Platform as a service (PaaS) is a facet of cloud computing. It involves services that provides a platform allowing customer-xs to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an application.

The capability provided to the customer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure customer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The customer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure (network, servers, operating systems, or storage), but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.

Intershop offers Intershop Commerce Management and Intershop Order Management as PaaS solutions to their partners and customers, including the option to modify and extend the standard offering as well as to re-distribute the offered services.

A packing slip is a document (paper) shipped together with the products to the customer-x. It contains a list of content of the package indicating the products and quantities of delivered products or services.

Intershop 7 and Intershop Commerce Management provide an option to have gifting-related messages printed on the packing slips, "packing slip messages".

In the WCM of Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, a page can be conceived of as an "entry point" to the storefront used to collect page variants. Pages are instances of a specific page type (defined by a pagelet) which specifies any parameters required for rendering the web page. Pages can have assigned multiple page variants. When a page is rendered one of its page variants is chosen based on various conditions.

In Enfinity Suite 6, Intershop 7 and Intershop Commerce Management, page cache means a temporary memory (managed by the Web Adapter) that keeps compiled front end pages (i.e., application responses) in order to speed up retrieval.

in Enfinity Suite 6's storefront editing, the "container" providing the content to be displayed in the slots/content page (deprecated)s

In the WCM of Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, a page template is a blueprint for page variants or other page templates that specifies the structure (the slots, etc.) of the final web page shown in the storefront and defines any parameters required for rendering the web page. In contrast to page variant types, page templates are created in the back office.

In the WCM of Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, a page variant constitutes a "container" object that holds the content components. Page variants are based on a page variant type or a page template that specifies the structure and defines any required parameters. Page variants are assigned to pages. Individual page variants can be subject to personalization, time control, etc.

In the WCM of Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, a page variant type is a blueprint for page variants or page templates that specifies the structure (the slots, etc.) of the final web page shown in the storefront and defines any parameters required for rendering the web page. A page variant type is the direct back office representation of a corresponding pagelet definition developed in Intershop Studio.

In the WCM of Intershop 7 /Intershop Commerce Management, pagelets are the development artifacts that constitute the meta model for the pages, page variants, content components, page templates, component templates, includes and view contexts that are managed via the back office to compose storefronts (or other front ends).

a release that is only talked and written about, without actually being delivered

in the demand chain, the channel of the parent (superior) organization

In the demand chain, the organization that is superior to another

Deprecated: use object replication instead

Depending on the context, "partner" may refer to different concepts.

1. 6WR/ISAFe:
   In the context of the 6WR project or ISAFe, partners are companies or organizations who provide extensions, solutions, services etc. around Intershop Commerce Suite.
2. Shop Manager:
   In the e-commerce manager's perspective, a partner is an actor in Enfinity Suite 6, Intershop 7 and Intershop Commerce Management that represents a selling organization within a partner channel, syndicates products or other content from the parent organization (sales organization or parent partner), and distributes products or other content over own channels.

In Enfinity Suite 6, the channel application of the partner channel, used by administrators of partner organizations for all administrative tasks, including organization management, channel management (via channel management plug-in), catalog management, or content management.

A pre-defined channel type in Enfinity Suite 6/Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management that enables sales organizations and partners to offer goods and services through partners, to interact with partners and to fulfill their orders.

In Enfinity Suite 6, the partner channel module within the sales organization back office, used by administrators of the parent organization that hosts the partner channel. This plug-in allows for managing partners, channel catalogs, content and orders.

Selling organizations working within a partner channel, see partner

mechanism to remind customer-xs of their storefront password

definable surcharge to be added onto the order total depending on the selected payment method

A payment method is a method that reflects the kind of money transfer from one party to another (customer to merchant). There are different payment methods that can be offered in online shops, e.g.

• cash in advance
• cash on delivery
• credit card
• open invoice
• direct debit
• others

A payment service provider (PSP) is a company that offers merchants online services for accepting electronic payments by a variety of payment methods including credit card, bank-based payments such as direct debit, bank transfer, and real-time bank transfer based on online banking.

Typically, a PSP can connect to multiple acquiring banks, card and payment networks. In many cases the PSP will fully manage these technical connections, relationships with the external network, and bank accounts. This makes the merchant less dependent on financial institutions and free from the task of establishing these connections directly - especially when operating internationally.

A payment service provider is the business partner who handles the financial transactions in case, for example, a credit card will be offered as payment method. The partner is involved in the process of card authorization and capture.

Generally, the performance of an e-commerce software is one of the major criteria for its market acceptance. Customers expect quick response times when visiting a web shop, and the owner of the e-commerce software wants to optimize the operational efforts and costs.

With respect to Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, performance and scalability measures apply to the following areas on different levels:

• application architecture
• application design, incl. coding guidelines
• cluster configuration
• database server tuning
• application server settings
• OS tuning

The performance report is a document, available for different builds (generally, builds that reach the QA entry criteria for testing) and give a detailed overview about the following NFR test measurements:

• baseline
• maximum throughput (-> scalability)
• stability (60h)
• all measurements are performed with and without active page cache
• all measurements are performed with PrimeTech and with QA Enterprise mass data environment

Permission marketing is a marketing technique that requires the approval of the customer-x.

For example, the merchant sends e-mail newsletters only to those customers who have specifically requested it. Different kind of procedures are possible:

• opt-in
• confirmed opt-in
• double opt-in

Permission marketing comes into force during the newsletter subscription. The kind of procedure that has to be implemented depends on the legal requirement of the country where the consumer are coming from. In Germany, for example, the double opt-in procedure is preferred from the legal point of view but not specially requested.

In the layered software architecture, the persistent object layer groups the persistent objects, which are used to write and read data to/from the database (see ORM). In Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, the persistent object layer is implemented in the ORM engine.

In Enfinity Suite 6/Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management development, pipelets are small, re-usable units of Java code (one type of pipeline building blocks) that perform discrete business functions.

Depending on the context, "pipeline" may refer to different concepts:

1. Developer
   In Enfinity Suite 6/Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management development, it refers to the fundamental architecture that describes all business workflows. Pipelines connect pipelets to model complex business processes, and call appropriate ISML templates to turn the results of a business process into a response that is sent back to the user client.
2. Sales
   In the sales context, it describes the individual steps salespeople take in the sales process: from the initial contact with a potential customer ("prospect"), to qualifying that prospect into a "lead", and further validating that lead into a "sales opportunity" followed through stages like meeting and proposal until the "close".

In the WCM of Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, placeholders define editable areas in page variants or content components that are derived from page templates or, respectively, component templates. If provided for by their corresponding types, page templates or component templates can propagate their slots to their derived page variants or components via placeholders.

A point of sale or point of service is one type of a touchpoint. It can be a retail shop, a checkout counter in a shop, or the location where a transaction occurs. Point of sale often refers to a terminal or more generally to the hardware and software used for the checkout process -- the equivalent of an electronic cash register.

an individual message in a discussion forum

mechanism for administrating multiple prices for products, used to enable customer segment-specific pricing, special prices for certain periods or discount visualization ("strike-through prices")

mechanism for defining the price list to apply

in auctions (Enfinity Suite 6), minimum increment or, in reverse auctions, decrement between bidding steps

Depending on the context, "pricing" may refer to different concepts:

1. Shop Manager
   A tab in the product detail view ( Commerce Management ) that summarizes the price settings for a product.
2. Developer
   The mechanisms for defining product prices in various ways, which are then used by the storefront for display purposes and as a base for selling them, including
   • price types (like sale price, list price or cost price)
   • price storage (like product prices or price lists)
   • price display (e.g., specific content components)
   • ...

In Enfinity Suite 6 and Intershop Commerce Management, process chains are a mechanism for automating the sequential execution of interdependent scheduled jobs or pipelines.

Defining a process chain involves, basically, the following tasks:

• specifying the chain elements, i.e., the jobs or pipelines to be processed
• creating a specific scheduled job that triggers the execution

In Enfinity Suite 6, a pre-defined channel type that enables buying organizations to collaborate with their suppliers. The procurement channel is used by buying organizations to browse catalogs and products, create requisitions and orders to be fulfilled by suppliers. The procurement channel also provides sophisticated sourcing features, enabling - for example - RFQs and reverse auctions.

Depending on the context, "product" may refer to different concepts:

1. Shop Manager:
   A product is an item that can be created, managed, changed, imported by a shop manager in the online shop to sell it to customer-xs.
2. Sales and Software Engineering:
   A product is an installable, self-contained and executable software that provides the minimum set of functionality (via features) required to serve a business need. It is built, sold and maintained by Intershop.

In Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, product assignment refers to the (logical) allocation of a product to a category. Via product assignment, products become part of a catalog. Product assignment can be done either manually or dynamically:

• manual assignment
  Manual assignment means that the category-product associations are created explicitly when editing a product or a category
• dynamic assignment
  Dynamic assignment makes it possible to automate the category-product associations on the basis of product filters

attribute group for products for technical processes (e.g., syndication) or front end visualization purposes

In Enfinity Suite 6, product binding is the assignment of a product to a catalog category. Via explicit product binding or implicit product binding, products become part of a catalog.

in Enfinity Suite 6/Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, a group of products offered with an own product ID and an overall price