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Overview of the Registration and User Processing Package
The processes related to customer (user) profiles and customer self-service are necessary components of any e-business expecting return customers. To help you get to market faster than your competitors, the BEA WebLogic Commerce Server product provides you with a Registration and User Processing package. This package contains default implementations for the most common pre- and post-order processing services (registration, login, customer profile creation/updates, and customer self-service pages). Designed to be used out-of-the-box, the Registration and User Processing package also allows your site designers to customize these processes, without the need for advanced programming skills. This topic provides you with some background information about the Registration and User Processing package, and introduces you to the types of services that are available.
This topic includes the following sections:
What Is the Registration and User Processing Package?
The Registration and User Processing package is a collection of services used to facilitate the registration of customers with your e-business site and the activities customer can perform after registering. There are services for registration, login, customer profile creation/updates, and so on. Additionally, the customer self-service pages provide your customers with the ability to check the status of orders and payments.
As shown in Figure 1-1, each service in the package consists of one or more JavaServer Pages (JSPs) and the business logic associated with them. Some of these templates may collect information from your customers, while others will simply display dynamic data your customer previously supplied. Some JSPs may do both. This logic is implemented as a combination of input processors and Pipeline components, each of which can be modified to suit your needs. You can also create your own input processors and Pipeline components to plug into the Registration and User Processing package.
Figure 1-1 Structure of the Registration and User Processing Package
Because all the business logic is managed by a Pipeline and accessed within a Pipeline session, the state of your customer's experiences can be maintained. For detailed information about Pipelines (including Pipeline components and Pipeline sessions), see BEA WebLogic Commerce Server Webflow and Pipeline Management.
In addition to the services available in the Registration and User Processing package, the BEA WebLogic Commerce Server product also contains services for browsing the product catalog and for order processing. For information on services related to the product catalog, see BEA WebLogic Commerce Server Product Catalog Management. For information on services related to order processing, see BEA WebLogic Commerce Server Order Processing Package.
High-level Architecture
The Registration and User Processing package is essentially an application that utilizes the Webflow/Pipeline infrastructure. Before you begin to customize or extend this application, however, it is important that you have a high-level understanding of how all the JSP templates in the Registration and User Processing package work together in the default Webflow. It is also important that you understand how this package works in conjunction with JSP templates in the Order Processing package.
Figure 1-2 shows the ways in which your customer might move through the JSP templates in the login and registration portion of the Registration and User Processing package. It also shows where the user processing portion of the package, the Product Catalog, and the Order Processing package come into play.
Figure 1-2 Default Webflow for Login/Registration
Figure 1-3 shows the ways in which your customer might move through the JSP templates in the user processing and customer self-service portions of the Registration and User Processing package. It also shows where the Product Catalog, the Order Processing package, and the login/registration portion of the package come into play.
Figure 1-3 Default Webflow for User Processing/Customer Self-Service
Note: All JSP templates include other templates, making it easy for you to create new pages with the same look and feel.
Whether you are customizing or extending this architecture, everything you need to know about the services in the Registration and User Processing package (including the JSP templates, input processors, and Pipeline components associated with them) is provided in this document. This includes detailed information about the database schema, for those advanced programmers who want to take their e-business site to the next level.
About the Database Schema
The database schema used for the Registration and User Processing package is the one used for the BEA WebLogic Personalization Server. For more information about this database schema, see BEA WebLogic Personalization Server Developer's Guide. Additionally, customer profiles in the BEA WebLogic Commerce Server are implemented as Unified User Profiles (UUP). For more information about UUP, see "Creating and Managing Users" in the BEA WebLogic Personalization Server documentation.
Development Roles
This document is intended for the following audiences:
Next Steps
Subsequent chapters of this document describe the Registration and User Processing package in detail, and provide you with information about how to customize or extend the default implementations to meet your requirements. These chapters are as follows:
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