service prepended with "IBM Websphere Application Server V7.0"
<<serverName>> is the name of the server to start (e.g. server1)<<profilePath>> is the path to the websphere application server profile
startType can be either automatic, manual or disabled

Following is the usage for the command

Usage: WASService.exe (with no arguments displays this help)
                    || -add <service name>
                       -serverName <Server>
                       -profilePath <Server's Profile Directory>
                           [-wasHome <Websphere Install Directory>]
                           [-configRoot <Config Repository Directory>]
                           [-startArgs <additional start arguments>]
                           [-stopArgs <additional stop arguments>]
                           [-userid <execution id> -password <password>]
                           [-logFile <service log file>]
                           [-logRoot <server's log directory>]
                           [-encodeParams]
                           [-restart <true | false>]
                           [-startType <automatic | manual | disabled>]
                    || -remove <service name>
                    || -start <service name> [optional startServer.bat parameters]
                    || -stop <service name> [optional stopServer.bat parameters]
                    || -status <service name>
                    || -encodeParams <service name>


To remove a service, use the following command

WASService.exe -remove SOLRSL02Node01
Remove Service: SOLRSL02Node01
Successfully removed service

Implementing SEO on IBM WCS 7 Feature pack 3 or greater

2012-06-14T09:16:00.002+10:00

Enabling SEO for a store

Ensure that the store is > FEP3, i.e., FEP3 sar is published and Search based navigation is enabled in management centre. SEO is not enabled by default after publishing the store. We need to enable SEO for a store by inserting a row in the database table SEOURL as below

insert into SEOURL values
(-100001,'StoreToken:CatalogToken','10352:10021',null,null,null,null,0)

We are inserting a token for storeId and catalog id where store id is 10352 and catalogId is 10021.

This will enable the SEO URLs for the store. Also we need to ensure that in our JSP’s all the URL formation has a patternName defined and this patternName should also be defined in a SEO URL Pattern xml file which will be discussed below.

Getting rid of the /webapp/wcs/stores/servlet context path

Open wc-server.xml and find the element <SEOConfiguration>. Add the following property to the element.

<context-root-rewrite value="/shop" />

</SEOConfiguration>

After restarting the server, all URL’s will be rewritten as www.domain.com/shop/..We also need to configure the webserver to pass through all the requests with /shop to /webapp/wcs/stores/servlet (remember we are not actually changing the context root but we are pretending to)

On a IBM HTTP server, the following redirect rule will suffice (usually done in httpd.conf)

## shop url Pass through

RewriteRule /shop/(.*)$ /webapp/wcs/store/servlet/$1 [PT,L,NE]

Generating SEO content for all dynamic categories and products

This is done by using the batch file provided in commerce v7.0 as shown below (assuming db2 database)

From C:\WCDE_ENT70\bin (Commerce installation path)

seourlkeywordgen.bat <<storeId>> <<catalogId>> <<languageId>> <<path to wc-server.xml>> <<path to wc-admin-component of infrastructure-fep component>> <<db2user>> <<dbpassword>>

where

- storeId is the store which owns the catalog

- catalogId is the sales catalog Id for the store

- languageId is -1 for en_US or all for all languages

- path to wc-server.xml in the EAR

- path to infrastructure-fep wc-admin-component.xml e.g. C:\WCDE_ENT70\workspace\WC\xml\config\com.ibm.commerce.infrastructure-fep\wc-admin-component.xml

- db2 user Id

- db2 password

This will generate the keywords for the products and categories based on the names.

Now every link in the JSPs that are being formed for the categories and products should have a patternName defined. This patternName maps to the one of SEOURLPatterns*.xml which can be found under Stores/WebContent/WEB-INF/xml/seo/stores/<<storename>>

IBM WCS Indexing Product attributes and Enabling Facets

2012-02-16T17:52:00.001+11:00

IBM WCS Indexing Product attributes(Classic Attributes)

Product attributes can be either defining (SKUs) or descriptive.
There are 30 String fields and 10 Integer and Float fields each that can be used for attribute indexing.
To index an attribute, enter the attribute name in “ATTRNAME” field of “CLSATTRSRCHCONF” table. For e.g., enter “Colour” if you have colour as the defining/descriptive attribute for items
Update the separator to the relevant separator character. For me it is a semicolon ;
Once this is done, run the pre-processing and then build index.
This will index the catalog attributes in Solr

IBM WCS Enabling Facets on Product attributes

Indexing will not enable the facets display on the store. To enable facet display, follow the steps below:

We need to add a search attribute for Colour in SRCHATTR table (Assuming colour is my product attribute)
-10001    0    CatalogEntry    _cat.Colour    0

Also add the search attribute properties in SRCHATTRPROPS as below
-10001    rank    cas_f1    0
-10001    search    cas_f1    0
-10001    display    cas_f1    0
-10001    filter    cas_f1_ntk_cs    0
-10001    catalogFilter    cas_f1_ntk_cs    0
-10001    facet    cas_f1_ntk_cs    0
Where cas_f1 and cas_f1_ntk_cs are the fields defined in solr core. Restart the websphere commerce server once done and you have the attribute facets appearing on the page.

Shipping Calculation Code

2011-12-19T17:17:00.003+11:00

Shipping jurisdictions, rules and charges can be configured using calculation code data model within websphere commerce.

SHIPMODE table consists of the shipping mode / method.
SHIPMODEDESC table consists of the description of the shipping method defined above

JURST consists of a Jurisdiction definition and JURSTGROUP is the grouping of the Jurisdictions. The JURST table also consists of the zip code range for which the shipping rule may apply.

JURSTGPREL table defines the relationship between JURST and JURSTGROUP. The SUBCLASS field of JURSTGPREL defines whether it is a ShippingJurisdiction (1) or TaxJurisdiction (2)

SHPJCRULE contains the relationship between the Jurisdiction and the Shipping mode. If multiple rows from the SHPJCRULE table qualify for the rule, then the row that has the highest precedence set will be applied. If two rules have the same precedence then both the rules are applied.

Migrating OpenLaszlo module from WCS FEP1 to WCS FEPx

2011-12-01T12:07:00.001+11:00

When applying a new feature pack / fix pack, the out of the box files that are customized may be overwritten by the fix/feature pack. To migrate all the customizations to the new fix / feature pack, follow the instructions

Start websphere commerce developer environment
In the enterprise explorer view, right click on “LOBTools” module and select “OpenLaszlo Migration à Compare Customizations”
The compare editor will open displaying details about the changes that needs to be migrated. Also displays the line number.
Manually migrate the changes to the new version

More details at

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.commerce.management-center_customization.doc%2Ftasks%2Fttfmigcmc.htm

IBM Websphere Commerce v7.0 Installation Primer

2011-11-28T17:38:00.001+11:00

Install IBM Websphere RAD v7.5.4 and IBM App Server Test Environment v7.0 (Assuming that RAD disks 1 through 6 have been extracted in to disk1,disk2,disk3,disk4,disk5 and disk6 respectively and the RAD setup itself has been extracted to RAD_SETUP folder )

a. Click on “launchpad” under RAD Setup directory

b. Choose the language in the following window (“English”)

c. In the following window, select IBM Rational Application Developer for Websphere Software.

d. This will first prompt for installation of “IBM Installation Manager”. Select the version of the installation manager on the screen (1.3.2) and click “Install”

e. Enter a short path in the installation directory. For e.g., “C:\IBM\Installation Manager\eclipse”

f. Upon completion of the installation, you’ll be prompted to restart the Installation Manager.

g. Once the installation manager restarts, update the installation repositories by selecting “File à Preferences à Add Repository”. Browse and select diskTag.inf from RAD_SETUP and add. Also add diskTag.inf from disk1 folder of Websphere Application Server Test Environment. Ensure that you have placed your disk folders in the appropriate order as shown

RAD >

RAD_SETUP

Disk1

Disk2

Disk3 etc..

h. Click on “Install” from the main screen of the installation manager and select RAD 7.5.4 and WAS 7.0.0 components. Sometimes, you may get a warning that the disk1 of RAD cannot be found. Ignore this at the moment as the installation manager will prompt you for disk1 path later on. Same with WAS disk 1. Please note that the providing RAD disk1 repository path at the time of installing RAD sometimes will not install RAD correctly. I faced this issue where the licenses were installed as Trial mode instead of Permanent mode (I had a permanent license, a partnerworld account)

i. Once the RAD and WAS are installed, Select “Update” from the “Installation Manager” main screen. (Ensure that you have configured the proxy if you are behind a proxy server by selecting File > Preferences > Internet > HTTPProxy. This will first prompt for update of installation manager itself. Please update the installation manager to latest version (1.5) and installation manager will restart to proceed with RAD And WAS updates.

j. Installation manager will automatically find the updates from the default repository and repositories configured by you. Select the suggested updates and update. (for e.g., update RAD to 7.5.5.5 and WAS to 7.0.0.19). The updates might be downloaded from Internet based on whether you have them locally or not and the repository is configured appropriately.

Installing the IBM Websphere Commerce v7.0

a. From the installation manager start screen, click on File à Preferences à Add Repository.

b. Add the websphere commerce local repository WCDEVENT\repository.config in the extracted zip

c. Once repository is configured, click “Install” from the installation manager main screen.

d. Select the Websphere Commerce Version displayed (7.0.0) and install.

e. Please check setup.log under WCDE_ENT70\logs to check if WCS was installed correctly.

Applying Fix pack and Feature Packs on top of Websphere Commerce

a. Install the Fix pack 1 for commerce by downloading the fix pack 1 and then configuring the repository in Installation manager to point to the fix pack 1 location. Fix pack 1 installed. No problem

b. Installing Feature Pack 1 for websphere commerce had some issues. The IBM installation manager just wouldn’t let me install FEP 1 and always gives the following error

installing IBM WebSphere Commerce
Developer Feature Pack 1.0.0.0 is not allowed; it is not compatible with IBM
WebSphere Commerce Developer Enterprise Edition 7.0.0.1.

In root installation context:

Undefined selector "ee" in component
"com.ibm.commerce.toolkit.native.cmc.enterprise" version
7.0.0.20091017_2008

IBM says update your installation manager to greater than 1.4.1 but my installation manager was already 1.5. After much R&D found that it was an installation manager issue and we need a fix to rectify it. Download the fix provided in the following link

https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24027424

Unzip the fix to a temp folder. Configure the installation manager repository to point to the above fix and also configure FEP1 repository. This will resolve the issue and you can continue installing the FEP 1.

Error While Building OpenLaszlo module

2011-11-22T17:40:00.001+11:00

Error While Building OpenLaszlo module

Sometimes while building and deploying using WCBD can throw errors while compiling open Laszlo as below

Call
to a possibly undefined method LzLoader, in line: this.loader = new
LzLoader(view_$0.sprite, {attachname: "debugloader"});

This is because there are .ser files checked in to the repository and the build contains all the .ser files. These are usually hidden in RAD and shouldn't be a part of build.

To rectify this, remove all the .ser files in the LOBTools module and then rebuild. This should resolve the issue.

More information at

https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21498905

Ensure that the host name is a fully qualified host name

2011-11-09T16:19:00.000+11:00

Problem:

Installation of a Websphere Commerce fix pack or enabling / disabling features in a feature pack throws an error similar to the following

Ensure that the host name is a fully qualified host name.

Example below shows an error that I encountered while applying Fix pack 4 on Websphere Commerce v 7.0

PropCheck:

ApplyDBFixpack:

GenerateANTProperties:

BUILD FAILED

E:\IBM\WEBSPH~1\COMMER~1\components\Fixpack\xml\configureDatabaseFixpack.xml:66: The following error occurred while executing this line:

E:\IBM\WEBSPH~1\COMMER~1\components\Fixpack\xml\configureDatabaseFixpack.xml:389: Ensure that the host name is a fully qualified host name.

TO rectify this, first ensure that the system on which commerce is installed has a fully qualified hostname. To check this, follow the instructions in the link below

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.commerce.install.doc%2Frefs%2Frigsrvnetprereq.htm

Step 2 is to check your instance xml file <<WC_InstallDir>>/instances/<<instancename>>/xml/<<instance>>.xml and search for “Webserver” section in the file and change the hostname to the fully qualified hostname rather than localhost (e.g. hostname.domain.com)

Reference

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21469286

Uninstalling Feature pack installed on Websphere commerce

2011-11-03T17:14:00.001+11:00

First step is to disable installed features of the feature pack on Websphere Commerce Server 7.0

Assuming current installation information

IBM WCS 7
IBM WCS Fix pack 2
IBM WCS Feature Pack 2 on top of Feature pack 1

Feature pack 2 provides the following features

content-version
social-commerce
store-enhancements
management-center
foundation

The features must be disabled in the order as shown above starting from a to e

Steps to uninstall feature pack

Disable the features of the Feature pack

Take a backup of the existing WCS configuration by issuing the following commandWC_profiledir/bin/backupConfig.bat backup_file.zip (Windows)

Backup the database (I am using DB2, so its pretty easy backing up using control centre)

Disable features by issuing the following command for each feature that is enabled

config_ant.bat -buildfile

WC_installdir/components/common/xml/disableFeature.xml

-DinstanceName=

instance_name -DfeatureName=<<featurename>>

-DdbUserPassword=

db_password

where <<featurename>> is the name of the feature as detailed in a to e above except b.

For disabling social-enhancements, logon to WAS admin console and go to applications à websphere enterprise applications à and select WC_instance_name_soccom and click uninstall.

Uninstall feature pack 2 by navigating to WC_installdir/uninstall.fep2 and click on Uninstall.exe. Follow the instructions. This will remove the feature pack 2.

Wishlist basics

2011-10-10T16:33:00.002+11:00

Websphere commerce wish lists are stored in IITEMLIST table.
Items in the wish list are in IITEM table.

Query to list all wishlists by registered users

select IITM.STOREENT_ID, count(distinct ITMLST.IITEMLIST_ID) as NoOfWishLists from IITEMLIST ITMLST, IITEM IITM,USERS USR, STOREENT ST where IITM.IITEMLIST_ID = ITMLST.IITEMLIST_ID and IITM.MEMBER_ID=USR.USERS_ID and USR.REGISTERTYPE = 'R' group by IITM.STOREENT_ID

Access control policies - Staging and Production

2011-09-08T10:33:00.000+10:00

Access control policies

Problem: New extended site store was created / published on staging environment but the out of the box store policies did not propagate through to the production.

Resolution: The default access control policies have to be manually loaded to the production environment. The steps below describe how to load the ACP.

Extract the accesscontrol.xml file from the store archive file that you want the policies to be loaded for. For example, if you have published Madisions.sar under the ExtendedSites, then extract the accesscontrol.xml from the path in the SAR

/WEB-INF/stores/StoreAssetsDir/data/accesscontrol.xml

Edit the accesscontrol.xml file extracted in the above step to make it a valid XML file. Add the following at the top of the file (as first three lines)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE import SYSTEM "../../../schema/xml/wcs.dtd">

And then close the import tag at the end of the file

</import>

In the XML, replace all the references of "&STORE_IDENTIFIER_RPS; with the name of your store. For example, Madisons (ie. refer to the STOREENT.IDENTIFIER field in the database for this value).

For example, replace "&STORE_IDENTIFIER_RPS;” with MadisonStorefrontAssetStore

Replace all occurrences of "@profile_mbr_id" with the member id who owns the store (please check storeent.member_id for details)

Replace with

Replace all occurrences of @profile_orgentity_id with the same value as above

Once the changes to the xml are completed, copy the xml to the following folder location on the target environment where policies have to be loaded.

<<WC_Install_Dir>>/xml/policies/xml

Run the idresgen command to resolve ID’s. Ensure that you run the idresgen on the target database (production in this case). The syntax of the idresgen is as below

idresgen.cmd -dbname <<name>> -dbuser <<user>> -dbpwd <<pwd>> -infile <<infilepath>> -outfile <<outfilepath>> -method mixed -schemaname <<schemaname>>

replace

<<name>> with database name,

<<user>> with the websphere commerce database user

<<pwd>> with the database password

<<infilepath>> is the file path. For example, E:\IBM\Commerce\xml\policies\xml\accesscontrol.xml

<<outfilepath>> is the output file path. This is the output file that is generated after running the idresgen command

<<schemaname>> is the database schema name which if left out will default to the –dbuser parameter.

The idresgen command syntax can be found at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v6r0m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.commerce.data.doc/refs/rml_idresgen.htm

The idresgen command above will generate a XML file by resolving the primary keys for the entities in the input xml. To keep the production database exactly same as the staging one, we need to modify the xml output of the idresgen utility and replace all ID’s with that of the staging environment.

After the above step is complete, run the massload utility to actually load the access control policies for the new store.

massload.cmd -dbname <<nameofdb>> -dbuser <<user>> -dbpwd <<passwd>> -infile <<resolvedxmlFilePath>> -method sqlimport -commitcount 200 -schemaname <<schemaname>>

nameofdb – Name of the Database

user – Database user

passwd – database password

resolvedxmlFilePath – complete path to the resolved XML File

This resolved the access control issue on production environment for default out of the box store policies.

Reference: https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21450424

Stop Search Engines to Indexing your site

2011-07-27T22:07:00.001+10:00

This is something unrelated to IBM WCS but I encountered a situation where I had to do this on a IBM WCS powered ecommerce site.

To prevent a Search Engine from indexing a page, place the code below between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">

This tag tells the robots not to index this page and not to follow any links within the page.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">

This tag tells the robots not to index this page, but follow any links within the page.

Another way is to place a Robots.txt file under the webroot folder of the webserver with the following contents

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

This will disallow indexing on the whole site

Creating JSON object in WCS

2011-07-13T19:12:00.000+10:00

Websphere Commerce provides a jsp tag to make it simple to generate a JSON object. For example, a product JSON might have to be created depending on the business requirements.

The details of the jsp tag is given below
<wcf:json object="${productJSON}"/>

where productJSON is an object (generally a Map) which gets converted to a JSON object.

Map contains key value pairs which are translated to JSOn as below

{
   Map {
         color: red
         price:20
}
}

Finding which APAR is installed on your Commerce instance

2011-07-05T15:20:00.002+10:00

To find if a particular APAR is installed or find all APARs those are installed on your websphere commerce instance, check for the file NIFStack.xml or NIFHistory in the following path

<<CommerceInstallPath>>\properties\version\update\backup

Extended site user login issue

2011-06-30T18:11:00.017+10:00

This is an issue that I faced when creating a new extended site from the extended site Hub. After the store was created, I registered as a customer on the site. But, I couldn’t login to the site with error saying “user does not have the authority to perform the action”.

Finally after much research I found that the registered user does not have an entry in the MBRROLE table with role id -29 (registered user) for the Org Entity (foreign key to ORGENTITY table. It’s basically the site). Also, apparently the organisation structure was modified as per the requirements of the organisation. I had to do the following entries in order to enable users registering on the site to login.

Open MemberRegistrationAttributes.xml and under <UserRoles> add a new entry for user registration type for the new store

This will still not allow already registered users to login. For that I had to make an entry in the MBRROLE table with ROLE_ID=-29 for the site.

The value of the parameter URL is not correct

2011-06-29T15:29:00.002+10:00

When integrating IBM websphere commerce with external third party systems like paypal, payment express, etc., there can be situations when an error “The value of the parameter URL is not correct” occurs. This error occurs for a redirectView – probably a return URL passed back from PayPal for example.

This may be the cause of enabling URL redirect filtering. This is configured in the instance xml (or wc-server.xml in Developer toolkit). Locate the <Module> tag for the store web module

To prevent the error, either turn off the URLRedirectFilter (not recommended on prod as this is in place to prevent phishing attack or enter the <AllowedHost> entries.

Activating Dialog Activity

2011-06-09T10:26:00.000+10:00

For activating a dialog activity which involves email actions, an inbound and outbound email account has to be setup. This account can be setup by following the steps detailed below.

1. Login in to the IBM WCS Administration Console
2. Select “Store” in the selection menu

3. Select “Configuration” --> “Email Activities”

4. Configure the Inbound and Outbound Email Account parameters. Each activity can have a separate email account. Enter the following parameters

Name – Name of the email activity account

Description – Short description

Host - This is the SMTP Host. E.g. SMTP.xyz.internal

Email Address – This is the email address of the sender in case of outbound and receiver in case of inbound

Account – IBM WCS User Id - wcsadmin

Port – This is the SMTP port. By default it is 25.

Commerce host – This is almost always localhost or the ip address of the local machine on which commerce is installed

Creating a Wish List Email Dialog Activity

2011-06-07T17:43:00.000+10:00

I am assuming here that an Email Template has already been created.

1. Login to management centre and select “Marketing” option

2. Select the store to work with

3. Select “New dialog activity” option

4. Select the “Blank Dialog Activity” template and click “OK”

5. In the new dialog activity screen, Fill in the required information like the name of the activity, description etc., and then select and drag the “Wait for Event” from the “Triggers” column and place it in the activity flow.

6. Configure the event for a wish list as detailed out below

The activity configuration has the following parameters.

Event Name – The event name would be the command name that is executed when customer adds an item to the wish list. In this case, it is “AjaxInterestItemAdd”

Number of Event Parameter – This will define the number of condition parameters on which the event will trigger. For example if you want the event to trigger for a particular item added to wish list then specify the parameter name and value as described in the next two steps.

Parameter name – This is a condition parameter name. If a wish list email has to trigger based on an item then specify the parameter as “catEntryId”. If left blank, then it applies to all.

Parameter value – This is the value of the parameter name specified in the previous step. In this case, it can be a particular item id.

Times – This defines the number of times the event must have occurred for a given customer for the activity to start / continue.

Time frame – This defines the time frame within which the event has occurred.
Days (only applicable when you select certain options in the previous step) – specifies the number of days within which the event has occurred.

7. Associate the Action when the trigger fires. In this case, it is the Send Email Action. Associate an email template to the activity.

In my next post, I will show how to activate a Dialog Activity

Order Locking

2011-05-24T22:33:00.001+10:00

All orders in Websphere Commerce are locked before processing by the OrderProcess command or display by the OrderDisplay command. A lock on the order is obtained by calling the OrderPrepare URL which roughly does the following activities before obtaining a lock on the order.

1. Checks the status of the order. (Must be in any of P, I, E, W, or N.) else throw error.

2. Calls PrepareOrder task command which does the following

Process order items based on PREPAREFLAGS in ORDERITEMS table
Check if the order items are BUYABLE (CATENTRY table)
If ATP inventory model, then process DoInventoryActionCmd > GetEligibleFulfillmentCenters, CheckInventoryAvailability, AllocateExistingInventory, AllocateExpectedInventory, DeallocateExistingInventory, DeallocateExpectedInventory
If not ATP (Example DOM / External Inventory model) then calls DoInventoryActionCmd > ResolveFulfillmentCenter
Get new unit prices for items if not manually overridden (PREPAREFLAGS of ORDERITEMS table)
Calculate TOTALPRODUCT in ORDERITEMS table for each item * qty
Recalculate order amounts based on USEFLAGS in STENCALUSG (store entity calculation usage)

If flag is -1, ApplyOrderAdjustments command is called. This is called only if it has entry in CMDREG table.
If flag is -2, ApplyOrderShippingCharges command is called. (has to be in CMDREG)
If flag is -3 and -4, ApplyOrderTaxes command is called.

Suborder is created (SUBORDER Table) for each shipping address in the order
Order is locked (LOCKED field of ORDERS table)

The order lock can be reset by either changing the order (adding / deleting / updating order items), by expiry or by calling OrderUnlock command.

Expiry of the order lock is set at the store level in the QUOTEGOODFOR field of the STORE table.

CSR's can place and modify the order on behalf of the customer. CSRs lock the order on behalf of the user by setting the forUser parameter for the OrderPrepareCmd.

Deleting a published store in Websphere Commerce

2011-05-17T17:12:00.003+10:00

If you want to delete any published store from websphere commerce, there are certain steps to perform as detailed out below.

First, open the accelerator, and select “Extended sites hub”. I am assuming here that there is an extended site. Once the hub opens select the option “View Stores”. Select the store and then click “Delete”. This will delete the store that the consumer can access.

There are other elements of the store that needs to be deleted from the database. A store can be linked to a StoreFrontAssetStore, CatalogAssetStore, etc. Also, stores are associated with fulfilment centres. Hence to delete these objects from the database, use dbclean utility provided by IBM. Following are the steps.

Deleting Store Object

Use dbclean utility to clean up store objects in the database as below

dbclean -object store -type specified -db <<dbname>> -loglevel DEBUG -name <<StoreId>> -instancexml <<WC_Install_Dir>>/instances/<<instance_name>>/xml/<<instance_name>>.xml

Deleting Contract Objects (Only for WCS Enterprise edition)

dbclean -object contract -type obsolete -instancexml <<WC_Install_Dir>>/instances/<<instance_name>>/xml/<<instance_name>>.xml -db <<dbname>> -loglevel DEBUG

Deleting Fulfillment Centre Objects

Use dbclean utility to clean up fulfilment centre objects in the database as below

dbclean -object fulfillment_center -type obsolete -instancexml <<WC_Install_Dir>>/instances/<<instance_name>>/xml/<<instance_name>>.xml -db <<dbname> -loglevel DEBUG