Session Management - In Memory Sessions

Maximum In-Memory sessions count is the count of active sessions that can be allowed at any given instance of time. Determining this value exactly may not be possible as the volume of active sessions varies time to time for any given application. 
In order to effectively support the maximum possible sessions, use the flag Allow-Overflow. Turn this to true, to specify that the number of sessions in memory can exceed the value specified by the Max in-memory session count property. 

**Setting this value too low without having the flag Allow-overflow, would result in poor application performance as all the requests would be waiting for a free session. 


NOTE

• This option is valid only in non-distributed sessions mode.
• Do not set this value to a number less than the maximum thread pool size for your server.

Glimpse of WebSphere Commerce V9.0

This section highlights the core features/capabilities of WebSphere Commerce V9 to the best of my knowledge and understanding. 

New Capabilities

• Watson Content Hub integration
• Watson Content Hub (formerly DX Content Hub) gives business owners the power to create iconic, robust, and consistent brand experiences by using cloud-based, cognitive content management capabilities.
• Generic External Order system integration
• Generic External Inventory system integration
• Dynamic Pricing integration
• Dynamic Pricing 16.4 is a cloud-based pricing system that analyses real-time market data to provide suggestions on how merchandisers can react to competitor pricing and shifts in market conditions. 
• Taxation integration
• Integrate WebSphere Commerce with a third-party tax calculation system to provide tax calculations.
• Payment integration.
• Integrate Payment Service Provider through payment tokenization.
• Apple Pay on the Web integration.
• Externalized Customization (xC).
• New programming pattern that introduces a separation between the core application components and customizations. 
• IBM Tealeaf Customer Experience on Cloud integration.
• Enabled AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) by default.
• Migration tool to transform EJB beans to JPA.
• Adoption of Docker to support
• Distributed deployment topology
• Certificate management
• Quick Deploy (with Docker-Compose) without any additional configuration.
• IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce
• This enables a CSR to perform key tasks on behalf of the guest, registered customers, for both B2B and B2C business models through the same storefront view as of any customer. 
• JQuery based Aurora starter store
• The Store server uses Spring MVC, instead of Struts

Deprecated Functionalities

• WebSphere Commerce SOI services.
• Alternate/Recommendation – Use REST service framework to work with the command framework and develop business services.
• WebSphere Commerce OAGIS messaging.
•  Alternate/Recommendation – Use REST service framework to work with the command framework and develop business services.
• Data service layer (DSL) 
• Alternate/Recommendation – Use the Java Persistence API.
• Request for Quote (RFQ)
• Alternate/Recommendation – Integrate with IBM CPQ.
• ATP inventory model
• Alternate/Recommendation – DOM Integration.
• Return process
• Alternate/Recommendation – Integrate with IBM OMS.

Discontinued Functionalities

• Support for Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) as a Web server.
• Support for Derby database for developer
• Alternate/Recommendation – Use IBM DB2.
• Sterling Configure, price, Quote
• Alternate/Recommendation – Use Modular Omni-Configurator which is lightweight and enabled for multi-device support.
• Managed files and managed directories (fileloader, fileprop utilities)
• Alternate/Recommendation – Use Watson Content Hub or a third-party file server to manage file assets.
• Search Utilities (crawler, configSearchReplication, setupSearchIndex)
• Alternate/Recommendation – Command-line search operations are replaced by RESTful APIs.
• Massload and Massextract utilities
• Alternate/Recommendation – Use dataload utility.
• Store Publish utility (publishstore)
• Alternate/Recommendation – New Gradle script replaces publishstore utility.
• Configuration Manager Tool (config_server)
• Alternate/Recommendation – The functionality previously performed by the tool is superseded by the continuous delivery pipeline.
• Migration Utilities (migrateListPrice, migrateMarketing, migratePromotions, migrateSearchFacet, migrateSolrSearch)
• Alternate/Recommendation – These are no longer needed and alternate migration approach has been defined.
• Reset database utility (resetdb) - Developer
• Alternate/Recommendation – New database can be created in DB2.
• Reset database utility (resetstores) - Developer
• Alternate/Recommendation – Project crs-web to be recovered.
• Reset database utility (restoreDefault) - Developer
• Alternate/Recommendation – Workspace to be recovered.

Programming Model

• Presentation tier is further decoupled from the business logic tier to better enable support for multiple sales channels.
• The Store server uses Spring MVC, instead of Struts.
• WebSphere Commerce services support RESTful services along with SOI and BOD services. The recommendation is to leverage RESTful services as SOI and BOD services are deprecated in this release.
• A similar recommendation to Persistence layer to leverage JPA as EJB and DSL are deprecated.

Micro Service Architecture of WebSphere Commerce

• Commerce components/layers are now loosely coupled.
• WebSphere Commerce Server, now being called as Transaction Server is separated into FIVE major functional servers to evolve into microservice architecture.
• Transaction Server
• Container server that runs transactional business logic and APIs that serve other commerce servers (Request routing, processing storefront transactions, processing REST services, hosting business and administration tools).
• Store Server
• Container server that runs storefront for all stores and holds all the storefront assets.
• Search Server
• A server that provides search engine capabilities for frontend applications.
• Customization Server
• A server that runs custom business logic as xC extensions.
• Utility Server
• Container server that runs application administration utilities. This does not exist in the development environment.
• Each functional server is available as a Docker image.
• Though the isolation is along well-defined service interfaces, there still exists some minor dependencies between the servers.
• Store, Search and Customization servers are WebSphere Liberty based, whereas Transaction and Utility Server is WebSphere Application Server based.

Reference

   Sample CI/CD pipeline to leverage WCS 9.0