Glossary

Business Manager

The primary tool used to configure Salesforce B2C Commerce and customer storefronts.

Business Object

Represents data such as products, prices, customer names, addresses and credit card information that is entered via or shown on a storefront.

Cartridge

A collection of B2C Commerce resources that is used as a flexible deployment mechanism for new functionality. A cartridge can contain customer data, product and catalog data, pipelines, pipelets, form definitions, scripts, templates and server connection files.

Content Assets

The portion of storefront pages (for example, HTML snippets and images) that must be regularly updated to keep the site fresh.

Content Slot

Content slots can be scheduled to show products, categories, content assets or static HTML in your storefront. A content slot is tagged in storefront ISML templates using the <isslot> tag.

Content Delivery Network

Service used to manage content distribution for a site.

Control Node

UX Studio development element that modifies the execution path of a pipeline. For example, in creating loops, calling other pipelines or creating alternative pipeline branches whose execution depends on certain conditions. Control nodes include start nodes (where the execution path starts) and end nodes (where the execution path ends).

FQDN

FQDN is an acronym for Fully Qualified Domain Name. A complete domain name consisting of a host, the second-level domain, and the top-level domain. For example, www.mystore.com is an FQDN. www is the host; mystore is the second-level domain; and .com is the top level domain.

Geolocation

The store geolocation feature is a database of zip codes to identify store location for store locator features on your storefront. Data must be imported per instance.

The IP address lookup geolocation feature is a database that maps the IP address of a logged in customer to a geographical region. This feature can be used to create customer groups based on geography. You can also use the IP address lookup via API for geotracking or other purposes. This database is shared by all instances on a POD and can't be updated or changed.

Impression

For active data, a product impression is the number of times a product is viewed in minimal detail on a page by a customer in your storefront. The specific interpretation of this is up to the merchant and depends upon how the isobject tag is implemented in your ISML templates. Product impressions are tracked and aggregated together. A product impression isn't used to calculate any other active data values. See also View.

Interaction Continue Node

UX Studio development element that processes a template based on user action via a browser. Both the Interaction Continue node and the Interaction node call templates that process requests from the storefront. However, an Interaction Continue node uses a form definition to handle multiple types of input from the storefront, while an Interaction node processes a particular storefront request such as when the consumer clicks the mini-cart.

Interaction Node

UX Studio development element that generates responses to requests or interacts with the client. Interaction nodes call templates to generate the response sent back to the client. Both the Interaction Continue node and the Interaction node call templates that process requests from the storefront. However, an Interaction Continue node uses a form definition to handle multiple types of input from the storefront, while an Interaction node processes a particular storefront request such as when the consumer clicks the mini-cart.

Internet Store Markup Language (ISML)

B2C Commerce proprietary extension to HTML that developers use to create B2C Commerce templates.

Jump Node

UX Studio development element that lets a pipeline forward a request to another pipeline.

Key-Value Pair

When a pipeline is processed, the Pipeline Dictionary accepts and stores parameters in key-value pairs. These parameters are used to exchange data between pipelets. They are also used by the Template Manager to show pipeline activity in the storefront (via the isprint tag).

Local Include

Use of the <isinclude url=""> syntax in an ISML template to include content from another template.

Model-View-Controller (MVC) Architecture

Software architectural model whereby the underlying data (model) is separate from the user interface (view), so that changes to the user interface don't affect data handling, and data can be reorganized without changing the user interface. The decoupling of data access and business logic from data presentation and user interaction is facilitated by a controller.

Page Caching

Page caching is the temporary storage of data that is likely to be used again. Page caching improves a site's overall performance and minimizes customer wait times, by storing key pages in the cache that change little and need to be shown immediately. The biggest challenge, when determining which pages or portions of pages to cache, is to balance the need for personalized dynamic pages against short response times.

Page Cache Management is configured and managed in the Business Manager. The B2C Commerce Web Server maintains separate caches for pipeline requests and static content. Page caching can be enabled, disabled or invalidated on a per web site basis.

Pipelet

Defines an individual business function within a B2C Commerce pipeline. Pipelets are part of the B2C Commerce API. You can also define specific types of pipelets such as the following:

Script: to call your custom B2C Commerce script file
Eval: to evaluate data in the Pipeline Dictionary
Assign: To assign values within the Pipeline Dictionary

Pipeline

A pipeline is a logical model of a particular business process, similar to a flowchart. UX Studio provides a visual representation of the process within the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Pipeline Dictionary

Used as a data transport mechanism along the flow of a pipeline. It transports data that is entered via or shown on a browser from one specific business function to another.

Point of Delivery (POD)

A point of delivery is a collection of computing, networking, and storage services that combine to host a multi-tenant SAAS application.

Primary Instance Group (PIG)

A primary instance group is the Production Instance, Development Instance, and Staging Instance for each customer realm. A primary instance group enables full lifecycle support for testing and replication for a customer storefront.

Realm

A realm is a collection of resources allocated to a customer storefront. Typically, this includes a primary instance group and one or more sandbox instance groups.

Remote Include

Use of the <isinclude url=""> syntax in an ISML template to include content from another pipeline.

Sandbox

B2C Commerce instance used by developers when coding and testing the storefront.

Secondary Instance Group (SIG)

A secondary instance group is a collection of three or more sandboxes associated with a realm for a specific customer or partner.

SiteGenesis

B2C Commerce's prebuilt application that merchants can use as a basis to develop their customized site.

Standard catalog

A catalog that isn't assigned to a site. Standard catalogs are usually organized to make it easy to manage products. These catalogs can match the organization of inventory or ordering systems. See also Storefront Catalog.

Static File

A file that doesn't change unless it's replaced, such as a product image, resource file or message file.

Static Page Content

Web page elements such as HTML headings and text, images called with HTML tags, and any other part of the page that is unaffected by the ISML conversion process.

Stop Node

UX Studio development element that functions as an emergency break, comparable to an exception within pipelets. If you want to stop all pipelines, use a stop node.

Storefront

Your online ecommerce site powered by B2C Commerce. A single instance can include multiple storefronts.

Storefront Catalog

A catalog assigned to a site. The structure of a storefront catalog determines the menu navigation structure and search refinements for the storefront. A storefront catalog can be assigned to multiple sites. However, a site can only have one catalog assigned to it. For SiteGenesis, this is the storefront-catalog-en catalog. Salesforce recommends including "storefront" in the name of your storefront catalog. You can also see which catalogs are storefront catalogs on the Catalogs page. Storefront catalogs have one or more sites listed in the Site Assignments column of the catalog list.See also Standard Catalog.

Template

Templates define how data and page information is transformed into the HTML that is rendered on a browser, using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for page layout and styling and the forms model for data display and verification.

B2C Commerce uses templates to generate dynamic HTML-based web pages for responses sent back to the client. Templates are created in the Internet Store Markup Language (ISML), a B2C Commerce proprietary extension to HTML.

User Session

A user session is the time that a user is logged on to the storefront. The session timeout is how long a user is logged into the site before being asked to log in again. For B2C Commerce, the session times out automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity. The automatic time out is set by B2C Commerce and can't be changed or configured. If there is consistent activity, the session is canceled after 6 hours and a new session is created for the user.

View

For active data, a product view is counted when a product detail page appears to a site visitor. Product views are used to calculate Look to book ratio. See also Impression.

Workspace

Eclipse-specific local directory that contains a developer's project files.