 | Level: Introductory Xiaomei Wang (xiaomeiw@ca.ibm.com), ECM Partner Technical Enablement Team,
IBM
Marc Grosse (mgrosse@us.ibm.com), ECM Global Technical Sales Team, IBM
31 May 2007 IBM® OmniFind™ Discovery Edition integration with WebSphere® Commerce enables
you to easily add advanced search and navigation to your WebSphere Commerce store,
thereby helping to reduce site abandonment and increasing online conversion. This
article provides step-by-step instructions for integrating OmniFind Discovery Edition and WebSphere Commerce
on Microsoft® Windows®.
Introduction
Many retail and catalog companies today are looking to improve
the online shopping experience by making it easy for people to find the products and
services that best match their specific needs, thereby increasing shopper conversion rates.
The OmniFind Discovery Edition integration with WebSphere Commerce improves the
embedded search capabilities delivered with WebSphere Commerce, a market leader
in e-commerce infrastructures. It provides a turnkey integration to WebSphere
Commerce that deploys quickly and provides a lower cost of ownership relative to
competitive solutions in the marketplace. No other search vendor provides a packaged
integration for WebSphere Commerce today.
With version 8.4, this integration has been further enhanced and made a part of IBM
Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition. The integration now leverages a new layout
editor, a graphical user interface for creating and modifying
search result layouts. As a result, no JSP coding is required. So the total cost of ownership for the all IBM
commerce solution is further slashed. Moreover, with greater scaling and throughput and new
support for the Unicode character set, this search solution can scale to handle virtually any
product catalog, in any language.
The OmniFind Discovery Edition integration for WebSphere Commerce can be deployed on Windows,
AIX®, Solaris, and Linux® environments. The example in this article is specific to the integration
on a Microsoft Windows platform. However, the key concepts and information provided are relevant to
any platform.
Integration architecture overview
IBM Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition is a turnkey integration between OmniFind Discovery
Edition and WebSphere Commerce, as shown in Figure 1. The module provides a pre-packaged content connector
to allow OmniFind Discovery Edition to acquire commerce product catalog information and rapidly create rich
search indexes. In addition, it comes with the Commerce Search Result layouts (the user interface) developed
on top of Layout Editor skins and an installation script to install them into WebSphere Commerce.
Figure 1. Integration architecture overview
In the integrated environment, OmniFind Discovery Edition processes the queries that users enter in
your store's search box. OmniFind Discovery Edition uses contextual understanding to interpret the underlying
intent of the request. After the system processes the request, it retrieves the appropriate
content and uses its adaptive presentation capabilities to guide the discovery (or search) process. The results are displayed
on the OmniFind Discovery Edition user interfaces that incorporate the appearance of your WebSphere Commerce
store.
The key features of the integration include:
- Packaged industry vocabularies and integration to WebSphere Commerce that speed up deployments
- Automatic re-spelling, stemming, and vocabulary relationships such as synonyms and related terms to help the
system understand the shopper's intent
- Enhanced understanding on numeric attributes via traits such as price, weight and age (for example, "I want a
new, lightweight, inexpensive phone")
- Ability to perform search-based merchandising to provide targeted offers and information based on the shopper's
specific interests and profile
- Dynamic search result refinements that allow users to narrow down results with faceted navigation
- Business user analytics that provides insight into search-based merchandising and product catalog offerings
- Support for WebSphere Commerce e-Sites and contracts.
Supported integration software stack
The integration requires OmniFind Discovery Edition, Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition, and
WebSphere Commerce software. To ensure the success of deploying this complex solution, it's important
to start with the supported version levels of the respective products, as listed in Table 1.
Table 1. Supported Integration Software Stack
Integration setup overview
The example in this article shows you how to build a Mobile Phone AdvancedB2BDirect Commerce store with enhanced
search capabilities in an OmniFind Discovery Edition and WebSphere Commerce integrated environment.
Check-list of the required software
The software used in the example include:
- WebSphere Commerce software
- WebSphere Commerce Enterprise V6.0 disk 1 and disk 2 (C900KML)
- WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment V6.0.2.5 (C900MML)
- DB2 Universal Database Enterprise Server Edition and Administrative Client V8.2.3 (C900LML)
- OmniFind Discovery Edition software
- IBM OmniFind Discovery Edition V8.4 (C96HXEN)
- IBM OmniFind Discovery Edition V8.4 Fix Pack 1
- Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition V8.4 (C96I2EN)
Deployment procedure
The following installation steps are performed to deploy the integration solution environment:
-
Prepare a system environment
-
Install WebSphere Commerce software stack
-
Publish starter stores
-
Populate the store with your own catalog data
-
Install OmniFind Discovery Edition, Commerce Module, and the Fix Pack
-
Perform integration for WebSphere Commerce
Prepare a system environment
The example uses Windows 2000 Server SP4 with Internet Explorer (IE) V6.0 (6.0 or higher is supported).
Ensure that the following system requirements are met:
- Set up a user with all administrator rights. The user ID,
db2admin, is created in this example.
- Optionally, disable Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), if applicable, in order to avoid potential port conflicts since the
WebSphere Commerce Quick Installation installs IBM HTTP server on the same default port.
- The system must have a resolvable fully qualified hostname, that is, the host name combined with the
domain name. This example uses
wcsintegration.torolab.ibm.com.
- Ensure host name resolving to IP address:
nslookup fully_qualified_hostname
- Ensure IP address resolving to host name:
nslookup IP_address
- Set DNS suffix if needed: navigate to My Computer -> Properties -> Network Identification Changes
-> More -> Primary DNS suffix of this computer, and define the DNS suffix if you have not.
- Remove the pop-up blocker from IE.
- Navigate to Start -> Programs -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Add/Remove
Windows Components to disable
Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration if applicable.
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Install the WebSphere Commerce software stack
This section uses step-by-step screen shots to illustrate how to use WebSphere Commerce's Quick Installation
to install the following software:
- DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows
- WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment product
- IBM HTTP Server
- WebSphere Commerce Server
- WebSphere Commerce Information Center
- Log in the server as user id,
db2admin
- Locate and run the WebSphere Commerce Installation program,
setup.exe in the WC60\disk1 directory. Use default for the rest of the
installation, and watch for the following key steps.
- Select Quick Installation for the setup type.
Figure 1-1
- Use defaults for all the destination paths.
Figure 1-2
- Specify the user ID and password that will be used to start DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows. The user ID must be an
existing Windows user ID defined on the local machine with Administration authority.
In this example, we use the following user information:
-
User ID : db2admin
-
Password : db2admin
Figure 1-3
- The Site Administrator ID is used to administer WebSphere Commerce. It's not an operating
system ID, but an ID created in the WebSphere Commerce database.
The Merchant Key is used to encrypt and decrypt certain data stored in WebSphere Commerce
database. It must be a 16-digit hex-number.
In this example, we use the following user and Merchant Key information:
-
Site Administrator ID : wcsadmin
-
Password : password1
-
Merchant Key : 0123456789abcdef
Figure 1-4
- Specify the password for the WebSphere Commerce Configuration Manager user ID.
In this example, we use the following password:
Figure 1-5
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Publish starter stores
This section uses step-by-step screen shots to illustrate how to publish an AdvancedB2BDirect starter store.
- Navigate to Start -> Programs -> IBM WebSphere -> Commerce Server V6.0 -> Administration Console to start WebSphere Commerce Administration Console.
- Log on using User Name: wcsadmin, Password: password1.
Figure 2-1
- Select Site (which is default), and click OK.
Note: make sure that the pop-up blocker of your browser is removed.
Figure 2-2
- From the top menu in the Administration Console, select Store Archives->Publish.
Figure 2-3
- Select AdvanedB2BDirect.sar, and then click Next.
Figure 2-4
- For Sample data, select None. You will import your own customer data at a later time.
For Inventory model, select Non-ATP. Click Next.
Figure 2-5
- Click Finish.
Figure 2-6
- From the top menu in Administration Console, select Store Archives->Publish Status
to check whether the store has been published successfully.
Note:Please be patient. The publishing operation will take quite a long time to finish. Please do not
interrupt or kill the operation, as it is going to create the database tables, populate them with required data,
and deploy all the required Web assets as well. There is no way to "undo" if you kill it.
Figure 2-7
- Select the relevant job with AdvancedB2BDirect.sar, and then click Details.
Figure 2-8
- Click Launch Store. Accept the default value of Web application Web path for the store,
and then click OK. The store should be launched. Save the URL to your favorites lists for future easy access.
Figure 2-9
- After you log in as User Name: wcsadmin, Password: password1, the AdvancedB2BDirect store
URL directs you to the site below:
Figure 2-10
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Populate the store with your own catalog data
This section uses step-by-step screen shots to illustrate how to populate the AdvancedB2BDirect store
with your own catalog data.
- Navigate to Start -> Programs -> IBM WebSphere -> Commerce Server V6.0 -> WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to start WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.
- Log on using User Name: wcsadmin, Password: password1.
- Select the AdvancedB2BDirect store and keep others with default values, and then click OK.
Figure 3-1
- From the Products menu, select Catalog Import.
Figure 3-2
- Click the Upload Catalog button.
Figure 3-3
- Accept the default value of UTF-8 as Catalog File Encoding,
and browse to your own catalog file. The C:\mobilePhoneData\MobilePhone.csv catalog file was used in this example.
Then click the Upload File button. Wait until you receive the message that the file was
uploaded successfully.
Figure 3-4
- Click the Upload Images button.
Figure 3-5
- This example uses the following zip files which contain customer Mobile Phone product images:
-
c:\mobilePhoneData\accessories.zip
-
c:\mobilePhoneData\mobilestore1.zip
-
c:\mobilePhoneData\mobilestore2.zip
-
c:\mobilePhoneData\mobilestore3.zip
-
c:\mobilePhoneData\mobilestore4.zip
-
c:\mobilePhoneData\mobilestore5.zip
Browse to one of the above product image zip files, mark the checkbox of ZipFile,
highlight the AdvancedB2BDirect/images/catalog folder at the bottom of the browser, and then click
the Upload button.
Repeat the same steps to upload the above six product image zip files one by one.
Figure 3-6
- Mark the checkbox of the MobilePhone.csv file with the status
New, and click the Publish Catalog button. Wait until the Status of the uploaded file changes
from New to Published.
Figure 3-7
- After finishing the operation of Publish Catalog, click the Upload Image button again.
You will see the tree structure of the uploaded images at the bottom of the browser. Make sure that the
image tree structure matches the directory definition in the csv file. If necessary, you can reorganize
the catalog images by right-clicking the folder or image that you want to move, rename or delete, and
select the corresponding action from the menu.
Figure 3-8
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Install OmniFind Discovery Edition, Commerce Module, and the Fix Pack
This section introduces the installation of OmniFind Discovery Edition, Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition, and the respective Fix Pack.
Install OmniFind Discovery Edition
This section uses step-by-step screen shots to illustrate how to install OmniFind Discovery Edition V8.4.
- Run the installation program of OmniFind Discovery Edition V8.4,
setup_win32.exe.
The default installation directory is used in the example, C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4.
Figure 4-1
- After accept the license agreement, choose the Custom installation type.
- When prompt for components to install, select JSP Based Presentation Views
and Layout Editor accordingly to the example shown below.
Figure 4-2
- When prompt for the JSP Presentation View installation type, select Other.
Figure 4-3
- When prompt for the Layout Editor installation type, select Other.
Figure 4-4
- Review the installation summary information, and install the product.
Figure 4-5
- Navigate to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System-> Advanced:
- Include the path to the jvm.dll file in the
PATH system environment variable.
In this example, the path is C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\java\jre\bin\classic.
- Add a new system environment variable,
IPHRASE_UNICODE, and set its value to 1.
Install Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition
With version 8.4, the WebSphere Commerce Integration Asset file, wcs.zip, is packaged within Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition.
This section illustrates how to install the integration asset.
- Create two new directories named ServicesToolkit and CommerceIntegration, one under the other in the OmniFind Discovery Edition installation directory. In this example, it is
C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4\ServicesToolkit\CommerceIntegration.
- Locate and copy the WebSphere Commerce Integration Asset file, wcs.zip, from the Commerce Module CD-ROM or electronic distribution to C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4\ServicesToolkit\CommerceIntegration.
Install OmniFind Discovery Edition Fix Pack
This section uses step-by-step screen shots to illustrate how to install OmniFind Discovery Edition V8.4 Fix Pack 1.
Fix Pack 1 provides fixes to the following components required in the integration solution environment:
- OmniFind Discovery Edition V8.4
- Documentation (Commerce Module User's Guide)
- WebSphere Commerce Integration
- Run the Fix Pack 1 installation program, setup_win32_ODE84_fp1.exe.
- Define the Fix Pack 1 installation directory, which should be the same as the ODE installation directory. In this example,
it is C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4 as shown below.
Figure 4-6
- Choose the Custom installation type.
- When prompt for components to install, select Industry Ontology Packs -> Commerce.
The setup program will replace the wcs.zip file located in ServicesToolkit\CommerceIntegration\ directory.
Figure 4-7
- Review the installation summary information, and install the Fix Pack.
Figure 4-8
Integrate WebSphere Commerce
This section illustrates how to integrate OmniFind Discovery Edition and WebSphere Commerce.
- Create the directory, C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4\deployment\wcs.
- Extract the wcs.zip file from C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4\ServicesToolkit\CommerceIntegration into C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4\deployment\wcs.
- Verify that the extraction finishes successfully with the creation of the directory structure of
C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4\deployment\wcs\wcs as shown below.
Figure 5-1
- Locate and open the wcs project property file, C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4\deployment\wcs\wcs\default.prp.
- Modify the values of the WCS_HOME and WCS_CONNECT property variables, and save the default.prp file.
WCS_HOME contains the path to the WebSphere Commerce home directory, and WCS_CONNECT matches the JDBC connection string for the WebSphere Commerce catalog
database. Their values vary from the product involved. Please refer to
Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition: User's Guide for more examples.
The following are used in this example:
-
WCS_HOME C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\demo\installedApps\WC_demo_cell\WC_demo.ear
-
WCS_CONNECT jdbc:db2:mall&user=db2admin&password=db2admin&driver=COM.ibm.db2.jdbc.app.DB2Drive
- Verify that the database connection string is properly configured.
- From a command prompt, go to the OmniFind Discovery Edition installation directory.
cd C:\IBM\IBM_OmniFind_Discovery_Edition_8.4
- Enter the following command:
python\python deployment\wcs\wcs\lib\wcs\tools\TestDB.py -p deployment\wcs\wcs\default.prp
Important: All OmniFind Discovery Edition commands are required to run from the OmniFind Discovery Edition installation directory.
Figure 5-2
- Generate the OmniFind Discovery Edition search indexes based on WebSphere Commerce attributes.
- Generate the OmniFind Discovery Edition features based on the WebSphere Commerce attributes.
From the command prompt, enter:
bin\iphrase build -p deployment\wcs\wcs\default.prp -setProperty "BUILD_MODE generateFeatures"
Note: Please ignore the following error shown at the very end of the command output.
Figure 5-3
- Build the OmniFind Discovery Edition search indexes. From the command prompt, enter:
bin\iphrase build -p deployment\wcs\wcs\default.prp -clean
- Ensure that the OmniFind Discovery Edition server is not running. To verify, go to the following URL, and
you should get a page cannot be displayed message.
http://localhost:8777/query?render=1
- Stop the WebSphere Commerce server by entering the following command from the command prompt:
C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\demo\bin>stopServer.bat server1
- Install the OmniFind Discovery Edition Layout Editor layouts (the user interface) into the sample WebSphere
Commerce storefront. From the command prompt, enter:
python\python deployment\wcs\wcs\lib\wcs\tools\InstallSearchUI.py -p deployment\wcs\wcs\default.prp
(Note:The python script above is designed to work with the sample storefronts. If you customized
the quick search or advanced search JSP code, review the instructions in
Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition: User's Guide for manually installing the layouts to
verify that your customizations do not prevent the script from functioning properly.)
- When running the integration solution on a slow server with system resource constraints, you may
increase the value of the connection.responseTimeoutSeconds property variable defined in the
Connection.properties file. This property variable specifies the number of seconds to
wait before the Layout Editor sends another request to an OmniFind Discovery Edition server that is not
responding. Its default value is 15 seconds.
In this example, the Connection.properties file resides under C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\demo\installedApps\WC_demo_cell\WC_demo.ear\Stores.war\WEB-INF\classes\com\ibm\wcds\resources.
- Start the OmniFind Discovery Edition server. From the command prompt, enter:
bin\iphrase server -p deployment\wcs\wcs\default.prp -numWorker 2 -nocache
- Start the WebSphere Commerce server. Navigate to
Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services, and start the IBM WebSphere Application Server V6 - WC_demo service shown below.
Even though the status of this Windows service may show as Started right away,
it will actually take a few minutes to finish the underline starting initialization procedure. You may verify its status by entering the following command:
C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\demo\bin>serverStatus.bat server1
Figure 5-4
- Launch the Mobile Phone AdvancedB2BDirect store from the saved URL, and it's now ready for the enhanced search.
The example below is a sample search result page. The navigation and refinement options are displayed. The attributes such as category and
price are automatically extracted from the Commerce product catalog.
Figure 5-5
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Summary
This article introduced OmniFind Discovery Edition and WebSphere Commerce integration
steps in Windows environment. It first reviewed the integration architecture and supported integration software
stack. It then used step-by-step screen shots to illustrate how to build a Mobile Phone AdvancedB2BDirect Commerce
store with enhanced search capabilities by intergrating WebSphere Commerce with OmniFind Discovery Edition.
After the integration, additional customization and tuning can be performed for advanced search user experience. This integration
solution uses the Layout Editor layouts embedded in Commerce store front for rendering search result page.
You can leverage Layout Editor (a graphical user interface tool shipped in OmniFind Discovery Edition V8.4)
to customize the out-of-box search result page without JSP coding involved. Moreover, you can configure
OmniFind Discovery Edition business rules via Management Console for cross-product promotion.
Resources Learn
Discuss
About the authors | 
| | Xiaomei Wang is a technical consultant in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Partner Technical Enablement team at the IBM Toronto Lab. Her current assignment is assisting business partners with integrating IBM Discovery products into their solutions. She has worked for eight years at IBM, and has extensive knowledge in the DB2 family of products. Xiaomei is a IBM Certified Solution Experts (Content Manager, DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Database Administration, DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Application Development, DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Advanced Technical Expert, and Business Intelligence), and also a Red Hat Certified Technician. You can reach herat xiaomeiw@ca.ibm.com. |
| 
| | Marc Grosse is a Technical Alliance Manager in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Global Technical
Sales team within IBM Information Management. Marc is currently working with Accenture around partner business
development, solution recruitment, and skills enablement. Previously, he was responsible for providing technical
support in recruiting and enabling business partners across the OmniFind suite of products. Marc has been with
IBM for 3 years and has in-depth knowledge of the ECM suite of products. Prior to IBM, Marc spent 6 years working
in project management, delivering customer solutions with software vendors in the Enterprise Content Management
and Business Process Mnagement space. Marc is certified as a Content Management and Discovery technical
sales specialist. You can reach him at mgrosse@us.ibm.com. |
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