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This post is brought to you by Robert Brown, Senior WebSphere Commerce Consultant, www.redbaritone.com
WebSphere Commerce v6 uses the Java Server Tag Library (JSTL) language for most all starter store JSP code. The starter store JSPs typically include the four core tag libraries as indicated below at the top of each file
When changes are made to files in your commerce application such as commerce config files or your application config files, you would simply copy these files to WC_InstName.ear folder and get away with it. This was true up until version 5.6.x of WebSphere Commerce, whose backbone is WebSphere App Server 5.0. But things changed with WCS 6.0 and WAS 6.0.
Typical configuration changes implemented on a commerce instance is done via the famous instance xml file. This file is located at
{WCS_HOME}/instances/{INST_NAME}\xml\{INST_NAME}.xml
Going back to 5.6.x version of commerce, any changes to this xml file are immediately picked up by commerce when the server is restarted.This changed with Commerce 6.0 and up.
This week I had a unique opportunity to test drive the installation of the newly released WebSphere Commerce 6.0 Developer. Here are my experiences from a Windows XP installation.
I will handle the quirks with the database setup after dealing with the basics.
Now that WebSphere Commerce 6.0 is out, let us take a quick look at what it has to offer to the business process, developers and adminstrators.
At the high level it is a complete revamp over its prior version. There are changes almost at every conceivable level. There are new “separately orderable features” such as IBM Sales Center and IBM Gift Center. Order processing capabilities now include several features that left many wondering how we lived without these features in the past! Most retailers added these features by customizing the heck out of the commerce versions they were using. Multi-tender, multiple ship dates and support for non-taxable items - some of the desparately sought after features - are finally available out of box. If you ever wondered whether Payments Cassettes is easy to use - you will find the answer in this: WebSphere Commerce now provides support for Payment Cassettes for backward compatibility! The new rule for payments is lightweight plug-in architecture. The big deals for stage propagation are the concepts of workspaces and quick and global publishing options.
Now that the core feature list is dumbed down to one paragraph, let us shift gears and focus on what matters the most for the developers.