This section describes how to install and configure a Commerce Reference Store in an environment that:
Runs on a single machine.
Has two Oracle Commerce Platform instances, one for publishing and one for production, which run under separate servers within a single application server distribution.
Each Oracle Commerce Platform server instance (EAR file) running in your application server includes the appropriate configuration and modules for its designated tasks. The publishing server runs Content Administration, Site Administration, Oracle Commerce Merchandising, and, to make it available for editing in the Business Control Center, an instance of Commerce Reference Store. The publishing server also runs the components that allow the Oracle Commerce Platform to integrate with Oracle Commerce Guided Search. These integration components trigger the loading of catalog data into the Oracle Commerce Content Acquisition System. This loading step must happen before the data can be indexed in an Oracle Commerce MDEX Engine and searched by Oracle Commerce Guided Search.
The production server runs the Content Administration publishing agent as well as the instance of Commerce Reference Store that is served to customers. To allow it to query the MDEX via the Assembler API, the production server also runs the Guided Search integration components.
The Commerce Reference Store EAR files are assembled in development mode, where only classes, libraries, and J2EE modules are imported to the EAR file, and Nucleus configuration and other resources are used directly from the Oracle Commerce Platform install directory. The two Oracle Commerce Platform servers communicate with each other through the Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) API, for example, when the publishing server deploys content to the production server.
Commerce Reference Store includes three storefront sites: CRS Store US, CRS Store Germany, and CRS Home. These sites are related in the following ways:
CRS Store US and CRS Home share a shopping cart, product comparisons, and gift and wish lists. Some catalog items are available on both sites, but each site also has items not available on the other site.
CRS Store US and CRS Store Germany have identical catalogs but use different price lists, because CRS Store US prices are in US dollars and CRS Store Germany prices are in Euros. These sites do not share a shopping cart, product comparisons, or gift and wish lists.
Additionally, the three sites include support for the languages shown in the following table:
Site | Language Support |
|---|---|
CRS Store US | English, Spanish |
CRS Store Germany | German, English |
CRS Home | English, Spanish |
Commerce Reference Store uses a switching database configuration that allows you to deploy changes to an offline copy of your data, rather than making changes directly to the data your live site depends on. After the data is deployed to the offline copy, a switch is made so that the offline copy becomes the online copy and vice versa. In this way, you avoid deploying to your live site, which can cause errors, inconsistencies, or poor site performance. After the switch is made, the offline copy is also updated, so that both copies are current after each deployment.
When you deploy from the publishing server to the production server, data that is ready to go live is copied from a versioned database, implemented as part of Content Administration, to the production database. Not all data benefits from versioning, so the production database contains several schemas:
The
Productionschema holds data that does not benefit from switching, such as user account data.The
SwitchingAandSwitchingBschemas hold data that does benefit from switching, such as catalog and pricing data. Only one switching schema is active on the live site at any given time. Data is copied to the offline schema, and then the switch is made.
The versioned database only has one schema, Publishing, that contains all the data required for your sites, plus additional fields that manage asset versioning.
