In this option, the Assembler is invoked early in the page rendering process as part of the Oracle Commerce Core Platform request handling pipeline. This option is appropriate when the bulk of a page’s content is served by the Assembler. This guide refers to these pages as “Assembler-driven pages.”

Assembler-driven pages are generally those pages that benefit greatly from increased merchandiser control. For example, a home page is a good candidate to be Assembler-driven because merchandisers want to customize their site’s home page based on the season, a current sale, or a customer’s profile. A search results page is also a good candidate because merchandisers may want to control the order of search results, specify special brand landing pages for particular searches, and so on. The Oracle Commerce Experience Manager tool, which works in conjunction with the Assembler API, is designed to facilitate increased merchandiser control, therefore pages that need a high level of merchandiser control are best served through the Assembler API/Experience Manager combination.

The content that the Assembler returns to the client browser can take several forms: JSP, XML, or JSON, as described in the following sections.