Introduction

Commerce Web site merchants often need new channels to promote new product lines, move their excess inventory, and clear out discontinued products. In addition, merchants frequently need to determine the product prices driven by market demand. This requires merchants and customers to negotiate or mutually agree upon a product selling price. Online auctions are a common method for providing this negotiation; they also allow the price and other terms for the sale of products to be dynamically established. The IBM WebSphere ® Commerce Suite, Version 5.1 Negotiation subsystem meets these needs by providing tools that a merchant can use to add product negotiations or auctions to an online commerce Web site. The end result is not only a win for the highest auction bidder, but also a win for the merchant's e-business.

This article demonstrates how merchants can add product auctions to their commerce site using IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite. In addition, this article includes an exercise which helps the reader to activate the Negotiation subsystem, integrate auction Web pages into a commerce site, and place items up for auction.

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WebSphere Commerce Suite overview

IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1 provides a solution for an e-business commerce Web site. The combination of the robust base support components -- including DB2 ® Universal Database, Enterprise Edition, Version 7.1 (DB2) and WebSphere Application Server, Advanced Edition, Version 3.5, as well as sophisticated development support that includes WebSphere Commerce Studio and VisualAge ® for Java ^TM -- provides a scalable solution for the commerce Web site. Commerce Suite utilizes an open architecture based on the Java programming model to provide these capabilities.

Commerce Suite contains components to meet the functional needs of the e-business Web site. These components contain support for online product catalog navigation, partitioning, categorization and product association. They also include support for managing shoppers, purchasing, inventory control, payments, messaging, and back-end integration to supply chains.

Included in these components are Web browser-based site management tools. These tools include Store Services, Administration Console, and Commerce Suite Accelerator. The Store Services provide a central location for creating, customizing, and maintaining basic operational features of the site. The Site Administrator or Store Administrator uses the Administration Console for managing site access control, monitoring site performance, configuring customer and back-end systems messaging, managing payment functions, and administering rules-based personalization. The Commerce Suite Accelerator provides an integration point for managing stores and products, marketing campaigns, customer orders, and customer service. A wizard is provided to help create and manage auctions.

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WebSphere Commerce Studio

WebSphere Commerce Studio is a complete set of tools that the Web site developer can use to create, update, manage and maintain the Web site assets from one central location. Commerce Studio uses WebSphere Studio as its base. It includes Commerce Suite-specific extension tools to assist the store developers. These tools include a Store Archive template to help you quickly develop a store project. They also include tools to import and export store archive files, as well as to publish the store archive to a running store server.

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The Negotiation subsystem

The Negotiation subsystem in WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1 allows a merchant to offer products for sale to the highest bidder, through auctions. You can implement auctions as part of an existing store, or use auctions to implement an auction Web site. In addition, Commerce Suite can conduct several auctions simultaneously.

The Negotiation subsystem uses WebSphere Commerce Suite scheduled jobs to help process auctions. These scheduled jobs are used to start and stop auctions, determine the highest bid and lowest winning bid, update the available quantity for Dutch auctions, submit bids from autobids, send automated messages to customers via e-mail, determine winners for open cry and sealed-bid auctions, and create an order from winning bids.

Auction types

The Commerce Suite Negotiation subsystem supports three types of auctions:

Open Cry

An Open Cry auction allows the participants to see all of the bids. This kind of auction usually involves rapid bid submissions and a closing of the auction when the bidding halts. Additionally, the time of Open Cry auctions can be extended for receiving late response bids. Bidding information and notification can be accomplished though e-mail and/or bulletin-board posting.

Sealed Bid

A Sealed Bid auction allows only the bid participant and the auction administrator to see the submitted bid. Bidders cannot see bids submitted by other users. This kind of auction is usually used to keep the bidding amounts anonymous and allows for long submission deadlines, so that bidders can evaluate their bids and the products. Bidding takes place over a specified time period, after which the highest bid wins.

Dutch

In a Dutch auction, the merchant sets a starting auction price to see if a bidder is willing to accept that trading price. If no participants accept that price, then the auction price is lowered. This continues until there are sufficient bidders to clear the inventory. The name of this type of auction has its origin in the Dutch tulip market, which would sell the tulips at lower costs as time went on in the day.

Auction style

Based on the three auction types, merchants can create their own auction styles, or use system-provided auction styles. An auction style is a template that contains predefined values for auction input parameters and rules. The use of these auction styles helps save the merchant time in creating new auctions. These styles are usually used for creating standard auctions. The WebSphere Commerce Suite Accelerator includes a wizard to create auction styles.

Pricing mechanisms

Auctions support two types of pricing mechanisms. In Discriminative Pricing, the auction winners pay their exact bid amounts. In Non-discriminative Pricing, all auction winners pay the price that is paid by the lowest winning bid. Non-descriminative Pricing is often used by Business-To-Business Web stores to liquidate inventory.

Auction rules

A merchant creates an auction by defining rules associated with that auction. These rules contain the name and type of auction, as well as the product and quantity associated with the auction. In addition, the auction rules specify the type of interaction, bid control, pricing mechanism, closing rules, and policy variations. Figure 1 below illustrates the rules associated with an auction.

Auction tools

The Commerce Suite Negotiation subsystem provides auction tools for both the buyer and the seller (merchant). The store Web site can provide the buyers with an auction gallery, where they can add the auctions they are interested in monitoring or participating. The auctions where the buyer places a bid are automatically added to the gallery. In an Open Cry auction, the bidder can set up a proxy bid, which automatically bids on behalf of the buyer. This proxy bid contains the buyer's starting bid, maximum bid and a bid increment. In addition, the auction can be defined to allow for e-mail notification and/or bulletin board auction status postings.

For the seller, the Commerce Suite Accelerator contains tools and wizards for creating and managing auctions. Additionally, as it is for the buyer, sellers can be notified of an auction's status through e-mail and/or bulletin board postings. Figure 2 below illustrates the auction buyer and seller tools.

Auction commands

The Commerce Suite Negotiation subsystem provides commands and tasks to implement the required logic and functionality to create, administer and run online auctions. In addition, the Commerce Suite Job Scheduler is used to periodically execute some of these commands. These scheduled commands include MonitorAuctions, ProcessOpenCryBids, ProcessDutchBids, ProcessAutoBids, DoAuctionNotify, CompleteOrder, and FinalizeAuction.

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The Auction tutorial

So far, we have discussed the concepts and functionality that WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1 provides for auctions in the Negotiation subsystem. Now, we will provide a tutorial that you can walk through to create and run an online auction in a Commerce Suite Web site.

In this exercise, we have installed WebSphere Commerce Suite, Professional Edition, Version 5.1 on our machine. We set the machine node name to wcs . We used an administrator user name of wcsadmin with a password set to password .

1. Create and publish a store

1. From your Windows ® Start menu, select Programs => IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite => Store Services . The Store Services Logon page opens.
2. In the User name field, type wcsadmin . In the Password field, type password . Click Log On . If the Create Store Archive doesn't come up, click New . The Create Store Archive page opens.
3. In the Store Archive field, type the name of your store archive: MyStore (the .sar suffix is added automatically).
4. In the Store Directory field, type the name of the directory: MyStore (keep the name of your store archive). The directory name defines where the Web assets will be published on the server.
5. From the Store owner drop-down list, select the organization that owns the store. For this tutorial, select Default Organization .
6. From the Sample list box, select InFashion_en_US_es_ES.sar . This is the sample store archive on which you will base your store. InFashion displays in two languages, English (en_US) and Spanish (Es_ES). A description of InFashion displays in the Sample description box. To view the InFashion preview pages, click Preview . After you have finished looking at the preview pages, click X to close the preview pages.
7. In the Create Store Archive window, click OK . A dialog box opens, stating that MyStore.sar was created successfully. Click OK . The Store Archive list displays. Note that the store archive you created displays in the list.
8. From the Store Services' Archive List, select the store to publish: MyStore . Click Publish to open the publishing page. Select your desired publishing options. For more information on publishing options, click Help . Use the default settings for publishing our store.
   Tip: To create a fully functional store, select all publishing options, including the product data option, the first time you publish a store archive.
9. Click OK . While the store publishes, you are returned to the Store Archive list page. Publishing will take a approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
10. The publishing state is reflected in the Publish status column. Click Refresh to update the status until the Publish status reads Publishing completed successfully . Select the store archive from the list and click Publish Summary to see the results of the publish.
11. On the Publish Summary page of Store Services, click Launch Store to view and test your store.
12. A dialog box stating the Web application Web path opens. Click OK . Since this is the first time you are accessing your store, it will take some time before your store displays. Browse through your store.
13. Add the URL of your store to your browser's bookmarks list.

Step 2. Enable the sample auction store pages

Commerce Suite 5.1 comes with sample auction files that can be used to quickly get a simple auction store up and running. Once you have created and published MyStore, use the following instructions to open the newly created sample store archive in WebSphere Commerce Studio. Complete the steps below to add the sample auction functionality to your MyStore.

Add the project to WebSphere Commerce Studio

1. Copy the Address.properties file from the C:\Websphere\WCS\samples\properties directory to the C:\Websphere\WCS\properties directory.
2. Stop and restart WebSphere Commerce Server - demo in WebSphere Application Server's Administrative Console. To do this, select Start => Programs => IBM WebSphere => Application Server 3.5 => Administrator's Console . The WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console opens.
3. Expand WebSphere Administrative Domain .
4. Expand your host name, that is wcs .
5. Right-click WebSphere Commerce Server - demo . Select Stop . After a few moments, a message displays stating that it stopped successfully.
6. Right-click WebSphere Commerce Server - demo . Select Start . After a few moments, a message displays stating that it started successfully.
7. From the Start menu, select Programs => IBM WebSphere Commerce Studio => Studio3.5 => IBM WebSphere Studiov3.5 .
8. Select Create new project .
9. Choose the Store Archive option. Enter the host name wcs , user name wcsadmin and password password to log on to your Commerce Suite instance. Click Log On .
10. A window with the store archive files list appears. Select the MyStore.sar file from the Archive file list, and click Import to import the SAR into Commerce Studio.

Turn off syntax checking in Page Designer

The store pages in the sample store use nonstandard syntax, since Page Designer cannot reconcile URL commands. To turn off the syntax checking in Page Designer:

1. In the left navigation frame in WebSphere Studio, expand the stores - MyStore folder by clicking on the + . Double-click one of the .jsp files to open it in Page Designer. A Syntax Error Window opens displaying the nonstandard syntax error message.
2. From the menu, select Tools => Page Designer Options . The Options window opens.
3. Click the General tab.
4. Ensure that the Format HTML source automatically and Correct HTML syntax errors automatically check boxes are deselected.
5. From the drop-down list, select Ignore all errors .
6. Click Apply .
7. Click OK .
8. Close the Syntax Error Window and the .jsp file that you opened. If a red check mark displays beside it, the file is still checked out. To undo the check out, select it, right-click, and then select Undo Check Out .

Include the Sample Auction pages in your store project

1. Expand the stores folder by clicking on the + . Right-click MyStore under the stores folder, and select Insert => File to open the Insert File dialog box.
2. In the Insert File dialog box, click the Use Existing tab. Click the Browse button to navigate to the C:\Websphere\WCS\samples\web\Auction folder. In the Open dialog, select all of the files, and click the Open button. Click OK on the Insert File dialog box to add auction sample files to your project.
3. Expand the stores - MyStore folder. Right-click the images folder, and select Insert => File to open the Insert File dialog box again.
4. Click Browse in the Insert File window. On the Use Existing tab, navigate to the C:\Websphere\WCS\samples\web\Auction\images folder, select the image file mailbox.gif , and click Open in the Open dialog box. Click OK in the Insert File dialog box to add the file to your project.
5. Export the changes to the store archive:
   
   
1. In the left navigation frame, select the project MyStore at the top of the frame.
2. Select Tools => Wizards => Export Store Archive .
   Figure 3. Selecting Tools => Wizards => Export Store Archive
   
   
3. The Store Archive Export dialog displays. In the User name field, type wcsadmin . In the Password field, type password . Click Export .
4. The updated file assets are transferred to the store archive on the server and a message box is displayed. Click OK .
   Figure 4. Message indicating that the export has completed successfully
   
   
6. Update MyStore.sar to add AuctionSample_en_US.properties :
1. Navigate to the C:\Websphere\WCS\stores\web directory, double-click MyStore.sar file to open it using a ZIP tool, for example, Winzip.
2. Double-click the properties.zip file in the Winzip window to open in another Winzip window.
3. Click the Add button in the Winzip window to open the Add dialog box.
4. Change to the directory C:\Websphere\WCS\samples\properties . Select the AuctionSample_en_US.properties , and click Add to add the file to the properties.zip file.
5. Click File => Exit to close the properties.zip Winzip window.
6. Click the MyStore.sar Winzip window. It will prompt asking whether you want to update the archive. Click Yes .
7. Click File => Exit to close the MyStore.sar Winzip window.
   
   
7. Republish your store using Store Services .

Note: Instead of using WebSphere Commerce Studio, you can add the sample auction store files to your MyStore store by manually copying the files in the following directories into the MyStore.sar file using a ZIP tool. However, this is not the recommended way of modifying Web assets within a store archive.

1. Contents of C:\Websphere\WCS\samples\web\Auction\*.* should be copied into webapp.zip within the Store Archive.
2. Contents of C:\Websphere\WCS\samples\properties*.* should be copied into properties.zip .
3. The files C:\Websphere\WCS\samples\web\Auction\en_US\*.gif should be copied into webapp.zip .
4. Republish the store using Store Services.

Completing the above steps will enable you to view the auction pages but with no data. To view products on auction, you need to do two things:

• Enable the scheduler to run auction commands.
• Use the Commerce Suite Accelerator or manual methods to create auctions.

Step 3. Integrate the sample auction store pages with the commerce site using Commerce Studio

Modify the sidebar navigation to add a link to the auctions site

1. In WebSphere Studio, double-click sidebar.jsp . Click on the HTML Source tab to view the source pane.
2. At the end of the file, add a link to the sample auctions site. See Figure 5 below.
   Figure 5. Link added to the sample auctions site
   
   
3. Select File => Save to save your changes to sidebar.jsp , and close the file. Right-click on sidebar.jsp , and click Check-in .
4. Right-click sidebar.jsp in your project pane, and click Publish this File .

Step 4. Enable the auction scheduler jobs

Auctions use the Job Scheduler, a component of a Commerce Server that schedules and launches jobs according to a timing framework. A job is a Commerce Suite command scheduled to run at a specified time or interval. For example, the MonitorAuctions command is a scheduler job.

Before working with auctions for the first time, you must activate auction scheduler jobs by updating the scheduler configuration table. To activate these jobs, first modify the wcs.auction.sql file.

1. Edit the wcs.auction.sql file in the C:\Websphere\WCS\schema\db2 directory and replace all occurrences of host@xxx.com with your address, for example, admin@ibm.com . This is the address that displays as the originator of auction-related messages sent from the system.
2. Select Start => Programs => IBM DB2 => Command Window , and run the following SQL statements in a DB2 command window:
   db2 connect to mall
db2 -tvf C:\Websphere\WCS\schema\db2\wcs.auction.sql
   Figure 6. Running the SQL statements in a DB2 command window
   
   

Step 5. Create auctions using the Commerce Suite Accelerator

Auction creation involves checking inventory, updating inventory, obtaining and saving fulfillment center information, checking and validating for bid rules, and finally, inserting into the auction table and updating tables related to the above mentioned tasks.

Commerce Suite 5.1 provides a couple of methods to create auctions. One is the simple and easy-to-use GUI interface in the Commerce Suite Accelerator and the second is a command interface that can be invoked either manually or through a customized GUI that is part of a store. In this section, we will investigate the steps involved in using both of these methods for auction creation.

Auction wizard

To create an auction using the Commerce Suite Accelerator, you need access to the merchandising menu. Merchandising Manager, Marketing Manager, and Merchant are the Access groups that can access the Merchandising menu.

Open the Commerce Suite Accelerator

To open the Commerce Suite Accelerator, do the following:

1. Start the Commerce Suite Accelerator by either:
• Selecting Start=> Programs => IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite => Commerce Suite Accelerator or
• Pointing to the following URL in your browser: http://wcs.ibm.com/accelerator/
2. Log on to the Commerce Suite Accelerator using User name wcsadmin and password password . Click Log On .
3. Depending on your user role, one or more menus display.

Create bid control rule

A Bid Control Rule specifies bid amounts and quantities, as well as increments, for bidding within specified ranges for Open Cry or Sealed Bid auctions.

To create bid control rules, use the Bid Control Rule wizard as follows:

1. From the menu, select Merchandise => Bid Control Rules . Click New .
2. On the General page, enter the name as myrule and enter a short description. Leave Open Cry selected. Click Next .
3. On the Rule page:
   1. Enter 10 for Minimum bid amount. The minimum bid amount represents the minimum that participants are allowed to bid.
   2. Enter 1 for Minimum bid quantity. The minimum bid quantity represents the minimum quantity participants are allowed to bid on.
   3. Enter 10 - 100 as the Value range. The Value range (for Open Cry auctions) is the lower and upper ends of the bid increment range.
   4. Enter 10 for Value increment. The Value increment (for Open Cry auctions) is the minimum increment between bids in the specified range.
   5. Click Add .
4. Click Finish . A message displays. Click OK .

Create a sample auction

1. From the menu, select Merchandise => Auctions .
2. The next page provides two options: to create a new auction or to find an existing auction. Click New .
3. The Auction types page lets you select the standard types or customized auction styles. For this example, we will select Create New => Open Cry . Click Next .
4. In the auction Product page, click Find to search for a product by name. On the Find Product page, enter evening for the product name. Click Find . Select first evening bag (sku-225) from the list. Click OK to return to the Product page.
   Note: Although check boxes are available for each product row, selecting more than one check box disables the OK button. Therefore, you will be able to select only one product at a time to create an auction.
5. This takes you to a page that allows you to enter the quantity that you would like to put on auction. The validation for the available quantity is not done at this point. Therefore, it would be wise to confirm the availability of the quantity that you wish to auction by querying the Inventory table. You can do this either manually or by using Commerce Suite Accelerator's GUI interface. From the menu, select Merchandising => Products . This displays all of the available products. Select the desired product and click Inventory .
6. Enter a quantity of 5 for the available quantity. Click Next .
7. The next couple of pages allow you to enter the desired duration, price and pricing mechanism. On the Duration page, enter Start date , Start time (which is after current time) and End date , End time . Leave OR selected. Enter 1 day for the When there have been no bids field. Click Next .
8. On the Auction Pricing page, enter 5 for Deposit and 40 for Reserve price. Select Discriminative . Click Next .
9. The Auction display page allows you to specify which templates to use in displaying auction rules and the product display for an auction. It also allows you to enter the desired product description for display. We will leave the default values auc_rule.jsp and auc_ItemDisplay.jsp for the Auction Rule template and the Product Display Template respectively. Click Next .
10. The last page before completing an auction creation is the Auction Bid Control Rule page. On this page, select MyRule . This displays the values associated with the rule.
    Figure 7. The Auction Bid Control Rule page
    
    
11. Clicking Finish will result in an acknowledgment message with the auction ID. Click OK .
    Figure 8. Message indicating that auction was updated successfully
    
    

Change existing auctions

To change existing auctions, use the Auction notebook as follows:

1. From the menu, select Merchandise => Auctions . The Auction List page displays.
2. From the Auction List page, select an auction and click Change . The first page of the Auction notebook displays. Note that the changes you can make depend on the auction state (as shown in the Auction List page). For example, you can change any field in an auction that is in the Future state, but only certain fields for auctions that are in the Current state. For current auctions, you can change the following:
   
   • End date/time (postpone only)
   • Quantity (increase only)
   • Offered price (Dutch auctions only)

   For future auctions, you can change all parameters.

3. To change an auction, complete each page and click Next on the navigation panel until you are finished. Online help is available for each page.
4. When you are done and have clicked OK , a message displays.

Step 6. Create customer bids for the auction

1. Launch your store in the Web browser.
2. Click the Register link on the left navigation bar of MyStore.
3. Register yourself on the store Web site.
4. Click on Link to Auction Site in the left navigation bar.

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Conclusion

In this article, we introduced the wealth of tools and functionality that WebSphere Commerce Suite provides to help you create and administer online auctions. This can be accomplished in just a few simple steps that are shared between the merchant and the Web site developer. The following steps summarize the process of adding this functionality to the commerce Web site.

1. Enable the store auction Web pages.
2. Integrate these Web pages into a commerce Web site using WebSphere Commerce Studio.
3. Enable the Auction Scheduler jobs.
4. Create auctions using the Commerce Suite Accelerator.
5. Allow customers to register and create bids on the commerce Web site.

Additional information about IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite and its associated tools can be found on the WebSphere Commerce Suite Web site . In the Technical Library section of the WebSphere Commerce Suite Web site, you will find many useful guide books, reference manuals, help files, API details, and a database schema manual. You will also find other tutorials on creating an online store and sample auctions.

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• WebSphere Commerce Suite overview
• WebSphere Commerce Studio
• The Negotiation subsystem
• The Auction tutorial
• Conclusion
• About the authors
• Comments

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