WCS 8 Features and Functionality

1. IBM Customer Service
IBM Customer Service provides a light-weight customer service solution that is embedded in the Aurora B2C and Aurora B2B storefronts. 
Stores that are enabled with IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce allow a customer service representative (CSR) to act on behalf of guest customers and registered customers. A CSR can manage customer accounts, cancel and reorder orders, and shop as customer. A CSR can also act on behalf of Buyer Administrators to help complete Aurora B2B tasks from the storefront, without having to access the Organization Administration Console.

2. IBM Management Center
The Management Center is updated to use Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and Spring Framework. 
With DHTML, Management Center developers can now view their changes without first compiling their code. 

3. WebSphere Commerce Professional
The Professional edition now enables limited use of the Extended Sites architecture, previously only available in WebSphere Commerce Enterprise.

4. WebSphere Commerce Search
You can work with customized files to extend the default Solr configuration files. 
For example, the schema.xml, solrconfig.xml, or wc-data-config.xml files.
You cannot directly modify or extend Solr configuration files, such as the schema.xml, solrconfig.xml, or wc-data-config.xml files. Instead, you can work with customizable files to extend Solr configuration files:

• The schema.xml file can be extended using the x-schema.xml file.
• The solrconfig.xml file can be extended using the solrcore.properties file.
• The wc-data-config.xml file can be extended using a combination of the solrcore.properties and x-data-config.xml files.

The Apache Solr software stack has been updated to version 4.10.3.

5. WebSphere Commerce REST API
The Aurora starter store uses REST services throughout the checkout process. The actions for each page map to a REST service.

• WebSphere Application Server
• 8.5.5.x
• Java
• SE 7
• Solr
• 4.10.3
• WebSphere eXtreme Scale
• 8.6.0.8
• DB2
• 10.5