Proxy stores (Business Edition)

WebSphere Commerce also supports entities known as proxy stores. A proxy store is a store that represents a business partner's operational assets and provides the business logic that allows the WebSphere Commerce site to interact with an external business partner. The proxy store also contains operational data that gets updated in interaction with the business proxy site. For example, a proxy store may capture the orders transferred to a remote order capture system, as well as capturing the suppliers' inventory information or the information sent to a supplier's fulfillment centers. Unlike a customer-facing store, a proxy store does not include a storefront and cannot be accessed by users.
Creating proxy stores

Creating a proxy store is very similar to creating a store in an extended site, in that the majority of the proxy store assets are provided from existing stores (including asset stores). As implemented in the samples provided with WebSphere Commerce, the proxy store does not include a storefront. The following diagram illustrates the distributor proxy stores using the assets from the distributor asset store and the catalog asset store.

Rather than providing a user interface wizard to create a proxy store, WebSphere Commerce implements proxy stores through service agreements, which are then imported via a user interface, into WebSphere Commerce, creating the proxy store. The service agreement is governed by a template, which determines what information you need to create. The template for creating proxy stores (TemplateReferralContract.xml) is available in the following directory: