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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 packet is a packaging unit for physical products that have to be shipped to the customer-x.

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

A release of a software product (Intershop Commerce Management, Intershop Order Management, Payment Connectors, PWA, Microservices) that is intended to fix a number of issues of a previous version.

• For Intershop Commerce Management the definition given in Concept - Versioning applies.
  In contrast to hotfixes, patches may include new features.
• For Microservices the definition given at https://semver.org applies. 

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.

A payment solution is a software for accepting electronic payments by a variety of payment methods including, for example, credit card, bank-based payments such as direct debit bank transfer or real-time bank transfer based on online banking.

Payment solutions are provided by a payment service provider (PSP).

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.

Persistent objects (POs) are Java objects used to write and read data to/from the database ("ORM beans"). They are persistent implementations of business objects.

See persistent object layer.

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.

Personas are fictional characters created to represent the specific user types, skills, attitudes and/or behavior sets that use a product (e.g., Intershop Commerce Management) or are involved in the (e-)commerce process in a typical way. Personas are useful in considering the goals, desires and limitations of users in order to guide decisions in the software engineering process about services, products and related interactions. They have a personality, including a name and an image, and complement use scenarios. Personas are different from system user roles but are typically mapped onto them.

Generally, online shop personalization summarizes all means for creating different experiences that are unique to individual customer-xs or customer segments.

Personalization can be based both on

• explicit data, such as user profile or user preferences, and
• implicit data like viewed pages or previously purchased items.

Mainly, personalization aims at the content to be presented, like catalog views, individual product recommendations, promotions etc. Additionally, personalization can impact formal presentation criteria like display language, colors, etc.

A personalization group is a temporary group of users (customer-xs) for which the storefront must be personalized in the same way. The personalization is done for groups of users rather than for single users for efficiency reasons. This reduces the number of possible page variations and allows for better page caching and reuse of personalized pages.

The personalization group membership for a user can be determined using various criteria, like authentication state (anonymous, logged in), registration state, customer segment, address etc. The personalization group membership may change with the users interaction in the storefront, like after authentication (login, logout), registration at the store or other actions.

Personalization groups are expressed by a PGID, which is contained in the URL. The PGID is important to distinct between personalized pages with otherwise equal URLs. For example, the same product page can have multiple instances with different prices, one for each personalization group.

A pick list is a document used in a fulfillment center that enables a person to pack the packet that will be delivered to the customer-x.

The pick list is a list indicating:

• the products to be packed (usually SKU and name)
• the stock location of the products (usually corridor and shelf)
• the needed amount of the product
• the ID of the packet
• service information like gift wrapping (optional)
• bar codes of the products (optional)

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)
   • ...