Shopping Cart in SAP Commerce: Performance, Architecture, Pitfalls, Testing

A shopping cart is the centerpiece of almost every e-commerce website.

In fact, this component is the first thing that makes an e-commerce store different from just an online catalog. Working with issues and challenges related to the cart is something you’ll never forget. 

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, at the opening of his novel Anna Karenina, writes ‘All Happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ You know, the diversity of cart-related issues I have been observing in the SAP Commerce projects, made me think that Tolstoy meant the developers as well. The diversity of the issues and challenges in this component is so vast that every case is different. However, when it comes to building or optimizing the shopping cart processes, understanding the limitations,  pitfalls, and peculiarities is a huge plus. 

Let’s have a look at how a shopping cart works in SAP Commerce under the hood and how to avoid making mistakes in shopping cart customization.

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It all started with the idea of making the built-in flexible search console more convenient for a developer. It is common to find ourselves forgetting the name of an attribute or its type. Imagine my surprise when I found the traces of this feature in the HAC source code. SAP left them unfinished and probably abandoned. For example, for the Impex console, suggestions are basically implemented and almost ready, but for some reason, they have not been finished and not enabled.

In this article, I’m filling this gap and document how to enable autosuggestions in the Impex console. Additionally, I introduce my custom solution for Flexible Search suggestions and autocomplete. Read More »

SAP Commerce released version 2011 of Commerce Cloud. As usual, the version number refers to November 2020. How big is this update? Should we rush with the upgrade? What new will the update of the platform bring you?  Read More »
Today I am sharing three great open source projects:
  • FlexibleSearch builder (Java Library),
  • HAC VCS Info (extension),
  • jHac (a console app for automating HAC operations).
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    In this article, we’re going to continue on the recent theme on using native SQL in SAP Commerce.

    The essentials were thoroughly explained in the first part of the series. Since the topic is controversial and should be used with caution, we highly recommend reading the introductory part before going further with this piece.

    You need to be aware of the potential risks, limitations, pitfalls, and caveats of the  ORM engine. In this work, we are explaining those details. We’d like to touch upon a few elements or aspects, you need to take into account when considering using native SQL in your SAP Commerce code. In this part you will learn more about the SAP Commerce L1 cache, multitenancy aspects, service layer direct, and performing faster bulk updates.

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    Come take a look into the v2005 release of SAP Commerce Cloud. I’ll cover cool and interesting new features, enhancements, and changes, and offer some commentary on what I like and what I like… less. Judge for yourself what SAP did well and what might warrant some extra polish.

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    Being at Crossroads, Take a Perspective View
    I often interview strong Java developers who were offered a move to SAP Commerce. What I see regularly is uncertainty and sometimes reluctance to learn SAP Commerce.

    Some say they believe they won’t be able to use the knowledge and experience anywhere else in their careers.

    Some of them see this move as ‘boxing’ themselves in. 

    It is generally believed that focusing on the niche product may cause taking a lot of time in the future to get re-trained for a different product or technology if the current market conditions change and SAP Commerce will fade in relevance and popularity. Proprietary platforms come and go, and developers feel afraid to find themselves with useless knowledge and meaningless experience. 

    Even though I generally share the view and arguments above, I also believe that SAP Commerce is a special case. What I want to leave you, then, is with the explanation of why I think so. 

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    On May 19th, 2020, Forrester released their Forrester Waves™ for B2C Commerce Suites and B2B Commerce Suites. Find out how SAP Commerce Cloud (Hybris) fared. Would you score it the same?
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    In today’s article, we talk about things normally considered as controversial and inapplicable. We explain the techniques on how to bypass the Commerce Cloud ORM layer and directly interact with database tables to provide faster reads and writes. This article explains how to do it and how to do it properly if using direct database access is the best solution for the task. When is it the best solution and what things you need to take into account if you decide to go this way? Read More »
    In a continuation of my previous research article on insights into the usage history of various SAP Commerce Cloud (Hybris) versions over a period of years, let’s see how the recent release of SAP Commerce Cloud v2005 impacts my previous commentary. Read More »